Meme Scholar with Madness (PhD)

[EndtheMadnessNow]

Ivan T. Sanderson's The Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained and their publication "Pursuit". Sanderson founded the Ivan T. Sanderson Foundation in August 1965 on his New Jersey property, which became the Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained (SITU) in 1967. SITU was a non-profit organization that investigated claims of strange phenomena ignored by mainstream science.


This t-shirt was a mail order exclusive for SITU members/Pursuit subscribers and was only available for a few months in 1979. If you want one click here.

Ivan Terence Sanderson (1911-1973; brain cancer) was a British biologist/cryptozoologist/UFOlogist and writer born in Edinburgh, Scotland, who became a naturalized citizen of the United States. Sanderson wrote on nature and travel, and was a frequent guest on television talk shows and variety shows of the 1950s and '60s, displaying and discussing exotic animals.

As a teenager he became famous claiming to have seen an "olitiau" (a large cryptid bat) after being attacked by a creature he described as "the Granddaddy of all bats". During World War II, Sanderson worked for British Naval Intelligence, in charge of counter-espionage against the Germans in the Caribbean. In 1968, Sanderson introduced the concept of the "vile vortex". Vile vortices are claimed to be "anomalic regions" regularly distributed on Earth where disproportionately many strange phenomena occur, such as disappearances, UFO sightings, or poltergeist activity.

SITU began publishing Pursuit with Issue No.1 (May, 1967) and the title simply as “Newsletter.” However, with Newsletter No. 3, the title “Pursuit” was added, and this remained the title.


SITU Newsletters 1-5 (has some interesting strange stories)




Bat sketch found at the American Philosophical Society.

Skim the Wiki if you've never heard of him.

Encyclopedia of Strange and Unexplained Physical Phenomena (1993) by Jerome Clark.

THE STORY BEHIND THE COVER

We kept warning and warning them, but people just laughed the way they always do or did, rather...

I'd first gotten interested in Flying Saucers back in the fifties when people started thinking there was something to these constantly recurring reports of strange things hurtling through the sky. If this had been a thousand years earlier, we'd all have been on our knees, no doubt, seeing in these strange shapes warnings of the end of the Earth. But, a thousand years later, we were a more sophisticated people. We didn't have the sense to be afraid of what we couldn't understand. When news came through that a cloud (that's what the reports called it, "a cloud") of shapes in the sky had appeared over Lhasa and that devout Tibetans and Chinese Communist officials were milling around the temples in the thousands, animosities forgotten, celebrating the coming of the men from something they called Shambala, we felt superior over these people who weren't as advanced as us.

And then the next day Ovington Proving Grounds went off the air. And then the state of Texas.

The gentlemen who represented Texas in Congress were quick to demand a bipartisan investigation.

A forcefield seemed to have been thrown around the state. No news was coming out of Texas. No radio stations seemed to be working. No planes were able to cross Texas. Reporters who had flown as far as the Texan border and then found themselves unable to proceed a step further, reported seeing people walking about, on the other side, with an obviously dazed look.

The day before Texas had gone off the air, a commentator in Dallas had chortled over the latest Flying Saucer story. A giant Flying Saucer had been seen heading towards Dallas that morning a fantastic round thing, large enough to cover a small village according to one report and the commentator, paying his respects to what he termed the silly season, had quoted the warning of a local Saucer group that the long anticipated Invasion might be on.

The next day, we in New York began to watch for Their coming. We had warned people, just as the group in Texas had done, that there was no assurance that the coming of the Saucers meant the Millenium was near, and we had attacked the emotional blackmailers who had started cults based upon alleged contacts with the "men" piloting the Saucers. We felt that even if these visits had taken place, they could be interpreted as "softening-up" steps, and nothing more. They came, finally, the morning of the sixth day after Texas had gone off the air.

I was down at the Battery, watching, as the huge Mother Ship landed in the Bay-a shimmering forcefield quickly thrown around it while, from inside the ship, more than a doren smaller scouts quickly emerged and were soon hovering over New York.

There was pandemonium where I was, of course. Men and women were kneeling in the streets. A wild-eyed man near me was shouting about the end of the world. But I could only feel numb. The end of the world that we had known was undoubtedly near. The saucer that was hovering closer and closer above our heads heralded a strange Tomorrow......

Full magazine: Ivan T. Sanderson-Fantastic Universe-Nov 1957


March 29/30, 1974: The Sugarland Express, the first theatrical film by rising director Steve Spielberg, is released. Spielberg shot the prison break where it actually took place: the Jester State Prison, a pre-release facility in Sugar Land, Texas.


Panavision chose this movie for the launch of Panaflex, a compact camera that enabled Steven Spielberg to shoot complex shots inside a patrol car. The hijacked Texas Department of Public Safety patrol car featured in the film is a 1973 Dodge Polara, which Steven Spielberg bought himself after filming, bullet holes and all.

Based on the events of May 1969 when fugitives Robert and Ila Fae Dent kidnapped Texas DPS trooper Kenneth Crone, commandeered his car and led police and other law enforcement officials on a chase from outside Port Arthur, through Houston, up to Navasota and on to Wheelock, where Ila Fae Dent's mother lived. At one point a motorcade of more than 150 police cars and reporters joined the pursuit. FBI agent Bob Wiatt (who retired in 2004) confronted them at the mother's home and was forced to shoot Robert Dent, who was armed, in the neck, killing him. Wiatt wrestled Ila Fae to the ground and handcuffed her.


Nuclear GOP rhetoric, wow!


Michigan Republican congressman suggests nuking Gaza

In 1964, Walberg served on the Barry "Nuke'm" Goldwater 1964 presidential campaign. Tim Walberg is an ordained Baptist pastor. No surprise, he was also part of the J6 plan! And took a mystery trip to Ukraine. Guess that Christian right neocon mentality of serving hell fire fallout to thy enemy still beats onward.

So, now we're back to raising the American flag, in a strange, weird manner...And the awkward beat goes on?



This isn't a game
Turn the safety off
Still we want more, so the beat gets faster
Everyone must play cause fame will find you
Put your face on the cover of a loaded magazine
We're proud of ourselves
Our greatest inventions, methods of killing, have reached perfection
All the players marching to a different drum
The rhythm of the war dance
And the beat goes on
...
- "Victory Not Vengeance Nation"




Remember that one time when celebrities tried to explain to all the people about the Clinton Whitewater scandal? Proof SNL used to be funny and relevant. Aired 03/19/94. It's a must watch:





3/29/1956 New York – Huge crosses, formed by lighted windows blaze above New York’s skyline as part of an Easter display in Manhattan’s financial district. This scene photographed from the roof of the Municipal Building features 150-foot-high crosses in the following buildings (L-R) the City Services Co.; City Bank – Farmers Trust Co.; and the Forty Wall Street Corp.  (United Press Telephoto)


Nighty night!


"And when thou art weary
I'll find thee a bed,
Of mosses and flowers
To pillow thy head."
  - John Keats