Who Can You Really Believe on the Web?

A 'Dreamland' podcast came up on my iPad yesterday featuring Rob and Trish MacGregor, as I had put the free part of the 'Dreamland' podcast onto my Apple podcast list when I had listened to the Dreamland podcasts I wrote about in these recent posts -
August 11, 11:11 and Rainbow People?

Dreamland?

I only find the 'Dreamland' podcast interesting because of the guests Whitley interviews on his show, and I only listen to the free part of the show, because I don't really resonate when it comes to the stuff Whitley says about his "visitors" and the future of our planet.
As I've said before and will say again, Whitley is an enigma to me, and I feel that he is not very good at joining the dots to any real puzzle pieces he may have been presented with.
'Fault in Our Stars' and 'The New Mutants' Director Josh Boone Interviews Whitley Strieber About Whitley's New Book 'A New World'?

But the "invisible woman" in the room in this latest 'Dreamland' podcast with the MacGregors was when Trish was asked about an event that in Trish, Rob and Whitley's minds involved Whitley's late wife Anne.
Trish says to Whitley around the 7-minute mark of the podcast that she thinks Anne died on August 11th and Whitley then says,"No, August 15th".
I was stunned as I had written a whole post about the date of August 11th and about celebrities' births and deaths on that date, and a large chunk of that post was about finding out that Anne Strieber had died on that date, too.
I was embarrassed that I hadn't done my homework good enough when I wrote that post and thought I had better go back and remove Anne from that post.

"Listen, and you will find moments, almost certainly, that will take you back to your own truth ..."

And now Whitley was confidently telling Trish that Trish was mistaken that Anne had passed on August 11th, as Whitley said it was August 15th.
I wondered how I could have written a whole post and gotten that date so wrong myself?
Wikipedia writes that Anne passed on August 11th, so I thought maybe I had read another wrong Wiki entry and based my post on that misinformation, as surely Whitley's word trumps any Wiki date attributed to his late wife's passing?

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

But the more websites I checked about the passing of Anne, the more I started to doubt Whitley saying Anne had passed away on August 15th.

Anne Strieber's Goodreads page

A Coast to Coast August 12, 2015 article
titled 'Death of Anne Strieber'

It soon became apparent to me that Whitley was wrong about the date of Anne's passing and not Trish.

An August 14th article at Whitley's Unknown Country
site titled 'Anne Strieber Has Died'

My point with this post is not to bash Whitley for getting the date wrong about Anne's passing, my point is just who can you believe with the facts when you are trying to compile the truth into your own research.
It's lucky I did my own re-search here before taking Whitley's word as gospel and re-editing or deleting the part of my post about Anne passing on August 11th.
But hey, we all make mistakes when it comes to our memories, because at the end of the day we are all only human.
Well, some of us might not be only human ... but who really knows when it comes to the web, right?-)

August 11, 11:11 and Rainbow People?

Black Friday 2019?

Russell Crowe auctions Souths
hat to raise money for fireys

To me Black Friday used to mean the day when a Friday fell on a 13th in any month, but now it seems to be used for a Friday in November every year to buy more sh!t that we probably don't need anyway.

Maybe it would be good to declare that day as Gratitude Day, as well, where we take time to reflect on the things that we already have in our lives and that we are grateful for?

It's probably more just a case of synchromysticism than planning on Russell Crowe's part, but I think that black rabbit on a white hat is a very symbolic image when it comes to the perils facing our future.
The rabbit is an introduced species that is causing a lot of environmental damage to the continent of Australia, and while Russ' cap is a South Sydney Rabbitohs Rugby League hat, that black rabbit on a soot covered white hat is a very good visual metaphor for the future we are heading for, and not just in Australia.
Corporate and individual greed is destroying our way of life, and we are heading down a very dark rabbit hole in the near future if we don't pull our heads out of the sand.

The South Sydney Rabbitohs have a white rabbit as their default avatar, which to me is even more ironic considering that the 1999 movie 'The Matrix' was filmed mainly in Sydney and that the Rabbitohs were booted out of the NRL competition in 1999 and didn't get reinstated until 2002.

Pi Day 2020?!

I'm not a Rabbitohs supporter, I'm a Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks member, so I find it rather ironic that in round 1 of the 2020 NRL season my team play Russ' team on Pi Day (3/14: March 14th), the date Stephen Hawking passed away on and which also happens to be Einstein's birthday.
Stephen Hawking's Final Theory: The Universe is a Hologram?

Looks like I've gone down another rabbit hole myself here with this post, but I'm starting to think that Stephen Hawking's final theory about the universe being a hologram was a pretty good theory.
Who knows what the future holds I guess, it's not as if we can see into it, is it?-)
Remote Viewing: An Ingo Swann Event?

Oh, and apart from dying on Pi Day, Stephen Hawking also shared January 8th as a birthday with Elvis and David Bowie:-)

I guess you can either put on the red shoes and dance the blues, or put on the blue suede shoes and keep dreaming:-)
Thank you very much, and happy Gratitude Day Black Friday.
Smoke causes frenzy of calls from Canberra residents

Quite an eerie sight seeing Black Mountain in the Australian capital city of Canberra covered in smoke on Black Friday.
Black (Iron Prison?) Mountain

Student climate change protesters take to
the the streets across the country

Ironically, Canberra is in the Australian Capital Territory, which is often just referred to as ACT.

I also find it ironic that the ACT flag and coat of arms has a black and a white swan on them.

Black Swan Events?

Scott John Morrison (born 13 May 1968)

And that the Australian Prime-minister is a Sharks fan.
Canberra Connections

Update: Not long after I had put this post up, the Sharks sent me an e-mail to tell me of their Black Friday sale:-)

Stop Worrying, Nobody Gets Out of This World Alive?

Hear Clive James read Japanese Maple, accompanied by visuals from animator Lucy Fahey

Ironically, while it may have been autumn in England, it's spring on the other side:-)

... and spring, as well;-)

I think Clive will be pleasantly surprised to find that the game is far from really over.

UPDATE: November 29th, 2019
The ABC TV special of Clive James being interviewed by Kerry O'Brien filmed in 2013 aired tonight on the ABC network and is available to watch for free at iView in the link below.

Clive James: The Kid From Kogarah

The Sharks look to paint Kogarah
black, white and blue in 2020

Ironically my NRL club the Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks will be playing their next two seasons of home games at Kogarah, while building works around the old grounds go on.
Having lived in Queensland pretty much my whole life I've never watched a game of rugby league at Kogarah before, but this year my interstate membership includes a home game ticket for a match at Kogarah, so I'll be planning on watching a few games there over the next two seasons ... God willing of course;-)

But you know what they say about how to make God laugh, don't you?-)

Consider the Titanic and the Lobster Chowder?

I had just listened to an episode at the 'Fiction Predictions' podcast which discussed a fictitious novel published 14 years before the Titanic sunk, which seemed to eerily parallel the events that would take place 14 years later.
And then I read the recent news article about Celine Dion saying how see nearly turned down the offer to sing 'My Heart Will Go On' -
Celine Dion reveals shocking fact about Titanic movie

Fiction Predictions Podcast: The novel that predicted the sinking of the Titanic

I can think of a person who starred in an earlier version of the movie 'Titanic' and who would latter lose a wife at sea, which was kind of hinted at in QT's 'Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood' this year through a parallel to Cliff Booth's wife's mysterious drowning, and which I wrote a post about earlier this year -
A Titanic Double Entendre at Robert Wagner's Character?

But what surprised me reading the news story about Celine was that there was an alternate ending to the JC version of 'Titanic' featuring Bill Paxton's character -
Emma Watson's Eerie Circle

And another fact in that same article that struck me as odd was there was written that 80 crew members working on JC's 'Titanic' movie were treated for suspected food poisoning and then it was later found that someone had spiked the lobster chowder with angel dust.

"Poisoned chowder: During filming, 80 crew members were violently ill and many were rushed to hospital when someone spiked a pot of lobster chowder with an illicit hallucinogen drug called angel dust.

Leo, Kate and that grandma (Gloria Stuart) didn’t eat any of the chowder."

Murdered on August 9th, 1969

I couldn't help thinking of David Foster Wallace's book 'Consider the Lobster' when I read about the spiked lobster chowder consumed on August 9th, 1996 -
"Titanic" Crew's Lobster Chowder Spiked with PCP

Shipping out: On the (nearly lethal) comforts of a luxury cruise

A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments is a 1997 collection of nonfiction writing by David Foster Wallace.
In the title essay, originally published in Harper's as "Shipping Out", Wallace describes the excesses of his one-week trip in the Caribbean aboard the cruise ship MV Zenith, which he rechristens the Nadir.

He is displeased with the professional hospitality industry and the "fun" he should be having and explains how the indulgences of the cruise cause uncomfortable introspection, leading to overwhelming internal despair.
Wallace uses footnotes extensively throughout the piece for various asides.

Another essay in the same volume takes up the vulgarities and excesses of the Illinois State Fair.
This collection also includes Wallace's influential essay "E Unibus Pluram" on television's impact on contemporary literature and the use of irony in American culture.

The name of the 2012 Simpsons episode
"A Totally Fun Thing That Bart Will Never Do Again" also references the title essay.

Fiction Predictions Podcast: How 'The Simpsons' predicted the cacophony of American politics

I think real life is way stranger than fiction.

Consider the Lobster

UPDATE: November 29th, 2019