RosFest 97
(Sorry, I just couldn't think of a name for
this piece. I thought of calling it "Fear, Loathing, and
Marketing in Roswell, NM", but it just didn't do it for me.
If anyone has an alternative title e-mail it to me.
By John Ludi (as Tim Elder)
(All rights reserved. In the extremely
unlikely event that some borderline personality out there
actually wants to duplicate this or any of my other writings, in
whole or in part, you must first get permission from the author:
me. If such permission is requested it is quite likely that it
will be granted based upon the fact that I really just don't care.
I only make this statement to avoid being quoted out of context.
I'd hate to be made out to be an even bigger boob than I know
myself to be. If, however, you do decide to endure the Herculean
effort of trying to make me look sillier than I already do,
please inform me of exactly when and where you have done so so I
can continue to hone my self-parody skills. Thank you, and have a
nice day.)
Part One: Getting There.
About two months prior to the Roswell event a website called
Parascope, as part of their weekly e-mailing, mentioned the
possibility of renting some astonishingly affordable camp space
with them. Knowing that the hotels would probably all have been
booked at least 6 months in advance and not having the slightest
idea of the layout of the town or even it's population, I sent in
20 bucks to cover 3 days of camping. I've been on their website
at least once a week for the past six months and find it to be
one of the better maintained sites out there that deals with
paranormal subject matter. The visual aesthetics and layout of
the site are impressive. I generally find the writing on the site
to be in the "pretty good to not bad" range, however it
tends to descend into the realm of the sophomoric when they deal
with certain areas they are openly skeptical about. There seems
to be a certain agenda based upon the preconceptions of those who
run the site that frequently annoys me. Willing to buy into a lot
of the right-wing conspiracy scenarios hook, line, and sinker,
they are rather narrow-minded in their approach to some other
areas, using the two-dimensional tools of ridicule and satire
where thoughtful analysis might better serve their purpose. Also,
there is this sort of (fortunately infrequent) snickering
adolescent fascination with softcore scatology that kind of
strikes me as somewhat juvenile at times. In addition, the "corporate"
nature of this site has always made me a bit wary, they have
commercial tie-ins with major media sources that have made me a
bit suspicious. As any of you who have read some of my other
writings in the past well know, I'm just not very trusting of
"Big Money" in any of it's varied manifestations. So it
was with more than a few trepidations that I took advantage of
their offer.
Many of the Parascopers were planning on caravaning to Roswell
from a member's house just outside of Albuquerque. I had a fairly
pleasant phone conversation with this individual and decided that
she seemed affable and interesting and not at all what I had
expected. I thought it would be interesting to meet some of these
people beforehand and so I found myself driving though a maze of
dirt roads in the New Mexican hills in the New Mexican darkness.
If you've never been to this part of the country I have one word
of advice for you: GO. It is one of the most beautiful places in
the world. Albuquerque itself is kind of a dump, but most of the
rest of New Mexico is just haunting. I've never seen so many
stars. Driving at night in the mountains is treacherous however,
and my car nearly took up permanent residence in a ditch before I
arrived at the residence of a woman who calls herself Kokyan
There were around 20 or so people there, most of whom were in
Kokyan's kitchen engaged in a fairly spirited series of
conversations that belied the fatigue many there were apparently
suffering from. Several people seemed interesting including an
amusing character from New York who regaled those assembled with
a great many lively (and almost believable) tales of his
encounters with the paranormal and urban violence that had me
laughing hysterically. Kokyan herself seemed nice, if a bit hyper
and stressed out. It was decided that we would leave ahead of
schedule as all who were expected to arrive were in attendance at
that point in time.
Before we left I hung out in Kokyan's computer room watching one
of the chat hosts (whose name escapes me though he lives about 10
blocks away from me in Minneapolis) host his chats. The question
arose of if I myself was a "Knollie" (a Parascope
chatroom regular) and if so, what my chat handle was. I had to
admit that I was not. That raised a few eyebrows, two of them
being his. I further explained that I had neither a subscription
to AOL or Windows 95 and that, to the best of my knowledge, those
were the only two ways to engage in their chatroom activities.
This seemed to displease this individual. I did not dare mention
the real reason I don't do chats. The real reason is that, for
the most part, it is a complete and utter waste of time...especially
if you have better things to do and you have a real social life.
I've tried it several times...I've gotten hopelessly bored every
time. The level of conversation is usually at the lower primate
level and that is in chatrooms that are dedicated to relatively
lofty topics. Mind you if I had a specific purpose for being in a
chatroom, such as interviewing someone, I'd do it. But as a means
of meaningful discourse it falls far short of the real thing.
Myself, I'm a tactile person. I like to look at people when I
talk to them. I like to hear the tone of their voice, the
inflections marking the difference between sincerity and sarcasm.
I like to shake people's hands, sense the rate of their breathing,
the way they stand, where they place their eyes. Not to mention
the subtle psychic messages that are beamed from their big grey
bag of neurons to mine and back again. If we don't have these
things we do not have a conversation, we merely have words being
carelessly flung back and forth without regard of their impact,
subtle or otherwise. The idiot who gets off on making a nuisance
of himself in a chatroom by repeatedly pledging his allegiance to
Hitler would not exist for very long in a real social setting. He'd
either be ostracized, avoided, or injured. I've come to view
chatrooms as a refuge for the socially incompetent at worst. At
best I suppose you could say that you can meet people that you
normally would not have access to in the normal course of your
life, but just look around you: the world has no shortage of
people. In fact the world is just slopping over with people, far
too many of them in my opinion. Perhaps we should spend less time
trying to build virtual relationships and work on building real
ones with the people we are compatible with in our own
neighborhoods. In short, I can't stand chatting on-line and I
have only used it as a precursor to phone conversations or face
to face meetings...and I've barely used it for that! End of
speech.
Admitting that I had never been in any of their chatrooms might
have been a bad move. At this point I started to get the feeling
that I was being kind of an interloper. Just some guy who took
advantage of a situation offered that maybe wouldn't have if he
had had a modicum of tact or common sense. I kind of felt that I
was crashing a somewhat private party. This feeling was only
going to grow over the next two days.
After about 15 minutes of Keystone Cops-like attempts at
organization, we left for Roswell at about 12:30 A.M. It became a
trial by fire for my 85 Lynx as the estimated peak cruising speed
of the large RV Parascope had rented rose from 75 to 85 MPH.
Fortunately my car did not shake too horribly and no wildlife or
livestock choose to migrate from one side of the road to the
other while I careened through the darkness debating the wisdom
of the choice I had made to caravan with these people.