ALERT: An Astronomical Halloween "Event"? [UPDATE3]

Get ready to duck? Or dance around giggling like a little girl?

NOTE: Updates at bottom. Jeez, where else would they be?

Da-da's been watching planetary and heliographic flux densities for some time (he does that), and it looks like something of a higher energy event is going to happen around Halloween. It might be a good thing, or it might be a no “thing” at all. Like gnomes in your mailbox, YOU NEVER KNOW.

Da-da brings it up as he noticed the neat, 24-hour precision of the energy wave. Who knows, maybe every Halloween has a weird energy wave. We shall see.

Now, here's the projection for 24 hours later:

Interesting how many solar plasma tendrils are 24 hours wide, huh? 24 hour programming?

Note that the plasma density ramps significantly at 00:00 am UT 10/31/14 and drops at 00:00 am UT 11/1/14 -- an exact 24 hour plasma wave. (That's 8:00 pm EDT 10/30 to 8:00 pm 10/31 EDT.)

This happens a lot, o'course, but Da-da's throwing it out there to see if it's significant, considering it's Halloween and all. Wishful thinking, perhaps. Many of these energy waves pass by all the time with nary a notice from us ground pounders.

Let’s see if anything happens. The sun is, after all, a projector of sorts, and that plasma wave could carry any amount of terrestrial "programing." We might get, “DIE HARD” or perhaps (gulp), “PHANTASM.” Or perhaps, "THE MAN WHO PLANTED TREES." Or nothing at all. One never knows with the sun.

An amazing topiary representation of Da-da's favorite animated feature, "The Man Who Planted Trees." Awesome.

UPDATE: Two independent sources have indicated that Da-da will be, "jumping-up-and-down-excited as a little kid" about something that's going to be happening very soon. When Da-da asked if it was something good for ALL of us, he got lots of nods. Something has been trying to tell Da-da something for the past four nights (but Da-da has been blocked by something), and this is apparently the message. What all this means is unknown, and whether this has anything to do with the above advancing plasma wave... again, unknown. But whatever it is, it's supposed to be exciting. Could it be... THE Event? Stay tuned.

Note: an "auroral wave" occurred a few days ago. Quite beautiful. Check it out. Da-da had never seen this before, and he's seen most everything.

UPDATE2: Seems the predicted plasma wave gave the earth a glancing blow, so whatever the big event is to be, it seems it's for Da-da alone. Let be be finale of seem.

UPDATE3: Ok, well... SOMETHING happened, or is in process of happening. Da-da just can't explain what. Feels like we made it over some hurdle.

Halloween is Coming

"Dick Cheney/Dracula party of 666,666... your table is ready."

Pay No Attention to That Big Speaker in the Sky

Dude, can you turn that DOWN?

Ok, Da-da has nothing else to do but think and wonder -- or try to think and wonder, while watching children NOT think in wonder -- and he's been wonderthinking if someone, somewhere, has discovered how to create and induce focused gravity waves, and have been testing such a system for nefarious purposes.

Peaceful or not, these potential sound/weather engineers were no doubt wasting their potential -- potentially -- on some spooky arm of the U.S. Government, which has nothing better to do than waste tax dollars on weapons of bass production. Middle-class reduction? Too bad they can't take credit for creating BANKS, those weapons of crass destruction. Wealth reduction? Anyway, here's why Da-da suspects someone somewhere may have discovered how to induce focused gravity waves.

Besides all of these examples, Da-da had his own earwitness event earlier this year:

Pay No Attention to the Clown Banging a Shield Behind the Curtain

The other night, April 12th, at approx. 3:00 am, while Da-da was trying to sleep after visiting with friends in Northern California, Da-da was witness to the weirdest thunder Da-da's ever heard in 198 years of thunder concerts. "Regular" thunder booms and echoes. But this thunder was, to wax onomonopoetic, like this: BAM... BAM... BAM... BAM... BAM... BAM... BAM.... Da-da lost count, but it sounded like seven times. (Seventh Seal? Buehler?) There was no echo, though, just extremely impressive and repeated, loud metallic reports of equal intensity.

The trailing edge of a storm was indeed over us, but nothing was happening until the cacophony, which sounded for all the world like a thousand-foot-tall giant banging a club against an enormous bronze war shield, and there was no rain or hail -- or lightning -- where Da-da was. It did, however, make the whole of Marin County vibrate. And while some might think it was due to thunder echoing (the town where Da-da heard the sounds is in a large box valley, suggesting echo to some), Da-da is a recovering musician (jazz and classical) and has rather acute hearing, and can tell if a sound is an echo or not. Additionally, Da-da not only grew up in a box valley surrounded by mountains and thunderstorms, he also spent lots of time in Colorado Springs, the thunder and lightning capital of the world, so he's pretty much heard it all -- that is, until now.

Suffice to say that it seemed like some large and aggressive zeitgeist-y spirit had finally been purged (and wasn't very happy about it), trying one last time to scare the pants off everyone. Well, it worked for the people around Da-da. Da-da himself rarely wears pants to bed, but if he did, they would've been scared off. (Da-da actually wears boxers with little Yodas on them.) So. Slice it right with Occam's razor and you've got unusual thunder. Slice it sinister (that is, slice it left) and you might've just heard HAARP being... HAARPy.

Ah. Now the weird part: The exact same metallic banging sound was reported in San Diego, CA and Lacey, WA at the exact same time, 525 miles south and 750 miles north, respectively. That's some echo, Timmy. Perhaps this was just a West Coast, longitudinal Testing of the Sound System for the Apocalypse? Next stop: rousing the whole earth at once?

In this account, Da-da blamed HAARP (which turns out to be a global system with numerous installations), which could indeed be the culprit mechanism, as it might be able to induce and modulate an electromagnetic vortex in various levels of the atmosphere strong enough to produce a sound -- OR find/create various standing wave resonances in a specific-sized/shaped bodies of ionized air at a distance and modulate sound into it. Those are two ways to potentially generate the observed phenomena.

Another avenue for creating these sounds is via focused gravity wave. The aformentioned weird sounds were the smoking gun. Since they were identical they were clearly a test recording designed to provoke terror, and since they were LOUD, the focused or circular gravity wave hypothesis makes more sense. It's easy to assume a gravity wave application if you know how speakers work:



Basically, when electrical current flowing through some matrix (copper, air, etc.) changes direction, the material's polar orientation reverses. A speaker is basically an electromagnet, and when you apply a modulated AC current to it (modulated by say a spooky voice through a microphone).... BOOM. Sound from the speaker.

Now imagine that someone invents a way of creating gravity waves at a distance -- or reverse engineers one from alien technology (like they did with the laser, the transister, memory metal, etc.) -- using the earth's natural magnetic and electrical fields. However it's created, the circular gravity wave itself acts as the magnet, and the air inside the magnetic toroid (esp. wet air) acts as the matrix. Indeed, the air would have to be the right density to achieve a truly sonorous effect, say 75% humidity or more. Apply a modulated current to said air matrix and BOOM: youse got yer Sound System of the Apocalypse available for use in scaring the extremely gullible and telling people the white zone is for loading and unloading ONLY. It's also conceivable that this technology could be used to create light effects, or perhaps even project images with the help of space-based lasers on satellites. Depends on how much mojo's workin'.

So. If you hear the Horn of the Apocalypse -- or the Gong of the Apocalypse, or the Giant Rubber Chicken of the Apocalypse -- or somesuch spooky sky sound in the coming months, you can sit back and relax and hope that they start playing requests. (Arthur C. Clarke said that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. POOF.) If all this sky sound system stuff is true and viable, after they use it for scaring the pants off people at the London Olympics, this kinda thing could open up a whole new royalties/copyright stream for recording artists, like Gordon... er, Sting, doing planetary shows. Hey, Gordon, could you turn that down?

All that said... if the End-of-Times Light-n-Sound Show you see is AWESOME and makes you feel GOOD and HOPEFUL and HAPPY and a lot of other nice words -- and nobody dies -- it's probably NOT the U.S. Government acting as producer. It's probably something several orders of magnitude better.

Yo, Angel-dude, can you turn that UP?

Friday Night Spooky: Got Simulacra?

That's actually a spooky video still, but it's not active. You can see it HERE.

Is it just Da-da, or is this recent peak-energy clip from the X-1.4 solar flar from the July 12th blast the spookiest looking damn solar flare ever? Besides the ferocious, bearded Masonic triangle death-hat firelord guy -- with some weird energy figure inside the triangle -- there are what look like FACES everywhere. Da-da's hoping this is a good thing... but they all look pretty grumpy. Got simulacra? Can Da-da even spell simulacra?

Da-da for one is sending a massive giggle tsunami out into space to DEFEAT this lame-ass grumpfest -- unless it's a GOOD thing. Then Da-da will merely be tickling happy mojo spirit friends (HMSFs). Either way, the energy will be here at 09:17 UT (5:17 am EDT) tomorrow, Saturday, July 14th. Weirdest thing is it's due here at the exact same time Da-da's oldest boy, Nagurski, was born exactly seven years ago.

Happy Bastille Day, everyone. Happy b-day, Nagurski. Let's hope your candle isn't lit by the sun.

Pay No Attention to the Clown Banging a Shield Behind the Curtain (UPDATED)

Go home, war god.

Three places at once?
 
The other night, April 12th, at approx. 3:00 am, while Da-da was trying to sleep after visiting with friends in Northern California, Da-da was witness to the weirdest thunder Da-da's ever heard in 198 years of thunder concerts. "Regular" thunder booms and echoes. But this thunder was, to wax onomonopoetic, like this: BAM... BAM... BAM... BAM... BAM... BAM... BAM.... Da-da lost count, but it sounded like seven times. (Seventh Seal? Buehler?) There was no echo, though, just extremely impressive and repeated, loud metallic reports of equal intensity.

The trailing edge of a storm was indeed over us, but nothing was happening until the cacophony, which sounded for all the world like a thousand-foot-tall giant banging a club against an enormous bronze war shield, and there was no rain or hail -- or lightning -- where Da-da was. It did, however, make the whole of Marin County vibrate. And while some might think it was due to thunder echoing (the town where Da-da heard the sounds is in a large box valley, suggesting echo to some), Da-da is a recovering musician (jazz and classical) and has rather acute hearing, and can tell if a sound is an echo or not. Additionally, Da-da not only grew up in a box valley surrounded by mountains and thunderstorms, he also spent lots of time in Colorado Springs, the thunder and lightning capital of the world, so he's pretty much heard it all -- that is, until now.

Da-da's Fan Club Begins to Coalesce... in a Pink and SPOOKY Fashion

That is so sweet. Da-da esp. likes the spooky MIB on the right.

Testing the Sound System for the Apocalypse?

Testing, testing... BOO!

An apocalyptic pie in the sky was flung at Da-da's a few months ago. He dodged it and gave its filling and delivery some thought. But first, let's review some sky-sound phenomena folks have recorded. Da-da's job as Da-da is to maintain the peace, so he found it damn spooky at first, then it finally hit him what it was -- and it's nearly impossible to fear what you understand. So, let's have a deeper looksee. Don't be scared. It's just a recording.

1. January 12th, 2012; Conklin, Alberta, Canada.




2. January 12, 2012, Czech Republic.




3. August 11, 2011, Kiev, Russia.




4. Then there's HAARP testing recorded by a ham operator.




5. Finally... January 12, 2012, Melbourne, Australia -- an admitted fake.



You can clearly hear "Godzilla" in this one, along with the "War Of The Worlds" death ray sound in various layers with other generic wave sounds. Again, this last one was an example of a fake, to show how the sound could be created and used over video from wherever.

WHAT'S GOING ON?

If you listen to all of the above bizarro sky sounds heard all over the world, they sound remarkably similar. In fact, they sound like the same file. While some might be fake, some seem genuine. Regardless, provided they are really being heard and recorded via the sky, they're STILL FAKES. Why? Because they're HAARP, modulating its output to play recorded sounds of terror. The sounds are terrifying and well... deliberately biblical. Horror movie-ish. Speaking as a gentleman scientist and parenting horror veteran, Da-da enjoys a good old fashioned horror movie filled with screaming, but he knows full well it's fake. Take that a step farther. Given Da-da's 20-year research into secret societies, along with his two decades-worth experience with the media, he now watches the world's events like penn and teller watch a magician: he's knows it's all fake. But how did they do it?

HAARP is basically a super-powered transmitter designed to bounce signals off the ionosphere, for a number of purposes. You can cook the atmosphere with one kinda wave, inducing weather, drop the frequency and allow it to penetrate the ground to perhaps influence subterranean structures, or tone it down and use a chunk of sky like a speaker, broadcasting spooky Sounds of the Apocalypse -- or perhaps even a biblical VOG (Voice of God) telling you to do... whatever. Be not surprised then, citizenry of the world, when the VOG sounds in your skies. Or the Trumpet of Doom. Or the Sandwich of Destiny (sandwiches make noise?) explodes. (Or, if Da-da suddenly gets control of HAARP, you'll be hearing Jelly Roll Morton.)

There could be a sound guy somewhere (and perhaps voiceover talent, as well?) who's recently been paid to do voice and soundwork for what they were told is "Fantasia 3" or "Apocalypse Tuesday" or somesuch. If this occurred, they would no doubt be well paid for their service, not that they'd know how the sounds were to be used until it happened. And then who'd believe them after the fact?

If Da-da's hypothesis is indeed true, what does all this tell us?

It tells us that someone, somewhere, wants us to be afraid. All of us. Fear controls people. We already knew that. But now someone is potentially testing a Sound System for the Apocalypse for... what? A future dumbshow coming to a Middle Eastern theater near you? Probably in advance of the main event, to sow mindless terror? If true, then HAARP just became a psychological terror weapon. However, there is a bright side: we may be on to the theater managers.

If true, the obvious denouement for this is staging the Apocalypse. But HAARP-style sound delivery is probably only good for about 100 miles of spread, so they'd have to spread it around. It would be impossible for HAARP to create an effect all over the earth at once, the earth is too big and HAARP is too small. Given the limitations, if you wanted to scare the crap outta people for whatever purpose, would you launch the dumbshow in one "theater," then take it on the road, hitting all the major metros as fast as HAARP's beam could be aimed? It's possible that there are other scale-model HAARPs in locations all over the world, ready for action as repeaters or splitters. A controlled media would fan the flames.

Of course, if the Apocalypse were indeed real, the VOG would be broadcast LIVE with a global -- nay COSMIC sound system rivaling anything George Lucas has. But God is so much more subtle than that; and He's Love, not fear, not someone's silly idea of an Old Testament carnival monster. (Old testy guys, that's maybe why The New Testament got penned -- it's new and improved!)

There's one easy way to prove Da-da's spooky HAARP hypothesis: check HAARP's power bills via FOIA for all the dates where spooky sounds were recorded/heard. If the power was spikey on on those dates, there's a potential smoking gun.

But wait, there's more. Grab a globe. Stick red pins in the following: Da-da. Ow. Now try: HAARP in Alaska's bottom right-hand corner; Kiev (they spell it "Kyiv" now); Bucharest (um, it's in Romania, geo-boy). Tie a string around HAARP and drag it across your globe. It operates LOS. Drag your line from Alaska to Bucharest, Alaska to Kiev, Alaska to Moscow. See how those three lines describe the same angle? "Marching it home," if you will. Now, what's immediately downrange of those three vectors? Apocalypse Central: JERUSALEM.

"Testing testing, APOCALYPSE APOCALYPSE, SIBILANCE SIBILANCE."

Then there's the one in Conklin, Alberta. Put in a red pin and pull your line across the globe. What's downrange on a straight line from HARRP and Conklin? Talahassee, Florida, where this was recorded:



So.


Some potential religious fanatics want to carry out some ridiculous Old Testament prophecy (Gog and Magog) by way of this newly cooked-up hoobah about Iran and Israel and everything else, but first they need to scare us to death. Alas, they're not gonna get away with it, no matter how much time they spend on these silly spooky broadcasts, real or fake, but regardless of the intent, THAT'S ALL THEY ARE. Silly spooky broadcasts. Fake videos. It's not real. If we all know this, and know that it's intentional, then no weird sky noise can cause terror. The effect is ruined. Like Da-da said, don't be scared. It's just a recording. Now we just need to bring those who are doing this out in the open so our children can finally be safe from all this crap.

Higher Weirdness (or, "Shut Up, Nostradamus")

Boo.

2012 hasn't even thrown out its new-years packing material and already we have our first set of bizarro anomalies... which are actually continuances of earlier bizarro audio anomalies that Da-da wrote about  HERE back in September. You can heck out the sounds embedded in at the end of that post, or specifically give a isten to this sound clip from that post (the event occurred last August 22, 2011):



Now, here's a similar sound that occurred recently in Costa Rica on January 9, 2012:



But things were already spooky, audio-atmospherically. Here's a bizarro sound from Kiev, August 1, 2011...



...as well as similar sounds in Bucharest in early December, 2011...



...and most recently in Alberta in broad daylight:



Sure, ok. That's all a 9.2 on the Da-da Weirdness Meter. Indeed, it's strange out there in the wide open air... but what else is new? It's always been weird. It's EARTH. But there's probably a reasonable explanation, if you have an open mind, or at least one that makes sense to a part of us. Factually, similar audio sky anomalies were observed in the mid-19th C. and absolutely nothing came of them. So, those who are crying about Trumpets of the Apocalypse should be hoist by their own self-serving petard. As for the later bizarro sounds of wailing in Kiev and Bucharest and Alberta... well, these could be audio fakes created by fundamentalist folks to carry said echatonic agendas. Da-da doubts this, but it's possible. Or it's consceivable that HAARP is causing it, as we have no idea what those idiots are doing (and neither do they). Or perhaps it's high energy particles from the sun striking the earth more violently as sun-earth magnetic fields align. (The proton density of the solar wind was higher than normal in the Bucharest and Alberta events, with some south-facing polarity.) Or perhaps that latter odd noise is the wind howling through the earth's hair as she hurtles along at the edges of the Milky Way, the galaxy itself screaming throguh space-time at a third the speed of light, perhaps encountering a region populated by space-dust pixies in Nostradamus gift shops selling FEAR sno-globes to the natives. No matter. Like they say in France, "Shut up, Nostradamus."

Da-da's REALLLY Scary This Halloween...

Hey... ready for that playdate??

Elvis' Ghost, Tires and the Other Side (or, "Where the Rubber Meets the... HUH?")

Da-da's backyard is BIG, Dracula.

Da-da was sitting in a tire store the other day – just for fun – when something occurred to him. There are lots of cars in the world, right? And each one has, presumably, four tires. And each of those tires is rolling and abrading and wearing and tearing to the tune of serious consumer moolah. So?

A recent worldometer study noted that approximately 500 million cars had been produced in the last decade alone, and about 1B+ cars and trucks are on global  roads today, which translates into... oh, 4B+ tires. That’s a lot of tires. (Da-da knows, he has a million in his backyard next to all the barrels of radioactive waste.) And at $80 a tire… well, let’s just say for the sake of argument that there’s roughly $500 billion in rubber and a bunch of questionable grammar grinding away at any given time. A natural question to ask is: where the flock are the giant piles of tire dust?

Wouldn’t you expect there to be huge black piles of tire dust on the sides of every interstate, what with all these tires rolling and wearing all over the place? Is it being absorbed by the road surfaces? Or are the tire manufacturers impregnating the rubber with tire-eating bacteria, to not only take care of the tire dust problem, but also to keep our precious sets of tires wearing and deteriorating predictably to perpetually boost their bottom lines? What’s going on at the molecular level? Can people be allergic to tire dust? Can it be ingested? Will it make Da-da's children go to sleep faster? Is it good in beer? Are these questions making you wanna OCCUPY DA-DA? (There are a lot in there, already; bring hors d'oeuvres and a perky zin.)

99% of the info out there revolves around telling you what to do when your tires wear out and how many exciting (read EXPENSIVE) new choices you have for boring old tires, blah blah blah... [SNORE]... ah, but not HOW they wear. AhA! Reams of data exist on tire size vs. load requirements, traction, tread wear, temperature, how to make old tires into modern office buildings, how to make tire-enchilada caseroles, how great that tire casserole would look on your HEAD... that kinda thing. All the rubber geeks (that’s what they like to be called) talk a good game, hiding behind stalwart phrases like, "proprietary optimized component" and "univolume torpometric reduction." Awesome. But what happens when the rubber literally meets the road? (You were waiting for that one, right? You're so LUCKY.)

After some truly exciting research on road surfacing, Da-da finally found a DuPont engineer, Gregg Babcock, who seemed to know his stuff -- and who may or may not have been in a joking mood. Da-da asked him what happens when a tire wears on an Elvaloy-coated road surface (Elvaloy being a DuPont chemical coating for roads to make them last longer). Note that this is what the guy actually said, Da-da's not making this up.

“Tire rubber on DuPont Elvaloy roads is disposed of by Elvis,” said Babcock with a straight face. “We have an exclusive contract with him to dispose of rubber from Elvaloy roads. He takes it with him to the other side. [Italics courtesy Da-da.] Our COMPETITION, on the other hand, lets it sit on the side of the road, where bacteria eats it. The bacteria love the oil in the rubber. Don’t quote me on the Elvis thing, the King might not like it.” Oops.

Da-da then asked him what really happens to the rubber.

“Seriously, the bacteria is what eats the rubber,” he said. “I don’t know the exact details, but some form of naturally occurring bacteria just adore the high surface-to-volume ratio created by rubber wearing against the road. The bacteria eat the rubber getting at the oil. I don’t have any papers or anything detailing the process.”

Well. We can all sleep better knowing that all the tires in the world are slowly being ingested by countless legions of hungry Elvis-worshipping bacteria. Makes you wonder what else they’re eating. At least it should, MISTER TEXTING WHILE DRIVING. This of course will only remain important until that time when we don't need roads, which will be soon. No, really.

1.21 gigawatts... RIGHT THERE.

Spooky Sayer Speaks Soothiness

Ok, this is weird. Look at the above. Da-da was talking with an "enlightened" friend about the recent Yale research report that showed a correlation between reduced births on Halloween and an increase around Valentine's Day. So why is this?

Do pregnant women (as opposed to pregnant men) simply choose not to give birth to a Halloween baby because of a supernatural stigma? A recent article on this suggested amazement that pregnant women could dictate and postpone such an event. Da-da has news for you, babe: PREGNANT WOMEN CAN DO WHATEVER THEY WANT. Anyone who's been around pregnant women (especially if you're responsible) knows that they're in charge. Good luck standing in their way. But there must be more to it than that, so Da-da consulted with Sybyl the Soothsayer. (Sybyl just knows things. Da-da's been around so he knows when someone "knows things," and Sybyl started telling Da-da about his own childhood in great detail for about 30 seconds -- Da-da's an only child and there were no witnesses -- so Da-da quickly said, "STOP. That's enough. You know things.")

Anyway, as for the lack of Halloween births, Sybyl stated plainly that, "The time around Halloween is a difficult incarnation. THE most difficult, in fact" Why's that, Da-da asked. "It just is." Ok, Philosopher's Stone, anything else? "Those who are born on Halloween, or within five days or so, are very powerful. They are here for a good reason and beat out other spirits who wanted into that situation. These spirits go to the head of the line. Best to work with them and not against them." Okay. Tough to argue with a stone.

(Psst. Da-da is a Halloween baby, shhh.)

Applied Tiki Dynamics

What the hell does this have to do with anything? Just you WAIT, menehune-breath.

At six, Da-da's oldest boy, Nagurski, has developed a fear of monsters... which is a bit later than normal, but these things happen. To combat this, Da-da did three things:

1. He started numbering everything in sight
2. He told his boys that the family had INTENTIONALLY moved to the town they live in because monsters HATE that town, and also because everyone seems to be CAPITALIZING EVERYTHING for emPHASIS, and...
3. Da-da installed tikis.

What? Tikis, you say? Why's that? Because...

That Midnight Look of Parenthood

That Sunday Night Look of Parenthood

Happy New Year's Eve Stream of Spooky Ancient Historical Consciousness, AAIEIIEIEEE

Happy New Year? Yes, THIS is the real New Year's Eve, according to the old calendar. What old calendar? You know, the OLD one. The one that the Romans and Atlantians and Rotarians used so long ago when people wore pointy hats and danced with animals. Ever wonder why September (latin for, "Month 7"), October ("8"), November ("9") and December ("10") are, according to our calendar: 9, 10, 11 and 12, respectively? Is our Gregorian Calendar two months off? Well... not really. Allow Da-da to digress from Da-da topics a moment.

In Ancient Rome, September used to be the seventh month until a whole bunch (the technical term) of rather snoozy calculations and numerical salads were mixed with too much Caesar dressing around 46 BC, when the first month of the year changed from March 1st to January 1st, due mostly to a bet that Caesar had with Brutus that he couldn't add an eponymous month (from "Quintilis" -- Month 5 -- to "Iulius," or "July"), and a nepotistic one (from "Sextilis" -- Month 6 -- to "Augustus," Caesar's adopted son). You get all that? Sure, Brutus got even later, but let's be honest, "SEXTILIS," sounds much better than, "Augustus." The old Roman calendar was hosed anyway, as it used to last some 304 days, with about 61 of those days of winter floating around unassigned because the Romans were too busy expanding their franchise, subjugating anyone not running ROME 1.0 software, and drinking untempered wine. Of course, Caesar's calendar had a flaw that wasn't fixed for about 1500 years, but they used to misplace WHOLE legions, so go figure.

But why did they change the New Year to January? Da-da doesn't care (actually, he's forgotten). The Egyptians had their New Year on August 29, and the Eastern Orthodox Church had theirs on Labor Day, September 1st, but only because PBR and chips were usually on sale. Regardless, anyone with an ounce of sense resets their clocks for SPRING, the growing season, March 1st -- though some did April 1st and some May 1st because they liked May Poles, jeez, who doesn't? (that deviation had more to do with a culture's latitude and when you could lie naked in the grass comfortably, ahem) -- but for much of the world going waaaay back, March 1st was the beginning of the new year. We won't bring into this all the other calendars, of which there are at least a hundred just in Cleveland alone. Like everything else in TIME, this stuff really doesn't matter, though it does give you what you really want: an excuse for a regularly occurring party. So, dust off the Mardi Gras hats a little early, Lombardo. Just don't wake Da-da with your ill-timed jocularity.

Backstory time. Speaking of calendars, the whole December 21st, 2012 Mayan calendar resetting to ZERO thing is another event that's wholly misunderstood. The Mayans, who had a million calendars commemorating this and that, used these calendars to remember pivotal events (like the last time Da-da trimmed his beard). One of the things that the dreaded 12/21/2012 Tzolk'in or Cholq'ij calendar actually commemorates is the cataclysmic sinking of the vast seven island, "continent," a loooong time ago. (And before you wag about there being no sinking land precedent, check out the geology of Lake Tahoe.) Ever looked at a map of the South Pacific, like the Phillipines or Borneo? Of course you haven't. Look at all the islands, which are just mountain-top remains of the island continent.

A Tikal frieze, lost to WWII, depicting survivors being picked up in the Pacific after a cataclysm; many confuse this with "Atlantis," but that's a different ocean, folks. There's a reason why Central American cultures have that old saying, "The Pacific has no memory." It doesn't.

Da-da's sources place this ancient cataclysmic event on the evening of October 31st, when the Pleiades are high in the sky (hence the calendrical dedication) -- the real basis for why various cultures celebrate this day as the, "eve of the dead," when the veil between life and death is thinnest... aka, HALLOWEEN. (Yeah, this is 20 years of secret society and ancient esoteric research talkin'; the things Da-da knows.) It's also why the sun god at Tiahuanaco is looking west and crying, in remembrance of all who were lost. (Note: those notches are where huge golden wraparound plates were attached. That crack is from a massive earthquake.)

Some left the island continents prior to the cataclysm, and some barely escaped. Many were lost. The survivors went to the cardinal directions -- South America, North America, India, New Zealand, etc. -- founding scores of civilizations (Mahenjo-daro, anyone?), as illustrated by the ancient Indian symbol of the swastika, which literally means, "you four groups go in four cardinal directions for a while -- then turn." (Like all symbols, it has lots of other meanings, too, not the least of which is spiritual.) Those on the move were all to turn in the same direction, after a time, so as not to bump into one another. Yup, people have always had  issues.

Physically speaking, the Egyptian and Mayan "feathered serpent" was sometimes depicted with red body, blue head, and green feathers, which might illustrate the aforementioned sunken-island Pacific continent looking like a serpent from the air (and still does if you trace the remaining island chains using Google Earth). Note that there may have been more than one serpentine island chain in oceans XYZ; sea levels, ice ages and capricious geology can ruin your whole day. Some recent, "seers," have called the Pacific variant, "Lemuria," or, "Mu," but it's real name has yet to be determined, as it's called many things in many languages no one really speaks anymore -- and then, each big island had its own unique name apart from the whole chain. It may have been called, "Xahila" or "Xanhel," which is Mayan for, "Great Serpent," ravished from the Heavens [Oxlahun-ti-Ku], though this could refer to another island chain, or something that disturbed the ancient vision of the Milky Way; the edge-on view of our galaxy in the sky has long been called a "dragon," ever since humans wore fake mustaches and put chickens in their underwear. Right. A LONG TIME.

There might be a few doctoral theses in there about this and that and where and when and how, but it so doesn't matter anymore, as Halloween candy is so damnably expensive now, anyway. Besides, good luck getting all this past chicken-butt scientists and anthropologists and archeologists and the media who are not only politically invested in their antiquated historical models, but also scared to death about anything that reveals the fact that the earth is DYNAMIC, and has whacked back countless advanced civilizations -- and will invariably whack parts of ours again one day. No biggie. Death itself isn't that spooky, as it's not really "death," as much as it is going back into the big spirit soup kitchen to find a parking space for your cosmological roach coach -- though hopefully you've divested yourself of a few roaches along the way. Ah, but once your kitchen is totally cleansed of roaches like anger and fear and guilt? BOOM. Well, then you might have a little problem with there actually being no individuals, per se, along with the loss of your "personality," which is an illusion, and the fact that we're all tiny drops of a giant spirit ocean, but Da-da's getting waaaay ahead of himself. Though this does aptly demonstrate the unconscious fear associated with, "Invasion of the Bodysnatchers," and a bunch of other sci-fi bugaboos about the evils of "group consciousness."

YOU CAN'T PARK THAT THERE!

Krikey, what the hell was Da-da talking about? Oh, right. HAPPY NEW YEAR, Caligula. Give your horse a kiss at midnight. And don't worry: it's not like the Mayans said a giant spooky hole was gonna open up and you were all gonna jump into it in fear. Jeez, some people will believe anything.

Oh. Right. 1/11/11. So 11 Seconds Ago.

One one one one one... wow. Da-da's numerologist said, "I'm not a numerologist," but added that this was indeed a list of primary numbers. Whoa. SIGNIFICANT. And he's a feng shui networking poobah. SPOOKY. It's Monday, so whaddayawant? Wait... it's TUESDAY. Ack. Like Da-da said... SPOOKY. Can you wait until it's 11/11/11?? AIIEIEEEE! Me, neither.