The O'Odham legend states that the ancient Hindus even came occasionally to America in a type of dirigible jet craft called Nah-Beg. Nah-Beg derives from the Sanskrit Nag-Bagh, meaning Snake God. Once, one of those Nah-Begs got out of control, swallowing several men alive in its intake manifold, in the lake in which it was moored. That lake, now bone dry, is located in the small village of Quitovac (Sanskrit; Khatti-Vac [Lord of Sacred Waters]), Mexico, just across the border.
Astonishing Evidence: Ancient India's Emperor Priyavarta Invaded Arizona!
i am pretty sure i have talked about the time portals before
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In general, Hollywood makes horrible desert movies. They either used the desert as a tired metaphysical trope or, worse yet, exoticize Native American culture and its supposed extranormal capabilities to offer cardboard critiques of white man's culture. The worst culprit: Dances with Fucking Wolves. Though I seem to recall Natural Born Killers also was pretty whack on that point. What this has to do with Greg's thread, ask me not.
four great gun masters live in this desert
Actually, I think it has a lot to do with this thread, although I personally admit to exoticizing extranormal Native American abilities and offering cardboard critiques of white man's culture as much as anyone and more than most. The desert comes up as a tired metaphysical trope because it is a tired metaphysical trope; living there for extended periods really does make you crazy and convince you that you are a messiah. You are right that the best desert movies come from outside the Hollywood system but that is true of most movies generally; for instance, nearly all biker movies are also desert movies and they are products of the vanished B-bill/drive-in regime, the Hohokam of the American cinema. I think Dances with Wolves happened on the Great Plains though, totally different shit. You could not get me to move out there for a million bucks. Even at a tender age the most telling detail of that film to me was that Costner can't actually fuck an Indian woman; she had to be a white woman who just happened to be raised by the Indians. And this was the 1990s. Oh Hollywood.
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you are right, it was the Great Plains. How did I fuck that up?
Oh, I remember how: I hated that movie so much, I tried to expunge ever memory of it out of my cranium. When it does resurface, it is in discombobulated slivers and shards. The best desert movies have been been made in Mali, Nigeria and Italy, but maybe not in that order. Best Hollywood desert movie may have been THE SEARCHERS. Again, white woman raised by Indians. But as with most Westerns of the era, it was not about cowboys and indians, but miscegenation at the dawn of the Civil Rights era. But that is banal Film Studies 101, so forgive me.
banal film studies 101 is my raison d'être
I can white-people it all day and all night long. You are confusing me with R. John or Ben. I saw that Sublime Frequencies thing on the home-bru musique of Niger and dug it. I am going to start exoticizing the extranormal powers of Black Africans just as soon as I get tired of exoticizing the extranormal powers of Red Americans.
grotto of miracles
The Shiva or I'itoi at that time, the leader and mining engineer living in Baboquivari, had to go to Quitovac and remove the energy source [of the crashed Nah-Beg --Gigglin' Greg] which was two small green stones containing a powerful and inexhaustible supply of energy. He also brought out alive the six men it swallowed. For many years, the O'Odhams kept those stones in caves. The positive charged stone became lost over the years. However, one O'Odham family kept the negative half of the energy generator in their home until the 20th century. Edward H. Davis, author of a small booklet published in 1920, wrote that he met an old O'Odham man who had seen the negative half of the generator. (Indian Notes and Monographs; Vol. III, #4; The Papago Ceremony of Vikita, published by the Museum of the Indian Heye Foundation, p. 62.) This powerful stone was small. The old Papago Indian told Davis that it was the size of a baseball. Later in the twentieth century, the O'Odhams decided to hide it in a grotto in Organ Pipe Cactus Park. No one knows where it is anymore.
i thought a grotto was by definition sub-aqueous
the Grottos of Quitobaquito
Before my computer was stolen I was writing a script in which this young science fiction author with muscular dystrophy hires a private investigator to check out this parcel of land in the mountains that he plans to buy. On the land is a cave with some weird other dimension shit glowing and pulsating. But he gets waylaid by other powers with their own interests in this weird thing that is in this cave. The point was supposed to be that everybody projected their own delusions onto this otherworldy object, thinking it was the key to solving whatever was motivating them and were willing to kill over it. But it doesn't do anything and eventually disappears without a trace. Really I was trying to remake the Maltese Falcon but with a science fiction twist. Anyway this reminds me of that.
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The ones south of Arivaca? You are all sick of that, right? Southern Arizona is awash in extranormal phenomena. Either that or the sun bakes the denizens' brains in such a fashion that they perceive extranormal phenomena.
I'd like to hear it.
mysteries of the mountains
Hey Greg
Did you happen to see that article in the weekly a while back about how pretty much the entire Dunbar neighborhood is built on top of the old city cemeteries? It's apparently pretty common for people (and their dogs) to randomly unearth Tucson's unwanted (or unwealthy) ancestors.
ha ha no i did not
Bear in mind I have never actually lived in Tucson! Unlike some people.
John needs to get into black powder revolvers. Actually maybe I should throw another party in order to destroy the board again. I got two guest bedrooms and everything. It will be harder to get people out here than it was to DC though.
Mister Flannel-Clad 90s sez...
bastard out of bermuda
dude claims to be starting an expedition next month
http://www.thothweb.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=printview&t=5840&st...
I am thinking I will go over after the Arivaca Film Festival in three weeks and just poke around for a week or so on my motorbike. I almost certainly won't find anything.
balzac - 'a passion in the desert'
" 'Well sir,' he said, after a moment of silence, 'since then I have been in war in Germany, in Spain, in Russia, in France; I've certainly carried my carcase about a good deal, but never have I seen anything like the desert. Ah! yes, it is very beautiful!'
" 'What did you feel there?' I asked him.
"'Oh! that can't be described, young man! Besides, I am not always regretting my palm trees and my panther. I should have to be very melancholy for that. In the desert, you see, there is everything and nothing.'
" 'Yes, but explain----'
" 'Well,' he said, with an impatient gesture, 'it is God without mankind.' "
i am not always regretting my palm trees and my panther
Right, so, nigh on a week ago I was driving from Sonoyta to Caborca looking hard for the turnoff to Quitovac and I did not see the turnoff to Quitovac. There can only be one explanation for this. The demons do not want me to find the other half of the generator.
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Ancient East Asian DNA found in the US:
http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Researchers_Find_Pre_Clovis_Human_DNA_...
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Underground Egyptian city in AZ?
http://www.hecklerspray.com/awesome-or-off-putting-kinkaids-ancient-egyp...
it smells snaky just the same
"One thing I have not spoken of, may be of interest. There is one chamber of the passageway to which is not ventilated, and when we approached it a deadly, snaky smell struck us. Our light would not penetrate the gloom, and until stronger ones are available we will not know what the chamber contains. Some say snakes, but other boo-hoo this idea and think it may contain a deadly gas or chemicals used by the ancients. No sounds are heard, but it smells snaky just the same. The whole underground installation gives one of shaky nerves the creeps. The gloom is like a weight on one's shoulders, and our flashlights and candles only make the darkness blacker. Imagination can revel in conjectures and ungodly daydreams back through the ages that have elapsed till the mind reels dizzily in space."
blame the smithsonian
Would the Smithsonian Institution hide its treasures from the eyes of American citizens? Would our government cause files and important archeological finds to disappear — just as the Egyptians caused that building near Giza to disappear?
It seems so! In fact, there is a long history of disappearing artifacts and records at the Smithsonian. . . . There is even a possibly apocryphal story about the Smithsonian Institution's taking a shipful of archeological objects and dumping them into the ocean.
http://www.spiritofmaat.com/archive/nov2/gcegypt.htm
i like how they also blame the S.I. for suppressing all evidence
of the giant skeleton people. There is also an eight-foot skeleton what gots a lantern in his rib-cage who roams the range between the Superstitions and eastern Cali. COINCIDENCE?!
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I even heard a story about the SI going to Greece and stealing some strange skeletons and then denying all knowledge of them.
Tell me about Fantasma Colorado!
Is it like this?:
'In a dramatic example of frontier justice, Wallace beheaded Vidal then lashed him firmly into a saddle on the back of a wild mustang. Tying the outlaw's hands to the pommel and securing the torso to hold him upright, Big Foot then attached Vidal’s head and sombrero to the saddle with a long strip of rawhide. He then turned the bucking horse loose to wander the Texas hills with its terrible burden on his back.
Soon, stories began to abound about the headless rider seen usually in remote country, with its sombreroed head swinging back and forth to the rhythm of horse’s gallop...Soon after Vidal’s body was laid to rest, soldiers at Fort Inge (present-day Uvalde) began to see the headless rider. Travelers and ranchers in “No Man’s Land” also reported continuing to see the apparition.
In 1917, a couple traveling by covered wagon to San Diego, Texas camped for the night outside of town. They would report the next day that as they sat by the campfire a large gray stallion sped by with a headless man shouting "It is mine. It is all mine."
Another sighting of the headless wonder was reported near Freer, Texas in 1969.
The legend lives on and still today, many people report seeing the headless rider galloping though the mesquite on clear and moonlit nights in South Texas.'
P.S. Tell me about the giant skeleton, too!
how does a headless man shout?
I have told pretty much ever'thing I done know. I have personally seen neither the 8-ft skeleton nor the Fantasma Colorado. However I regard the proposition that the 8-ft skeleton is the ghost of a prospector as ridiculous, as I have never done seed an 8-ft prospector. I think it is far more likely to be the restless haunt of a Pre-Man, trying to tell us something. The Fantasma Camel would logically seem to have some link to Hi Jolly's creature teams but he crops up a bit weirdly east for that -- Greenlee is mountain country, the south edge of the Mogollon Rim, gorges and crevasses where the Gila burbles down from the Rockies, not the low sandy desert. Range not basin. Who knows with ghosts.
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