My only picture in this entry

On the way to the Pine Bush UFO Fair, I ask Amber if she thinks the attendance to the fair would increase or decrease if motherships appeared over major cities. She thinks a second before deciding it would depend on the cities, a fine diplomat.

Amber sets up the tent in twenty minutes. Aside from crude mechanical utility, I've learned to keep out of her way. I serve as another pair of hands helping erect the tent, I unload boxes onto the grass, I assemble tables, but that is the extent of my usefulness. If I tried to arrange my table cloth or books, Amber will redo it behind me to meet her specifications. I am saving time and frustration by keeping out of her hair, which makes me a lazy jerk, but it is better than feeling like an incompetent husband as she huffs fixing the misalignment of my novels to her aesthetic perfection.

A young woman approaches my booth with wide, empty eyes, asking if I will take one of her books. I scan the title and see it says something about UFOs and the New World Order. I do want a copy of what I am certain is an unhinged cult manual, but I do not want to accept it from her hand. She might take that as an obligation to listen. I have books to sell.

She happily accepts my declination, turning on her heels to scare off a couple looking at my books. They take her book and glare at me, as though I had put her up to this, as though I so don't want to sell my stock that I sic strangers on potential customers. The man shoves the cult book in his baby's stroller and the push back into the crowd.

The organizers are adamant that no one can walk the streets selling their wares. They either look the other way when money is not being exchanged or the cultist was too stealthy.

When I look up at a new customer, another, older cultist has replaced the first, shouting for people to accept a free book. Free bad books devalue my quality ones, which do not want to convince readers of any viewpoint besides that they want to read more of my books.

For the next hour, I see cultists wandering around, asking people to take their books. Then, the cultists disappear, either having exhausted their supply or been shooed away by the organizers.

A church has a booth here every year, trying to proselytize by offering a free round of cornhole. I do not see any prize attached to tossing a beanbag in a hole, though maybe a high score is required before the Pearly Gates. In front of their booth is a sandwich board proclaiming that that can give a quiz no one can pass. This may not be false advertising. One cannot pass what one does not take. Under their tent is someone dressed as Scrappy Doo, among the worst, most superfluous characters in the cartoon canon. This feels right. Anyone enticed by Scooby Doo's nephew needs to be saved from Hell.

For half an hour after we are set up, the tent beside us is empty but for some chairs and a table. I assure Amber that, if it remains so much longer, I am going to colonize it.

With minutes to spare, Travis Walton, one of the most famous abductees living today, is directed to the empty space. As he is one of the draws for those who have a serious interest in ufology (as opposed to the 95% of people who are here to enjoy a curious street fair on a perfect day), people might loiter before my table waiting to speak with him, buying one of my books to tide them over.

This does not happen.

Walton's story is that he was abducted from a forest in Arizona in 1975. His six coworkers saw the ship, but they escaped unharmed. Walton was gone for five days, he says, because he went toward the ship. He thinks he injured himself in doing so and the occupants kept him to repair the damage. When he woke, it was to a hospital-like room, where several short, bald creatures attended him. He wrote his experience in the 1978 book The Walton Experience, an unassuming title, which was adapted into the movie Fire in the Sky, more eye-catching to the casual viewer.

Skeptics have attempted to debunk the Walton based on polygraph results, but also supposed statements Walton and the crew gave before and after the abduction. Some claim that Walton used countermeasures to trick the polygraph, but that would almost be unnecessary. Polygraphs are notoriously unreliable even when not dealing with alien abductions. Walton even went on a Fox game show called The Moment of Truth, where he failed a polygraph when asked if he was abducted. If you put me in front of a studio audience and asked me whether I knew my name, my nerves might be enough that I would fail.

I don't have to rule on the truth behind Walton's story. I am happy to be on the same roster.

(c) Ken Pond,

Thom Reed joins Walton. Reed's UFO 1969 incident was the first to be "officially inducted into the archives of the United States as historically significant and true" owing to news coverage of the time, witness statements, and polygraph results. In 1969, Reed was 9, but it is enough that he was there. Reed reiterates that this was an "incident" and not an abduction, though this does not stop visitors from addressing it as an abduction until he stops correcting them. He won't use the word, but he would drive himself crazy addressing every slip of the tongue. As his story involves an entire car full of people teleported by a bright light, one can understand the irresistible lure of the word "abduction." It is Reed's experience and he can use whatever term he prefers.

Thom Reed's presence means that I pop my head up, prairie dog like, every few minutes when one of the fairgoers addresses him.

A news station comes toward my booth, cameras and mics blazing. They stop, distracted in their course, and interview a woman with an alien doll in her (https://amzn.to/2Wl4NBc) BabyBjorn, asking her questions as though she might think this hydrocephalic alien is alive. The worst part is that they angle the camera such that no part of my table is visible in the footage. My weirdness is hidden under a bushel. I have been filmed and interviewed a few times here and only once made it to air. My books in the background of their shot might be enough to destroy footage. Even when my interviews have turned into something, it was in German, ten seconds, and did not increase my fame or make sales.

Later, a crew does film me. They point a camera at me and tell me to say whatever, so I give a blurb about my books and say I haven't much seen anything in the skies over Pine Bush, despite going on sky watches and to the support group meetings. Once we are done and I've signed a release for them to use this footage, I ask them what outlet they represent. None. They are doing this for themselves, a private project for their personal use. I do not think I am sexy enough for this to be covert porn.

There are six or so different crews filming the event today, from private collectors to major networks, though most do not bother even panning their camera over me, despite my proximity to the guests of honor. I do not look strange enough for that, and perhaps I am not. I can tell the same few stories, but none are about being abducted, so why bother with me?

I should learn to lie under polygraph to improve my career. "Yes, sir, the aliens took me on their ship and told me we needed to stop using nuclear weapons if we were going to join the galactic brotherhood. They cannot reveal themselves to earthlings until we clean up all our pollution and become vegetarians. Then they gave me this round scar on my shoulder, which is definitely not from when I had chicken pox in third grade."

Ken and Holly arrive to get footage, using my booth as a landing pad. They leave before the annual parade begins. That isn't the sort of b-roll he wants or needs. This ends up not being to his detriment, as the officer telling people to clear the way makes up an eighth of the parade. Amber looks down at a message on her phone. When she looks up a few seconds later, the parade has gone, all seven people. I snap a single picture.

Ken asks if I will do sound for him while he interviews Walton. I shrug, saying that I must stay behind my table in the unlikely event that someone wants to buy a book. He deputizes Amber. I run her through the basics: Put the headphones on, point the box at the thing making noise, make sure the meter stays in the green. Walton gives them a minutes-long, detailed interview, which thrills Ken.

I glance over at Amber. She smirks and rolls her eyes. She does not leave the table to do sound again. That one experience more than enough for her.

Ken films me before he leaves. I will be in a short documentary alongside ufological luminaries. I promise Ken that I will share it with what Pine Bush UFO enthusiasts I can, but it is difficult to coax something toward the virality that would make his effort for Mediagate.xyz worthwhile.

I don't know that I will watch his product before sharing it, though. I do not watch things in which I feature, unless my appearance is brief and ideally not in English. My image and words are my kryptonite, like a Gothic villain terrified of mirrors.

Holly told Ken of my suspicions he is up to something given the effort he put into be nice to me. He told her he is touched, but that he only wants to be my friend because I am intelligent and interesting. Even more dubious. If I were being this nice to someone, I would be after their inheritance.

Ken returns later, confiding that he filmed the woman behind me, who told him that she is a million-year-old alien on her fourteenth lifetime. He is both amused and worried. I peek behind me at a woman in a brown duster, wide-brimmed brown hat, and twelve-foot scarf.

"That's the Doctor," I tell him. "The Fourth Doctor, to be exact."

Ken says she might believe what she said. I get the feeling Ken is not a Whovian.

(c) Ken Pond,

After Ken has gone, this woman passes my table. I approach her, telling her how Ken took her story seriously. She laughs a little too emphatically, then slides her fingers between the buttons of my shirt to hold me in place, smile fixed.

"But do you know," she says, staring into my eyes, "that you are 1.3 billion years old?"

I smile back, refusing to be unnerved. "I'm made of star dust."

She releases me, satisfied. "You are made of star dust."

The strangest thing I see is not any of the costumes, but a woman with a Doritos bag opened lengthwise, eating the chips with a fork. She is the one I would believe was a poorly disguised alien, unaccustomed to our social etiquette. Later, someone informs me that this is a "walking taco," taco fixings dumped into a bag of chips. I have never had much trouble moving with a taco.

A woman stops by my booth and asks if my books are self-published. She hasn't read them, of course, and maybe she mistakes them for non-fiction. I point out the three that are. The rest are traditionally published, though I suspect aloud that the publisher is nearing the end of their life cycle. She takes my business card, putting it in a small sandwich bag with a few others, and tells me that she works for Red Wheel/Weiser, one of the premier publishers of occult and spirituality books outside Llewellyn. I smile, though I don't expect anything more to come of it. Her story could hold more water than an interdimensional abduction fleet hiding under this town, but it doesn't behoove me to get my hopes up.

I sell only a few books, less than I have before and not worth the gas getting here or the food I buy to sate Amber. I am here for the press, to be filmed and maybe catch the right eyes. I can never know when that is likely to happen, so I show up and put forth my best face.

A woman tells me a long story about her family owning a cemetery where a witch is interred. Her coven disinters her every thirteen years to take clippings from her well-preserved corpse to use in rituals to increase the coven's power, leaving behind her expensive jewelry. She shows me texts from someone named Ghost, detailing all this as verifiable proof. I listen and get down what I can, enough keywords that I can verify how much of this story holds water. I am skeptical of most things involving modern people grave robbing for magic, having met plenty of covens that would lack the cardiovascular health for it. It's unclear why, given that I have a book titled Pagan Standard Times, she thinks I would rule against the witches.

Given how most people confide alien adjacent stories, post-mortem witchcraft is a breath of fresh air.

A man with a camera -- I'm not sure he is part of a crew or simply knows he will get more attention with a camera -- stands before Travis Walton and acts like a ufology fanboy. It is sweet to see someone starstruck -- assuming that phrase is not offensive when we are dealing with a man who claims he was abducted. He then tells Walton how much he likes his book and how cool it would be if someone made a movie of it. Walton gently reminds him that someone did which was sensationalized because the actual events of being paralyzed by a beam of light and prodded by machine elves reads as too commonplace.

"No," says the guy, "I mean a good movie. If I were going to make a movie about it, I'd make it" -- he pauses trying to find an acceptable word -- "chronological."

Fire in the Sky is chronological, as are most movies.

He spends another five minutes suggesting to Walton how he would make the movie differently, though he has not seen Fire in the Sky and every idea he has is something that is already in the movie. Finally, he lands on the idea of making a movie about Walton's life in the years before the abduction happened, when he worked forestry with the man who would become his brother-in-law. This is not something that is well-explored in Fire in the Sky, likely because it is not a movie people would pay to see.

Walton is gracious and tolerant, as is no great surprise. He has heard worse.

We are small spectacles on our own, costumed characters wedded to our tents. The authors and speakers are there for the entertainment of the fairgoers, but we are not meant to be taken seriously. We are to be spoken to, told stories, but that is where it ends. The public does not much want our books because we are not meant to have reality once we leave this street.

Soon in Xenology: Social Justice Wiccans.

last watched: Angel: the Series
reading: Fast Times at Ridgemont High
listening: Damien Rice