give up your inquiries

"the mass psyche has begun to hallucinate, because the destiny of human beings is to live in the imagination" - Terence McKenna

Calling from the end of time.
This post is not anything like what I had hoped. It was originally conceived on January 10th, but student teaching took over, and I have been trying to find the time since to complete it, but simply could not. The events in Boston last week finally fleshed out the story in my mind, and for me, announced the necessity of its posting. It is much shorter than planned, gladly, as a full exploration of this topic would be incredibly lengthy and nearly impossible to read, and was completed quite hastily. The nature of the topic itself is so hard to fully articulate without numerous references to the work of Carl Jung, but I simply do not have the time. I would like to leave this for consideration by my readers whom remain to me, a mystery...





The New Year began another ascendancy of the weird, with some truly disturbing simultaneous events occurring worldwide, but the personal magnitude did not become apparent immediately. If the planetary consciousness is not working overtime, producing these phenomena, then they are being actively constructed psychically. It could be a combination of both processes, or nothing comprehensible. Even if the explanation is, in all cases, pure coincidence, this would not take away from the strangeness, and would in fact add to it. In any case, the cycles of absurdity are becoming increasingly ramified. No big deal really, the "big surprise" beckons from the eschatological frontier...or something like that.

The pervasive and unpleasant odors reported throughout New York City on January 8th did not immediately arouse more than a passing interest in the expected press emphasis on “fears of terrorism” amongst New Yorkers. The article in the New York Times was interesting however, first of all, for its mention of “conspiracy theories”. The language of this did not seem to be a reference to fears of a terror attack, and was not followed up with an explanation of said theories. Thus far, merely a strange occurrence made stranger by Mayor Bloomberg’s assertion that the smell could not be identified but that it was not dangerous. I followed the story for several days thereafter: the source of the odor was never discovered, it appeared again the next day on Staten Island, and while New York and New Jersey publicly passed the blame back and forth across the Hudson, coverage disappeared completely.

But what followed from other elements of the story led me down a road of speculation which opens up and connects to questions I have been asking myself for some time on seemingly unrelated events, and broader ideas on the nature of reality and synchronicity. This line of inquiry linked the original story with events in my own life, bridging the synchronistic world of the larger culture with that of my own more immediate experience.

Below, a shortened version of the article in the New York Times, emphasis in red, for those unable to read it all :

NY Times (1/09)A Rotten Smell Raises Alarms and Questions

It was the odor associated with natural gas — the telltale, unpleasant sulfur scent that typically signals a gas leak. But this time, it was lingering in many areas of Manhattan and northeastern New Jersey, coursing through buildings and leading to fears that it could ignite or that a dangerous chemical had been deliberately released. Schools and office buildings were evacuated. A subway station was shut, and commuter trains were rerouted. Government security officials were put on alert. Fire trucks raced through the streets, while Coast Guard vessels patrolled New York Harbor, communicating with tugboats and container ships. Twelve people with complaints of minor illnesses or injuries were taken to hospitals.
The source of the odor? As of last night, city officials still did not know. But it lingered for an hour after first being reported around 9 a.m., leaving New York with another mystery on its hands and more than a few conspiracy theories to sort through. With anxieties about gas leaks rattling the nerves of the city, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg held a press conference to assure residents that the city’s air-quality detectors had found no cause for alarm. He hypothesized that the odor could have been caused by the release of mercaptan, a compound that smells like rotting eggs and is added to natural gas so people can detect and report leaks. Throughout the day, possible culprits — among them a minor gas leak in Greenwich Village and natural-gas pipelines in northeastern New Jersey — were considered and ruled out. The olfactory mystery in the New York region was matched by strange activity elsewhere. In Austin, Tex., police cordoned off 10 blocks of the downtown business district early yesterday after more than 60 birds were found dead overnight along Congress Avenue, which leads to the State Capitol. Air testing there failed to find a cause, but preliminary results determined that people were not at risk. In New York, the piercing odor was the talk of Manhattan, and it called to mind another mystery: the maple syrup odor that people reported smelling on separate days in late 2005 and whose source has never been established. In yesterday’s case, several people said they were overcome by the odor. “I feel faint,” said Ivolett Bredwood, a legal assistant who noticed the odor once she stepped off a New Jersey Transit train at Pennsylvania Station around 8:45 a.m. The smell trailed her as she walked to her office, at 99 Park Avenue, which was briefly evacuated. “It’s an awful, nasty smell.” The widespread uncertainty and potential for danger led the authorities to take numerous precautions as thousands of reports of the odor flooded into 911 and utility hot lines.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority briefly closed the subway station at 23rd Street and Avenue of the Americas, as well as a control tower at West Fourth Street. Service was temporarily halted on PATH lines terminating at 33rd Street.
The major gas utilities — Consolidated Edison in New York and Public Service Electric and Gas in New Jersey — checked their transmission lines and reported no leaks, changes in pressure or other abnormalities. The city’s Department of Environmental Protection dispatched a mobile laboratory to the West Side with meters to test for ammonia, chloride, cyanide, methane, carbon monoxide, hydrogen sulfide and volatile organic compounds. “That’s the hardest part, finding the source,” said Christopher Haas, a department specialist in hazardous materials. “Air is very dynamic.” Officials were reluctant to discuss terrorism precautions in great detail, but they said that the city regularly monitors the air with machines that can detect the presence of chemical, biological or radiological substances. At the Port Authority Bus Terminal, some alarmed passengers thought that their buses had problems. And at the Equitable Center, on Seventh Avenue between 51st and 52nd Streets, air vents were closed to keep the odor out. Two schools were evacuated. Norman Thomas High School in Midtown was emptied for about 50 minutes beginning at 9:30 a.m., while students at Public School 11 in Chelsea were taken to Public School 33 nearby. Jeremy Fleishman, a worker at a computer repair shop in Chelsea, said it smelled as if “somebody left the Bunsen burner on” in chemistry class. By 10:30 a.m., he said, “it mostly dissipated — or maybe we just got used to it.” At 980 Avenue of the Americas, a building that was briefly evacuated, a guard, Ralph Supino of Secaucus, N.J., said he called Con Edison but reached only recorded messages. “They were overwhelmed,” he said. For some, it seemed logical that the odor was tied to some sort of terrorist plot. At 1250 Broadway, which was also briefly closed, a guard, Miguel Contreras of Irvington, N.J., said that thought raced through his mind when he noticed the smell upon arriving at the bus terminal on his way to work. "You pray to God that everything is fine and it’s just a leak somewhere,” he said. Adding to the alarm was the strength and duration of the odor, which may have been aggravated by a weather phenomenon known as a temperature inversion. Inversions, which often occur when a warm front moves over a cooler, denser air mass, cause the temperature closer to the ground to be cooler and the air higher up to be warmer — a reversal of the usual pattern. Inversions can trap pollutants and odors, preventing them from being dispersed upward. David Wally, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service’s forecast office in Upton, N.Y., said a warm front approached the city between 7 and 8 a.m., making it “very possible” that an inversion trapped the pollutants and gaseous odor closer to the ground. The inversion eroded later in the morning, he said. The city recorded 4,500 more 911 calls than usual between 9 and 11 a.m., with most of the increase in Manhattan. The Fire Department responded to 450 calls, 41 of them for emergency medical assistance. Dr. Kristin E. Harkin, an emergency-medicine physician at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center, said that strong odors can worsen the symptoms of people with chronic respiratory ailments like asthma and emphysema. Some suspicion fell on New Jersey, given the path of the prevailing winds and the prevalence of chemical and petroleum facilities in the state. Calls about the smell were received in West New York,Weehawken and other places. In Hoboken, the downtown police headquarters and several office buildings were briefly evacuated, according to Mayor David Roberts, who said he took an anxious call about the smell from his wife. Jack Burns, coordinator of the Hudson County Office of Emergency Management, in Secaucus, said that officials had ruled out the possibility of a mercaptan spill there. He added, “If it’s in New York and people can smell it in western Hudson County, that’s a lot of it, whatever it is.” Michael Williams, an accountant in Jersey City, said he delayed taking a smoking break for more than an hour because the odor was so intense. “I didn’t want to spark an explosion or anything,” he said.

At first glance, just another crazy day in the post-apocalypse. But the truly unsettling parts for me were the mention of last year's maple syrup smell, and the dead birds in Texas. Why? What was unmentioned, and I was unable to find anywhere else, was that this same smell wafted through the streets of Phoenix, Arizona last year. I was there, on my bicycle, all afternoon. I asked other people if they smelled it, they did. The smell dissipated quickly, but it happened once or twice more on “separate days”, and never occurred again. Aside from some brief paranoia and speculation, I soon forgot about the smell. I do not remember the dates, but I am willing to bet that it was simultaneous with New York’s maple syrup event. My experience went unreported in the local press, as far as I know, but apparently not in New York. It seems to have been notable enough for the New York Times to mention in connection with the more recent smell. Why maple syrup?

It gets even better… Austin was not the only place where birds were dropping from the sky. The apparently simultaneous maple syrup odors are mirrored by the apparently simultaneous large-scale discoveries of avian corpses. These were all reported on January 10th, occurring in Texas, Colorado, and Esperance, Australia. All three articles are reprinted without permission below.

Bird Deaths Shut Down Downtown Austin
The Associated Press
Tuesday, January 9, 2007; 4:41 AM

AUSTIN, Texas -- Texas health officials are trying to determine what killed dozens of birds whose remains prompted a temporary shutdown of 10 blocks of downtown Austin.
Police closed a section of downtown for several hours Monday after 63 birds were found dead in the street, but officials said preliminary tests found no threat to people.Workers in yellow hazardous-materials suits tested for contaminants in a cordoned-off area near the state Capitol and the governor's mansion before authorities finally gave the all-clear in the afternoon. Dr. Adolfo Valadez, medical director for the Austin and Travis County Health and Human Services Division, said the dead grackles, sparrows and pigeons were to be tested for signs of poison or viral infections. Officials did not believe bird flu was involved...Some experts said the most likely cause of the die-off was a deliberate poisoning. "It happens quite frequently," said Greg Butcher, director of bird conservation at the National Audubon Society in Washington. The dead birds were found overnight along Congress Avenue, a major downtown thoroughfare.

Bird deaths being investigated
The Daily Times-Call
1/10/2007

LONGMONT — About 40 dead birds littered a short stretch of U.S. Highway 287 south of the city Tuesday. Boulder County health officials and the Colorado Division of Wildlife were still coordinating efforts late afternoon to investigate the site, just south Mooring Road. From an initial description, division veterinarian Laurie Baeten said the birds were likely starlings killed by a passing truck. Considering whipping winds in parts of Boulder County on Monday and the fact that starlings tend to flock at night and in large colonies, Baeten suspects a gust might have thrown the colony into the path of a tall vehicle such as a semi truck. “Starlings tend to sit on the road and fly low,” Baeten said. “This wouldn’t be out of the ordinary.” While farmers on granaries and feedlots have been known to poison starlings — a non-native species from Europe originally brought to America as pets — such cases are rare in Boulder County, Baeten said. Poisoned birds are generally found within a few miles of the site where they were poisoned, and in smaller numbers. County health spokeswoman Chana Goussetis said West Nile virus is not an issue this time of year, and she doesn’t suspect any other kind of virus caused the die-off. Avian flu is carried by migratory birds, and starlings are not migratory, she said. Niwot resident J. Morley reported the dead birds to the county health department after he drove past them on U.S. Highway 287 at about 1 p.m. “There were slews of starlings on the (telephone) lines, like they were in mourning. Then I saw all these black balls on the road and realized they were birds,” he said. “It was kind of eerie, kind of Steven King-ish.” Morley said he wouldn’t have reported the incident had his wife not mentioned a news report that Austin, Texas, shut down 10 city blocks after discovering dozens of dead birds there Monday. Esperance, a coastal town in West Australia, also reported Monday that several thousand birds mysteriously dropped dead out of the skies. Health officials at both those locations have not yet determined the cause of the die-offs. Boulder health officials said they contacted animal control officers to investigate the birds on U.S. 287. If there’s reason for concern, they’ll send a carcass to a state laboratory. “We don’t believe there’s a public health risk,” Goussetis said.

Several thousand birds mysteriously drop dead in Australia
Malaysia Sun
Tuesday 9th January, 2007

A major phenomena has occurred over the West Australian coastal town of Esperance. Several thousands of birds, of many different species, have mysteriously dropped dead out of the sky. Investigations by scientists and vetinarians in the West Australian capital of Perth have failed to discover the cause of the mass deaths.The Australian newspaper says all the residents of flood-devastated Esperance know, is that their 'dawn chorus' of singing birds is missing. The main casualties are wattle birds, yellow-throated miners, new holland honeyeaters and singing honeyeaters, although some dead crows, hawks and pigeons have also been found. Wildlife officers, say The Australian, are baffled by the 'catastrophic' event, which the Department of Environment and Conservation said began well before a freak storm last week. On Monday, Esperance, 725 kilometres southeast of Perth, was declared a natural disaster zone. District nature conservation co-ordinator Mike Fitzgerald said the first reports of birds dropping dead in people's yards came in three weeks ago. More than 500 deaths had since been notified. But the calls stopped suddenly last week, reportedly because no birds were left. 'It's very substantial. We estimate several thousand birds are dead, although we don't have a clear number because of the large areas of bushland,' Mr Fitzgerald said. Birds Australia, the nation's main bird conservation group, said it had not heard of a similar occurrence. 'Not on that scale, and all at the same time, and also the fact that it's several different species,' chief executive Graeme Hamilton said. 'You'd have to call that a most unusual event and one that we'd all have to be concerned about.' The state Department of Agriculture and Food, which conducted the autopsies, has almost ruled out an infectious process. Acting chief veterinary officer Fiona Sunderman said there were no leads yet on which of potentially hundreds of toxins might be responsible. Some birds were seen convulsing as they died. Michelle Crisp was one of the first to contact the DEC after finding dozens of dead birds on her property one morning. She told The Australian she normally had hundreds of birds in her yard, but that she and a neighbour counted 80 dead birds in one day. 'It went to the point where we had nothing, not a bird,' she said. 'It was like a moonscape, just horrible. But the frightening thing for us, we didn't find any more birds after that. We literally didn't have any birds left to die.'

Less than a month before, in December, the same phenomena was reported in Maine…

Lewiston residents unnerved by unexplained deaths of crows
December 19, 2006

LEWISTON, Maine --Residents unnerved by the unexplained deaths of dozens of crows in a neighborhood next to the Promenade Mall hope tests by the U.S. Department of Agriculture will provide some answers. To residents, it seems almost as though dead crows were falling from the sky. Damien Perreault, 71, said he disposed of 10 dead crows he found on a walk Monday. That didn't count crows dead in the trees. Ray Beaudoin, a resident of Summit Avenue, called animal control officials when the dead crows started appearing a couple of weeks ago. State environmental control officials were not interested in testing them because the season for West Nile virus is over. But the U.S. Department of Agriculture accepted a couple of the birds last week and will run tests. For now, residents have no answers but plenty of theories involving pollution, bird illnesses -- or intentional poisoning. Dan Marquis of the Stanton Bird Club said the notion of intentional poisoning is worth looking into. For now, Beaudoin said there's no noisy cawing. Hundreds used to roost in a tree line that separates the parking lot of the Promenade Mall and Summit Avenue. "In the last three or four days, the crows are nowhere to be found," he said. "It's quite eerie," he said.

Again, so what? Well, I have observed the same phenomena here in the Valley, again, unmentioned in the local press. My movement around Phoenix has been primarily by bicycle for the past year, and I have seen more dead birds on the side of the road than I ever could have imagined possible, usually along stretches of sidewalk in Tempe, occurring in spatial/temporal clusters. Riding home from my former job at a Tempe office, for a time I feared the much hyped avian flu, but never explored the issue. I am not quite sure how to articulate my thinking on all this, but in my mind, I am seeing some kind of connection between these events, but I feel like it may be much more intangible than words can express. Some larger framework or structure of reality is attempting to assert itself somehow. I am reminded of Carl Jung’s book on UFOs published in 1959, still the most important statement on the phenomena, going way beyond anything published since. He posited the UFO as a sort of mythical extrusion into reality of something more ineffable, a felt need in the modern collective psyche for a unifying symbol. This need had been satisfied in the past with other miraculous symbols, but the modern form was the flying saucer. The eruption of synchronicities has reached a fever pitch. Maple syrup, and dead birds? Even those simultaneous events that are purely physical, and easily explained, indicate to me in some way that reality is knitting itself together more tightly. The whole thing is just too weird.

Finally, this past week in Boston, and other cities:

Suspicious Devices Not Bombs, Boston Officials Say

ASSOCIATED PRESS
January 31, 2007

BOSTON -- Several illuminated electronic devices planted at bridges and other spots in Boston threw a scare into the city Wednesday in what turned out to be a publicity campaign for a late-night cable cartoon. Most if not all of the devices depict a character giving the finger. Peter Berdovsky, 29, of Arlington, was arrested on one felony charge of placing a hoax device and one charge of disorderly conduct, state Attorney General Martha Coakley said later Wednesday. He had been hired to place the devices, she said. Highways, bridges and a section of the Charles River were shut down and bomb squads were sent in before authorities declared the devices were harmless. Turner Broadcasting, a division of Time Warner Inc. and parent of Cartoon Network, later said the devices were part of a promotion for the TV show ''Aqua Teen Hunger Force,'' a surreal series about a talking milkshake, a box of fries and a meatball.Authorities are investigating whether Turner and any other companies should be criminally charged, Coakley said. It wasn't immediately clear Wednesday who might have hired Berdovsky. ''We're not going to let this go without looking at the further roots of how this happened to cause the panic in this city,'' Coakley said at a news conference. Those conducting the campaign should have known the devices could cause panic because they were placed in sensitive areas, she said. Turner did not notify officials of the publicity campaign until around 5 p.m., nearly four hours after the first calls came in about the devices, she and others said.
At least 14 of the devices were found, Coakley said. ''The packages in question are magnetic lights that pose no danger,'' Turner said in a statement. It said the devices have been in place for two to three weeks in 10 cities: Boston; New York; Los Angeles; Chicago; Atlanta; Seattle; Portland, Ore.; Austin, Texas; San Francisco; and Philadelphia. ''We regret that they were mistakenly thought to pose any danger,'' the company said. As soon as the company realized the problem, it said, law enforcement officials were told of their locations in all 10 cities. The marketing firm that put them up, Interference Inc., has been ordered to remove them immediately, said Phil Kent, Turner chairman. ''We apologize to the citizens of Boston that part of a marketing campaign was mistaken for a public danger,'' Kent said. ''We appreciate the gravity of this situation and, like any responsible company would, are putting all necessary resources toward understanding the facts surrounding it as quickly as possible.'' Interference Inc. had no immediate comment... Homeland Security Department spokesman Russ Knocke praised Boston authorities for sharing their knowledge quickly with Washington officials and the public. ''Hoaxes are a tremendous burden on local law enforcement and counter-terrorism resources and there's absolutely no place for them in a post-9/11 world,'' Knocke said. Authorities said some of the objects looked like circuit boards or had wires hanging from them. The first device was found at a subway and bus station underneath Interstate 93, forcing the shutdown of the station and the highway. Later, police said four calls, all around 1 p.m., reported devices at the Boston University Bridge and the Longfellow Bridge, both of which span the Charles River, at a Boston street corner and at the Tufts-New England Medical Center. The package near the Boston University bridge was found attached to a structure beneath the span, authorities said. Subway service across the Longfellow Bridge between Boston and Cambridge was briefly suspended, and Storrow Drive was closed as well. A similar device was found Wednesday evening just north of Fenway Park, police spokesman Eddy Chrispin said...' Messages seeking additional comment from the Atlanta-based Cartoon Network were left with several publicists. ''Aqua Teen Hunger Force'' is a cartoon with a cultish following that airs as part of the Adult Swim late-night block of programs for adults on the Cartoon Network...The cartoon also includes two trouble-making, 1980s-graphic-like characters called ''mooninites,'' named Ignignokt and Err -- who were pictured on the suspicious devices. They are known for making the obscene hand gesture depicted on the devices.

ASSOCIATED PRESS
February 1, 2007

In nine cities across the country, blinking electronic signs displaying a profane, boxy-looking cartoon character caused barely a stir. But in Boston, the signs - some with protruding wires - sent a wave of panic across the city, bringing out bomb squads and prompting officials to shut down highways, bridges and part of the Charles River. Something that may have been amusing in other cities was not funny to authorities here, the city that served as the base for the hijackers who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks. Officials defended their reaction Thursday even as two men charged in the case, and some residents, mocked the response as overblown. Young Bostonians familiar with the unconventional marketing tactics used by many companies tended to see the city's reaction as unmitigated hysteria. Tracy O'Connor, 34, a retail manager, called the police response "silly and insane," contrasting it with that in other cities where no one reported concerns about the devices - an advertising gimmick for the Cartoon Network show "Aqua Teen Hunger Force." "We're the laughing stock," she said. Public safety officials and a large segment of Boston's older generation condemned the publicity campaign as unthinkable in today's post-9/11 world. "Just a little over a mile away from the placement of the first device, a group of terrorists boarded airplanes and launched an attack on New York City," police Commissioner Edward Davis said in an interview with The Associated Press. "The city clearly did not overreact. Had we taken any other steps, we would have been endangering the public," he said. Davis said that as calls were coming in about the electronic signs in rapid succession Wednesday afternoon, police also received reports of two devices that resembled pipe bombs and had a confirmed report of a man walking down the hallways of New England Medical Center making a rambling speech about "God getting us today" and "This would be a sorry day." Davis, who took his job in December, said he didn't know of any calls coming in to the Boston 911 line. Officials found 38 blinking electronic signs on bridges, a subway station, a hospital, Fenway Park, and other high-profile spots in and around the city. In New York, officers went to various locations and found only two of the devices - both attached to a highway overpass. Police said it did not appear it was targeting any landmarks such as the subway, Empire State Building or Brooklyn Bridge. "People can be smug and say all you have to do is look at this and know this is not an explosive device, but the truth of the matter is that you can't tell what it is until it's disrupted," Davis said. Officials have vowed to hold responsible Turner Broadcasting Inc., the parent company of the Cartoon Network... Two men who authorities say were paid to place the devices around the city pleaded not guilty Thursday to placing a hoax device and disorderly conduct. Peter Berdovsky, 27, and Sean Stevens, 28, were released on $2,500 cash bond - apparently amused by the situation, even though they face up to five years in prison. They met reporters and TV cameras and launched into a nonsensical discussion of hair styles of the 1970s. As they walked off, Berdovsky gave a more serious comment. "We need some time to really sort things out and, you know, figure out our response to this situation in other ways than talking about hair," Berdovsky said...The devices didn't prompt calls of concern in any of the nine other cities where Turner said the devices were placed. Police in the other cities fanned out to find and remove them after Boston's scare. Some enterprising people got to the devices before police: At least seven were for sale Thursday afternoon on the Internet auction site eBay, ranging in price from $500 to $2,100. Most of Boston's colleagues in law enforcement in the other cities chose their words carefully. "I wouldn't want to give my opinion but in today's world it's better safe than sorry. Someone (in Boston) clearly thought there was a threat," Atlanta police Officer Joe Cobb said. In the Seattle area, authorities thought the devices were "obviously not suspicious." "In this day and age, whenever anything remotely suspicious shows up, people get concerned - and that's good," King County sheriff's Sgt. John Urquhart said. "However, people don't need to be concerned about this. These are cartoon characters giving the finger." Tobe Berkowitz, an advertising professor at Boston University, said it's easy to understand why there is a generational gap between the way the target audience for the promotional campaign reacted and the way older Bostonians reacted. "For people who are hip and live in the world of blogs and all sorts of cool alternative media, it's one thing," he said. "But for the rest of us ... they don't get it as a marketing or a clever event, they see it as a huge disruption of their lives." The publicity campaign was conceived by the Adult Swim marketing department and approved by the head of the Cartoon Network, Turner spokeswoman Shirley Powell said Thursday. She said the devices had been up for two weeks around the country and the network had not received any calls about them. "We were simply promoting a TV show," she said. "If we had ever perceived this to be something threatening safety, we would never have proceeded with it." The network told the marketing company to decide where the devices should be placed, with the mandate they should be in places likely to be seen by young men. Adult Swim's target audience is men aged 18 to 24. The marketing company that placed the signs, Interference Inc. of New York City, did not return calls seeking comment and its offices were closed Thursday.

The complete folly and embarrassment aside, I think this story says quite a bit about our present condition. No further comments are necessary on this one. So...

The dead birds:
HAARP?
Chemical Testing?
Random coincidence?
Synchronicity?

The odors:
similar list (see above)

Aqua Teen Bomb Scare:
Cultural Exhaustion?
etc., etc.


There is obviously no concrete connection between these three stories, but the numinous psychological element is there, for me at least. The absurd simultaneity simply reveals the novelty of the moment. Again, name-check Carl Jung. As for the dead birds found in several cities worldwide, and the pervasive, unexplained odors, I have had direct experience with both of these phenomena. This is mildly disturbing. The Aqua Teen thing for me is some kind of signpost. I cannot take this any further.