This pictorial deck is from Creative Card Games.

(Posted by Doug Skinner.)

 Thanks to everyone who made the trip out this past Mother’s Day to attend our 10th Ullage Group event Unacceptable Flying Objects. A dedicated audience decided to reject the beautiful spring weather in favor of deepening their understanding of UFO’s under dim projector light.

Anthony Matt performed the introduction and opened a customary alcoholic beverage, which was UFO pale ale beer, and then offered a bottle each to our hosts Jeff and Lynette.

Anthony Matt discussed how UFO’s were perceived by various ancient cultures and how these views resurfaced in the work of Carl Jung in his concept of the collective unconscious. He also showed some recent UFO footage shot over Brooklyn by Geoff Bradey.

Doug Skinner spoke about a secret series of drawings made by “silent contactees.” The drawings were circulated amongst late 1960’s UFO researchers. Doug spoke about the strange origins of the drawings and then offered a symbolic interpretation of the drawings, which revealed a remarkable connection to Sumerian culture.

Lisa Hirschfield took us through a maze of UFO comic book and pulp magazine imagery from the 1940’s-1980’s. Lisa demonstrated how UFO imagery spread to every corner of our culture from contactees to Santa Claus.

Thanks again to everyone who attended. We will have another event coming soon.

(Posted by Anthony Matt.)

“Felix the Cat’s Rummy” contained pictures of cartoon animals, as well as a picture of Felix himself.  Some of the images were also used in other rummy decks, but I hadn’t seen this scootering pig before.

(Posted by Doug Skinner.)

Doug Skinner will show some of his picture stories on the next “Carousel,” that long-running series devoted to projected images.  It’s curated by R. Sikoryak, and this installment also features Sam Henderson, Emily Flake, Matthew Thurber, Lauren Weinstein, and R. Sikoryak.  It’s at Brooklyn’s Brick Theater on June 4, at 9 pm, and the directions are here.  And for more on “Carousel,” you should probably look here.  (The image above is from my adaptation of Jean Richepin’s immortal “Song of the Baptismal Bells.”)

Doug Skinner will also perform his songs at the Jalopy Theater, on July 22.  More details will surface.

Our last event, “Unacceptable Flying Objects,” was good clean fun.  A report will follow shortly.

(Posted by Doug Skinner.)

“Bible Memory Match” — which bears no sign of date or publisher — presented 18 pairs of Biblical subjects, to be matched by the players.  I don’t remember the buzzard in this scriptural passage.

(Posted by Doug Skinner; thanks to Lisa Hirschfield.)

As the magazine evaporates, like dew, from the American landscape, perhaps we should pause to appreciate some outstanding ones.

One of my favorites is a small magazine from the 1890s, Multum in Parvo. In fact, it billed itself as the “Smallest Magazine in the World.” And small it is — 3” by 4 1/2″. It was published monthly by a certain A. B. Courtney, in Boston; there are many ads for the Keystone Book Company, in Philadelphia, so maybe they had a hand in it as well. Each issue is 16 pages, sold for a nickel, and is devoted to a single topic. These include jokes, lightning calculation, recipes, detective stories, magic tricks, riddles, light verse, Civil War vignettes, ventriloquism, hypnotism, spiritualism, and mind reading. My entrenched habit of browsing through ephemera has also netted me a couple of examples with different covers, sold as non-periodical pamphlets.

Anyone familiar with the Haldeman-Julius Little Blue Books will be struck by the resemblance: the format, the price, even much of the content. I doubt there’s a lineage; more likely, great pamphleteers think alike.

Here’s a gallery of some:

(Posted by Doug Skinner; a longer version appeared in the Big Blue Newsletter, #13.)

“Himalaya,” a 1997 game from Charles Wilkins, had a mountaineering theme.  You collected Meter, Danger, and Gear cards on your way to the summit.

(Posted by Doug Skinner.)

Admirers of Jean-Jacques Rousseau may be unaware of his musical interests.  He wrote a great deal of music, compiled a musical dictionary, and paid bills by copying music.  The dictionary is a neglected treasure, as passionate and eccentric as anything else he wrote; the entry for “copyist” fills 13 pages (at least in the 1839 edition that beckons on my shelf).  Here’s an excerpt (as usual, in my translation):

“It is more important for music to be copied neatly and correctly than it is for simple writing, because he who reads and meditates in his chamber can easily recognize and correct errors in his book, and because nothing prevents him from stopping or beginning again: but in a concert, where each player sees only his own part, and where the speed and flow of the execution leave no time for correction, mistakes are irreparable: often a sublime piece of music is crippled, the performance interrupted or even halted, everything goes wrong, the ensemble and effect are ruined, the listener is rebuffed, and the composer dishonored, all because of the copyist.”

(Posted by Doug Skinner.  The music above was copied by Rousseau in 1773.)

I’m not sure if “Compucards” qualifies as a children’s game; it bills itself as “Playing Cards with Binary Numbers, for the Computer Generation.” It dates from 1983, and was apparently a promotional item for Certacom, a “Telecommunications Equipment Distributor” in the UK.  The standard four suits are used, but the numbers are 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, and 32; with face cards as 64 and 128.  The joker is a Software Bug.

(Posted by Doug Skinner.)

It’s time for the Ullage Group’s tenth mini-seminar!  In “Unacceptable Flying Objects,” we turn to one of our society’s most pervasive and stigmatized topics, UFOs.  We’re interested in it particularly as a cultural phenomenon, and in the social and religious impact of those pesky mandalas.  We’ll move beyond the dull ping-pong between believer and debunker, and the hipster’s itch for kitsch, to find the darker meanings beneath.

Lisa Hirschfield will offer a multimedia survey of saucer sightings in 20th century children’s culture, with a special focus on UFO aesthetics, the changing culture of extraterrestrial contact, and what subliminal messages — if any — such phenomena may convey.

Anthony Matt will discuss how UFOs have always haunted humanity in various forms throughout history.  He will also discuss the interplay between perception and UFOs.

Doug Skinner will interpret a series of unsettling (and unpublished) drawings by “silent contactees,” which circulated among UFO researchers in the late ’60s.  He will also examine the curious subculture, both of percipients and researchers, that produced them — and which often had little to do with things in the sky.

We’ll be at the Jalopy Theatre, in Brooklyn, on Sunday, May 8, at 3 pm.  Admission is our traditional pittance, $5.  It will be disturbing, and you can drink while you’re spooked.  Directions to Jalopy are over here.

(Posted by Doug Skinner.  The image is from the cover of “Flying Saucers” magazine, October 1964.)