We’re happy to report that the Ullage Group now owns a functional 1932 Violet Ray Generator.  One of your founders (Doug) and charter member Dr. Mamie Caton bought the device at an antique store in upstate New York.  We tested it before purchase; the spectacle of four clueless adults trying to work a potentially broken and/or dangerous electroshock machine struck me as a chilling indictment of American education.  That stuff on the glass electrode has been cleaned off, and it seems to be working.  It’s now in the hands of your other founder (Anthony), and may appear in future events.

Speaking of which, our next event is slated for May 18, at Jalopy.  It will be called “Microlithomania,” and will focus on unusual stones smaller than megaliths.  More details will follow.

The series of children’s card games will continue indefinitely; we plan to post a fresh specimen every Friday.  We hope to showcase those with imaginative and arresting graphics; feedback is welcome.

We’ve also acquired a large collection of stereoscopic slides from the early 1950s.  Doug and charter member Lisa Hirschfield found them at a Manhattan flea market, and immediately saw their ullagistic possibilities.  There are about 300 of them; the subjects include middle-aged couples standing in front of buildings, children on lawns scowling at adults, formally dressed diners enjoying fruit cups, and other precious documents of daily life.  They will soon be examined by stereoscopic specialists Greg Dinkins and Anthony Matt.

A DVD of the puppet shows and videos Doug did with Michael Smith in the ’90s has been released by 2nd Cannons.  You can now learn how to mix Doug and Mike’s signature cocktail, the Gibsonetto, while lounging at home in your underwear.  Human progress is slow, but heartening. 

(Posted by Doug Skinner)     

Your third selection comes from a curious game called “Golden Egg.”  There is no date, price, copyright, or publisher; all we are told is that it was made in Hong Kong.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

Blasphemy is a wacky bit of homo sapiana; it requires a deft two-step of belief and disbelief.  Without belief, there’s no point to it; without disbelief, no taste for it.  This bittersweet combo is well-suited to the Italian palate.

Few languages, apparently, are as fertile in blasphemy.  One of the preferred formulas is the yoking of a sacred term to a scabrous: Porco Madonna (pig Madonna), Dio boia (God hangman).  Sometimes the recipe is more rococo: Dio Faust links God to the archetypical Satanist.

In 1965, a blasphemy contest was held in Florence.  The first prize was awarded to the elegant expression Dio Dio — for this assumes that the first Dio is sacred, and the second nasty.

Neither religion nor blasphemy floats my personal boat — unmoored as it is in the unchartable waters of indifference.  But the richness and economy of Dio Dio are pure pleasure.  How much more meaning and humanity can be packed into six letters?

(I refer the reader to volumes 1 and 2 of “Maledicta,” edited by Reinhold Aman; and to “Florentine Locutions,” by Kevin Beary, 1984.)

(Posted by Doug Skinner) 

We started this as a sort of Fortean Society, as you may have gathered from the occasional remark.  Since there’s some confusion over the term, we might as well clarify matters.

First off, both founders (Doug Skinner and Anthony Matt) have been active in various Fortean groups — loosely defined as groups that bandy about topics that might have interested Charles Fort.  Anthony has written for the “Fortean Times,” and is working on a documentary about Fort and Forteans.  Doug, being older, had a head start; he was a member of John Keel’s disreputable NY Fortean Society (see above), and has written and lectured on a bouquet of topics.  We also do other things, thank you; it’s not the brainstem of either of us.

The word “Fortean” was coined by Ben Hecht, who proclaimed himself the first one.  For him, it simply meant that he liked reading Fort.  Some citizens, especially those pseudo-skeptics hooked on debunkery, take it as a synonym for “believer”; and deride all Forteans as saucerheads and Sasquatch trackers.  Fair enough — some are, and vice versa.  Some Baptists play baseball, if you get my drift.  Fort himself is best defined as a Pyrrhonist (that is, a deep-dyed doubter, in the style of the Greek philosopher Pyrrho).  Anthony is interested in hoaxes and stereo photography.  Doug goes gaga for methodology, and for the literature and history of heterodoxy.

The founder of the original Fortean Society, Tiffany Thayer, defined himself as a Pyrrhonist, anarchist, and atheist; and devoted the organization to “dissension from all dogma.”  We like his spirit, but see several reasons not to turn his anti-dogmatism into dogma.

We hope that clears things up; and we love you all, sort of.  How are you doing with that ullage?

(Doug’s “Fortean Times” article on Thayer has been posted here, if you’re interested.)

(Posted by Doug Skinner) 

Fort fans will be intrigued to hear that a new biography of Charles Fort, by Jim Steinmeyer, is due out soon.  I’ve just read an advance copy, and urge you to keep an eye out for it.  Steinmeyer has scoured the archives, and come up with much fresh material; Fort’s delightful letters alone are worth the trip. 

Fort’s reputation has always been a many checkered thing; I’m curious how this affectionate and scholarly account will be received.

(Charles Fort: The Man Who Invented the Supernatural, by Jim Steinmeyer, will be published in May 2008 by Tarcher/Penguin.)

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

We have another one for you: this comes from “Farve-Firkort,” a game from Denmark.  No date or publisher is given.  I think the name means “Four-card in color”; any Danish speakers please chime in with corrections.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

Somewhere in the ullage of our culture floats that odd artifact, the card.  Cardboard rectangles are used for many things: postcards, business cards, gaming cards, fortune-telling cards, trading cards.

One of the most ephemeral is the children’s card game.  The games themselves are usually simple time-wasters, cheap toys to divert a bored kid for an hour or so.  But the artwork is often relaxed and charming, anonymous hackwork done far below the radar.

And so we start here a series of children’s card games.  This first specimen is from “Highway Travel,” an undated deck from Built-Rite.  It can be played either by matching the images with things seen on a car ride, or as a variation of “Old Maid.”

(Posted by Doug Skinner) 

Here is a link to our new flickr page with 3D photos from our first event, “Five Sides of a Machine.” The photos can be viewed with standard red and cyan 3D glasses.

Stereoscopic photography by Mick Andreano.

(Posted by Anthony Matt)

I have little interest in astrology.  I doubt that my character is determined by the fact that some groups of stars look like animals, sort of; on the other hand, I feel no itch to denounce it as a pseudo-science, as the pseudo-skeptics do.  As an old-school skeptic, I accept that my human faculties are inadequate for establishing criteria for knowledge, and so reserve judgment.  I view astrology as an art based on astronomy, just as music is an art based on acoustics.  I’m more interested in music than astrology, but so what?  I’m still happy to lift a pint of plain with an astrologer.

True practitioners, however, would agree that the sun-sign columns in the daily papers are nothing but fungible boilerplate, with as little connection to real horoscopes as, well, CSICOP to Sextus Empiricus.

So, rather than stoop to the stale comforts of either belief or ridicule, I offer a game you can play with the daily column.  All you do is remove the middle portion of the horoscope, thereby linking the first few words with the last, and revealing a new message.  Here are a few examples; which I offer not as literature, but as simply a way to enjoy what is otherwise a rather dull page of print.

The time has come to draw a line under the past.  No matter how important certain developments may have been they are of no importance at all when compared to what is about to occur in your life.  Always look forward.  Always be positive.  Always believe that you are capable of doing more.

The moon’s eclipse of Mercury in your fellow Air sign of Aquarius today will make it easy for you to put your thoughts, and your feelings, into words, which in turn will help you to get others’ approval for a creative plan they might not totally believe in.  Your way with words will win them round.

You start out alone, but it doesn’t last long.  Your sign is always one conversation away from being in a group with common interests and feelings of solidarity.  When you’re ready, reach out and start talking.

If you’ve got something to say, don’t hold back.  Voice your opinion.  However, keep in mind that just because you hand out free advice to someone, it doesn’t mean he is going to take it.  You might wonder why people ask for help if they don’t act upon it.  But it’s like the old saying:  You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink!

You will be struck by an incredible idea today — in fact maybe several incredible ideas.  Carry a pen and notebook with you at all times, because if you don’t write down your thoughts the moment you have them other, less important, matters will crowd them out of your mind and they may be gone forever.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

The circle is a rich and potent symbol: of knowledge (Charles Fort’s “One measures a circle, beginning anywhere”), of divinity (the proverbial “God is a circle whose center is everywhere, and whose circumference is nowhere”), and of futility (those “vicious circles”), to name a few.  I know of only one passage, however, that literally dissects the circle, and lays bare its anatomy.

It comes from an 1844 treatise on the squaring of the circle, by Jean-Pierre-Aimé Lucas, one of the “literary madmen” unearthed by Raymond Queneau.  (Queneau compiled an anthology of outsider literature in the 1930s, realized it was unpublishable, and salvaged some of it in his novel Les Enfants du Limon — Children of Clay — which is about, among other things, a writer compiling an unpublishable anthology of outsider literature.)

Here, then is Lucas; the translation is mine:

“Then, I repeat, I had to imitate a surgeon, and look into the interior of the circle for its organizing principles, which I was fortunate enough to discover.  Its skeletal framework can be found in the presence of four perfectly equal squares; the marrow, the most delicate part of the bone, is represented by the sections of the quadrature; the nervous and muscular parts are indicated by the tissue of the square of the quadrature; the flesh is represented by the area of the circle; the center of this curve joins its heart to its head; finally, the right angles that determine the angular sections of the quadrature are the arteries, which vivify the flesh and, consequently, refine the skin: which, as I have already noted, is represented by the perimeter.”

(Posted by Doug Skinner)