Day: March 29, 2015

Dreams and unnamed sources: The ‘EX’ files on Lubitz

Germanwings co-pilot had dreams about plane crashing, report says »

The co-pilot Andreas Lubitz who steered an airline with 150 people on board into a French mountainside had been dumped by his girlfriend the day prior to the crash and was undergoing treatment for depression from a doctor, according to reports Saturday.

But we are just finding out so much about Lubitz so quickly, aren’t we? The problem I have with all of these stories is that unnamed people are being quoted and we are not finding the true source of the information. Where does it come from? Family? Friends? The EX? I am not trying to cast too big a shadow of doubt—I believe in conspiracy but also know that not everything is one, so i am trying to be cautious but sensible. But here is a quote from the FOX NEWS story that gets me into the caution zone:

The New York Post reported that the German newspaper Bild quoted an ex-girlfriend saying that Lubitz “would wake up in the middle of the night screaming, “We’re crashing!”
“When I heard about the crash, one thing that he said kept going through my head: ‘One day I’m going to do something that will change the whole system, and everyone will know my name and remember it.’ ” the woman told the paper, according to the Post.
“I didn’t know what he meant, but now it makes sense,” the woman added.
The Post also reported that French TV channel iTELE reported Lubitz and another girlfriend of seven years shared an apartment in Dusseldorf and planned to get married next year. However, the channel had said Lubtiz’s fiancée ended the relationship the day before the crash.

So how convenient. Suddenly when a big crime is committed, we are told by this EX that she broke up with him a day prior.. And we also have been told as a child he loved this area of the ALPS. And we also know that he was DREAMING about crashing a plane now.. All of this added up together sure sounds like the perfect story book beginning and ending …

I think this girlfriend story is a little sketchy. Don’t get me wrong, again, I am not trying to create rumors where there are none.. but I would think investigators should be asking more about this EX.. asking why the breakup happened. If it did. Asking more about those dreams. If they did..

And if someone is speaking about ‘doing something everyone will remember,’ or something of the like, the partner usually queries a lot more about that than this girlfriend apparently did.

And now pilots are going to have to sign away their medical information on a regular basis to a corporation to ensure something of this nature will never happen again.. I guess Andreas Lubitz will be remembered for that…

….but I keep pondering the ‘we’re crashing!!’ dreams, and they are peculiar. I have reservations about buying into the storyline at this point—at least as it is being presented by the supposed ex-girlfriend of 24 hours.

And let me ask something more.. in our information age where everyone tweets and tumbles and Facebooks into the night, where is the social media presence of Lubitz? Or this girlfriend?

March 29, 2015
SCARY STORIES TO BAN IN THE DARK

Given history, I suppose it’s amazing I even got the chance to read SCARY STORIES TO TELL IN THE DARK when I was a kid in the 90s. I was doing more reading on the upcoming documentary being made on this and learned something I never quite knew previously: This was among the most banned book of the 1990s..

Cody Meireck describes it best,

The interesting thing that I have been encountering as I begin to talk about this documentary is the question of how I can “bill” the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark series. It is listed as the most banned book between 1990-1999 and remained at #7 in 2000-2009. It was #1 on the list for several years in the 1990s. In the 21st Century there are a number of other books that have taken the mantel for most frequently banned… Harry Potter is often up there, and recently the bookAnd Tango Makes Three is often high on the list because of the presence of a homosexual couple (animals though they may be). So although Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is no longer top on the list, for the last 25 years that the American Library Association has been compiling a list, it has been a major title on the list. The original books are over 20 years old at this point, and yet they still show up on the lists amongst more widespread and known books such as Harry Potter and Huckleberry Finn. That says something.

I remember the moment I got my first SCARY STORIES book.. it was during grade school when a book fair truck came and set up in the school gym.. I found this black book with a skull on it and somehow was attracted to the concept and stories.. It became a treasure for me and then, with each new one, I would buy them up for the collection.

The most amazing part, given history of book bans, is that I bought my SCARY STORIES book at a Catholic school book fair! The same Catholic school that suspended me for a day for bringing a fake Freddy Kreuger glove to class in fourth grade for our field trip..

I suppose the school’s nuns couldn’t be aware of every book that was sold. And even more, I ponder if the book seller was secretly trying to fight the pop culture movement at the time to hide these books from kids.

If it wasn’t for the SCARY STORIES books, my appreciation of the paranormal and even love of drawing perhaps would never have blossomed. I bet there’s a lot of 90s kids in the same boat as me because of this series..

March 29, 2015
THE CREEPY CLOSET AT 3AM

Let me first explain what this is.. Late at night, if you’re perched at the right place in my bathroom, this is a view directly into my bedroom.. There is a piece of blanket stuffed into the closet which pokes out. Quite frankly, perhaps my laziness has equaled this, it has been there for a long time.. Too long. As a matter of fact, each night at 3am when either nature calls or some other noise of the house startles me awake, I make my way to the bathroom and see this blanket.. The more I stare, though, the less it is looks like a blanket.

See, this blanket has been scared me for months. With the darkness of night shrouding the room and just the faint glow from a nearby night light, this little piece of blanket starts it morphing. It looks at first like a witch, sort of staring at me.. If you look long enough, it begins to change into a smiling old hag, almost with a knowing cackle on her face as she sees me have a heart begin to race.. A few times it turned into a man, posing as though he was taking his final photo of life. There was a time when it appeared to be a wolf.. Another time it was simply a blank figure but yet somehow had eyes that were staring at me, almost winking with each second I gawked back..

Sure, I know this is all a figment of the wild night time imagination–when your reality suspends for a little as you take walks between the here and the dream world there.

But each time this is so realistic that I need to check this blanket prior to attempting to regain the sleep world. Regardless of my knowledge, my distinct knowledge, that this is a blanket, my deep fear of the shapes it poses as forces me into a nightly check.

I maintain sanity, let me explain.
I maintain reality..
But in the dangerously dark night air, the shapes that objects take can piece your imagination and scare you to the bone.

March 29, 2015