Comic for Friday, Nov 5, 2021

[mlooney 3,417]

Here is!

It's obviously the Great and Powerful Turtle!

[Pharaoh RutinTutin 1,586]

Tedd, if you haven't considered your next question, may I suggest "Mr Arthur, if I do accept this offer and go to work for you, will I be called away at all hours of the day and night just like my dad has been my whole life?

[mlooney 3,417]

1 hour ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

Tedd, if you haven't considered your next question, may I suggest "Mr Arthur, if I do accept this offer and go to work for you, will I be called away at all hours of the day and night just like my dad has been my whole life?

"Why, of course not Tedd.  At least not until you are in grad school."

[Darth Fluffy 302]

<face palm> I just realized that the last panel is referencing UFO sightings near Roswell. The 'turtle' is a UFO to the public.

[ChronosCat 155]

Yes, and a turtle-shell is even saucer shaped. (Though those crystals on the final design do unfortunately break up the outline if you're not directly below it.)

[mlooney 3,417]

I had assumed that it was a given that not-turtle was most of the UFO around Roswell.  Of course, in the EGS universe, it's canon that the "Alien craft" at Roswell was in fact a weather balloon.

[Pharaoh RutinTutin 1,586]

2 hours ago, mlooney said:

in the EGS universe, it's canon that the "Alien craft" at Roswell was in fact a weather balloon.

But was it specified from which planet said Weather Balloon was launched?

[mlooney 3,417]

Well, when you put it that way, might be aliens after all.

[Darth Fluffy 302]

1 hour ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

But was it specified from which planet said Weather Balloon was launched?

If you don't know where they are from, then they are "Whither?" balloons. (Just horsing around.)

mlooney, is it one star per post, or one star per pun?

[ijuin 572]

5 hours ago, mlooney said:

I had assumed that it was a given that not-turtle was most of the UFO around Roswell.  Of course, in the EGS universe, it's canon that the "Alien craft" at Roswell was in fact a weather balloon.

The 1947 Roswell incident was a balloon, but this turtle-shelled being may be responsible for more recent sightings.

[mlooney 3,417]

Well, yeah, stands to reason.  The question to ask is why New Mexico?  Is it because of Trinity site?  If so you would think they would be more drawn to the Nevada test sites.

[mlooney 3,417]

Or it could be they like green chili sauce.

 

[Darth Fluffy 302]

10 minutes ago, mlooney said:

The question to ask is why New Mexico?  Is it because of Trinity site?

Per Wiki, the infamy of the region dates from this one specific event. Roswell Army Air Field became Walker Air Force Base when the US Army Air Corps became the US Air Force. It was a SAC base, and was closed in 1967.

Picking between 'weather balloon', 'secret military project', and 'visiting space craft from another world', I'd pick the last as least likely. This is still true with similar sites in Nevada. YMMV.

I've visited the outskirts of Roswell, but only because it was on the highway from Carlsbad Caverns back to Albuquerque. Roswell is in south eastern New Mexico.

The charisma of Roswell as a UFO center is stoked by barren land with poor economic alternatives milking the area's rep to attract tourism. It seems to be working, to some degree, as basically, there is nothing much there to recommend the site otherwise..

Trinity site is not all that close. Trinity site is in south central New Mexico, at the north end of WSMR, not really close to Holloman AFB, and the city of Alamagordo, and the main entrance to White Sands National Park, all at the south east end of WSMR. And, it should go without saying, you don't want to overlap your missile range with your national park, although a case could be made why it might have some positive benefits. And Roswell is even further to the east, over a bunch of somewhat misplaced mountains that are separated from the mainstream of the Rockies by a bit.

New Mexico is served by two Interstate highways, I-40 E/W, a major thoroughfare, and I-25 N/S, a regionally important artery that stretches from Juarez and El Paso through Albuquerque, passing near Santa Fe, continuing up the east side of Colorado, meets I-80 at Cheyenne, and continues north. Anything on those roads is in increments of two hours away. Everything else is inaccessible to varying degrees.

 

1 hour ago, mlooney said:

If so you would think they would be more drawn to the Nevada test sites.

Area 51 in Nevada is the current hotbed of UFO aficionado activity. "They can't shoot all of us if we all invade at once." "Wanna bet?" I believe this has more to do with next gen (and beyond) aircraft research than any former nuke tests in the ground of the surrounding desert.

[mlooney 3,417]

I used to work at McGregor  range, the southern part of WSMR (actually part of Ft. Bliss, but they touched).  I spent time at Groom Lake (aka Area 51).   I'm aware of all of those details.  Just The Dan said "New Mexico" instead of "Roswell" so I was expanding on what an alien visitor might notice about NM above and beyond the rest of the south western desert.

[Darth Fluffy 302]

57 minutes ago, mlooney said:

I used to work at McGregor range, the southern part of WSMR (actually part of Ft. Bliss, but they touched).

An aptly named fort, considering the area ...

I was a bit surprised that WSMR is under the direction of the Army, but then I was reminded that it is a joint missile range. They also control access to the Trinity site.

We used to fly racetrack patterns over WSMR for a test program I was on. Of course, we had to schedule when we flew, to not conflict with other activities. The whole area is civilian no-fly. 

 

1 hour ago, mlooney said:

I spent time at Groom Lake (aka Area 51).   I'm aware of all of those details.

Ooo, nifty! Too bad you can't talk about it.

 

1 hour ago, mlooney said:

Just The Dan said "New Mexico" instead of "Roswell" so I was expanding on what an alien visitor might notice about NM above and beyond the rest of the south western desert.

Not a whole hell of a lot. The Very Large Array at Socorro might interest an alien visitor.

New Mexico grows on you, but there's a lotion you can get which mitigates it.

 

[Don Edwards 548]

36 minutes ago, Darth Fluffy said:

New Mexico grows on you, but there's a lotion you can get which mitigates it.

One of the major streets of Las Cruces, NM is Amador Avenue. Which loosely translates as Lover's Lane.

So there's at least one thing to like about the state.

[ijuin 572]

3 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

Per Wiki, the infamy of the region dates from this one specific event. Roswell Army Air Field became Walker Air Force Base when the US Army Air Corps became the US Air Force. It was a SAC base, and was closed in 1967.

Picking between 'weather balloon', 'secret military project', and 'visiting space craft from another world', I'd pick the last as least likely. This is still true with similar sites in Nevada. YMMV.

 

Area 51 in Nevada is the current hotbed of UFO aficionado activity. "They can't shoot all of us if we all invade at once." "Wanna bet?" I believe this has more to do with next gen (and beyond) aircraft research than any former nuke tests in the ground of the surrounding desert.

Yeah, I'm leaning toward a lot of UFO sightings being secret government aircraft research. The B-2 bomber, for example, was frequently reported as a UFO before it was publicly unveiled, due to its almost-unheard-of tailless body plan and near-invisibility to radar and thermal sensors.

[Darth Fluffy 302]

2 hours ago, Don Edwards said:

One of the major streets of Las Cruces, NM is Amador Avenue. Which loosely translates as Lover's Lane.

So there's at least one thing to like about the state.

There is indeed. I lived there for a while, and found a lot a liked.

But on the other hand, it is difficult to argue that it is not a wasteland, as is much of the high desert. The landscape is predominantly brown, it takes months to get used to; although, you can enjoy being hypoxic and an easy drunk for those same months as you acclimate, so you can self-medicate cheaply with booze.

The skiing is great, because the high altitude contributes to great powder for skiing throughout the Rockies. Plus, you can no longer see it when it is covered in snow.

It is also superb for star gazing, if you leave town. Since towns are two hours apart, that's not hard to do. You can see more stars than you can imagine; the 'Milky Way' is not just a thing pained in books, you can see it. Again, you are not looking at New Mexico.

Put it this way, almost everywhere on the North American continent, the Euro invaders took the natives land and sent them elsewhere. Not so much in New Mexico.