Chapter 1: Section 2: Page 20: Lines 171-174 (276-279)

 "Nowadays," Penny said, "they'll fly wherever they're needed, far above fortress walls and national boundaries, running blockades, feeding the hungry, sheltering the sick and persecuted . . . so of course they make enemies everyplace they go, they get fired at from the ground, all the time. But this was different. We happened to be up with them that one day, and it was just the queerest thing. Nobody saw any projectiles, but there was . . . a kind of force . . . energy we could feel, directed personally at us. . . ."

* * * * * * * * * *

"they'll fly wherever they're needed"
The "they" here are the Garçons de '71. Remember them?! Penny mentioned them earlier when she began this story of the Bindlestiffs over Mount Etna last spring. Apparently the Aeronautic Clubs aren't direct descendants of the Garçons de '71 like I thought. The Garçons de '71 are still out there floating their balloons twenty years after the Siege of Paris, going where they need to go to help out all the besieged people of Earth.

"they make enemies everyplace they go"
Of course they do! Nothing like helping out the oppressed by interfering with a nation's subjugation of people they've "othered" through national campaigns of propaganda to invoke that nation's wrath!

"Nobody saw any projectiles, but there was . . . a kind of force . . .energy we could feel, directed personally at us. . . ."
Whoa! This is the kind of thing Leonard Nimoy's "Mr. Spock" would have stood at attention for! On tonight's episode of In Search Of . . . "Invisible Forces." This is the kind of stuff that would have gotten its own edition in the Time/Life series Mysteries of the Unknown. This is the stuff I would have read about and believed in like a good little Fox Mulder wannabe in elementary school (before Fox Mulder existed so, really, he's just a pale imitation of me).
    This invisible force didn't harm anybody though so why might it have been directed at them? Penny sets it up as if it were an attack, seeing as how the Garçons de '71 have made so many enemies. But nobody gets hurt so it must have been a . . . probe! The aliens were out there probing these kids!

Well, Penny, that's one hell of a sky-story! I think you win this round of frightening tales around the campfire!

Chapter 1: Section 2: Page 13: Line 49 (154)

 "Professor!" cried that lad, peering incredulously through the burnished cylinder, "the unclad figure I reported—it is not that of a chap, after all, but rather of . . . a lady!"

* * * * * * * * * *

Ever notice how telescopes, which are used to leer at things, are phallic and radio receiver satellite dishes, which are used for listening, are yonic? Really makes you think, doesn't it?!

Or does it? I don't know. I don't care. Be stupid forever!

Or be smarter than me forever yet totally without whimsy by pointing out all the scientific reasons why telescopes must be shaped the way they're shaped and satellite dishes must be shaped the way they're shaped and how similarity to genitals has nothing to do with it! I'd rather have fun making up crazy theories!

Except now right wing politicians have ruined that for everybody. Remember when it was fun to be a fan of things like In Search of . . . and The X-Files and Kolchak: The Night Stalker? Remember when wild conspiracy theories were just fun to rap about because believing or not believing them didn't actually change your world much? So what if somebody thought you were nutty because you believed in The Bermuda Triangle or the Abominable Snowman? At least believing that wouldn't cause them to hate half of America because they thought a Jewish Cabal was trying to institute a New World Order to enslave humanity while also killing off a good percentage of humanity and also maybe destroying white people or something. I don't know! All those political conspiracy theories ruined the fun of the really wild ones, like David Icke's revelation that the royals and many more were lizard people! The whole second series of The X-Files was ruined (aside from Darin Morgan's episodes. Always so good!) because it centered around the new kinds of political conspiracy theories, the ones mainstream people had embraced thanks to Fox News, rather than the fringe ones like our small pox vaccinations were an attempt by the government to store all of our DNA for experimenting in alien/human hybrids.

I wish I'd kept up my subscription to The Fortean Times but I let it lapse when I forgot all about it after I changed addresses in 2003. It came so irregularly that I just forgot I was subscribed! And it's just too expensive to buy every issue off the newsstand here in America.

Wait. What. Really? "Newsstand" is spelled with two S's? That's weird!

Anyway, look! Miles found a naked lady!