Day: June 2, 2023

by Travis Mateer

I drove to Alberton, Montana, twice this past week, and both days (Tuesday and Thursday) the truck above was on the side of the road with the curious word HUSH painted on the back. This spot on I-90 is around mile marker 64, headed east, which is what I told the Mineral County Sheriff’s Office when I called it in. There was a person in the driver’s seat just sitting there with hands on the steering wheel, and the dog to the right, leashed to the vehicle. Weird.

On Tuesday I actually drove all the way to Superior to see if I could turn up any information on Kasen Konop, the young man who supposedly shaved his head and fled to Superior after Joey Thompson went missing on April 11th. Here’s an image from Kasen’s Instagram account, the account that supposedly had posts deleted from it:

It’s surprising how little is known at this point about the death of Joey Thompson. It’s been nearly a month since his body was found 40 miles west of where he was last seen alive and still no word about the manner and cause of death. Also, as of the writing of this post, I’ve received ZERO call-backs from both the Missoula and Mineral County Sheriff Offices. Why?

On Thursday night I couldn’t sleep, so I went downtown and walked around aimlessly for about an hour until several cop cruisers sped by me on Front Street. Where were they going? I walked in the direction the cops drove, toward the Roam student housing complex, and then toward Kiwanis Park. That’s where I saw the authorities removing a dead body from the bathroom at Kiwanis Park.

I watched this scene for awhile trying to determine if the dead body was the result of an overdose or something else. I saw a cop with a flashlight to the right of the bathroom looking for something on the ground by the picnic tables. What was he looking for?

After about 15 minutes of observation I decided to leave. Three young woman who had been going to the park before I suggested they wait wanted an update, so I told them there was a body being processed by law enforcement. Then about a half dozen young men, or boys I should say, showed up (one of ’em looked about 12 years old) and I told them the same thing. Drugs, they asked? Maybe, I replied, then I asked them if they knew about the death of Joey Thompson, and they did, including the story about how Kasen shaved his head and left town.

While the coroner and crime lab seem to be staying busy, the actual RESULT of that work is still a bit of a mystery. I’ve seen a bunch of the crime lab staff testify in court during the Lee Nelson murder trial, so I know they have fancy degrees and can dress nice, but beyond that, I have little-to-no confidence in the crime lab’s ability to act autonomously from the investigating jurisdictions they rely on day to day in this criminal just shit show.

I would like to be wrong about this assessment, but I’m afraid I’m not. And having a broken criminal justice system doesn’t bode well for creating a bustling tourist economy fueling a multi-modal, mixed-use utopia with a couple of weeks of non-mosquito weather perfection we used to be able to enjoy before every inch of park space was ceded to “houseless” drug abusers.

It’s important the tourists and low-information citizens of Zoom Town at least have some IMPRESSION that the criminal justice system isn’t fucked, so cue a well-timed bust of some SEX traffickers!

From the link (emphasis mine):

Deputies observed the conditions in Soul Massage and found what looked like a sleeping area. It had a small twin bed and a space that appeared to be used for cooking and eating. Dirty dishes and pots with food inside were visible.

In one room, deputies observed a makeshift closet with clothes and several suitcases. A small television was present. Deputies also noticed a security camera on the wall. The conditions inside the business were unsanitary, with dirty linens and floors.

A detective who is known to be an expert in Human Trafficking confirmed that victims of human trafficking in illegal brothels or commercial sex locations are often required to live on premises. By keeping victims on-premises, human traffickers are able to exercise control over the victims and can force them to work at all hours of the day or night.

I added the emphasis because I’m curious why this EXPERT detective isn’t named. I’m also wondering if the victim of human trafficking in this case got any nice recovery time in the woods with Lowell Hochhalter and Company at the “safe” house at Crooked Tree Ranch.

All this stuff is keeping ME pretty busy, but the weekend is fast approaching, so I’m going to chill out for a day, then get back to it on Sunday with a review of the week that may include one more podcast episode in the old format I’ve been using since January.

If you appreciate my local, independent journalism, then Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF) is one way to support my work. Making a donation at my about page is another. I’ll be preparing this weekend for Monday’s City Council meeting where the emergency ordinance to better address “urban camping” will be discussed, so stay tuned.

And thanks for reading!

by Travis Mateer

I don’t often use obnoxious “fact-checking” sites, but when I do, it’s to show that even Snopes had to rate as TRUE the rapper formerly known as Kanye West’s usage of a symbol associated with a UFO cult.

Before I get to how this UFO cult led me to special-order a Playboy magazine FOR THE ARTICLE, let’s take a look at a quote from a book I just picked up at the Book Exchange, titled New Age, Neopagan, & New Religious Movements by Hugh B. Urban. From the book (emphasis mine):

Most Americans today remember the Raëlians because of their stunning claim in 2002 that they had successfully cloned a human baby. According to Raël’s message, all life on Earth had been created by the extraterrestrial designers through cloning, and we could achieve immortality by cloning ourselves and transferring our present memories into infinite future copies of ourselves. In 1997, Raël formed a company–now called Clonaid–to begin research into human cloning, and the company claimed to have developed a cell fusion device that assisted with human cloning. On December 27th, 2002, Clonaid announced that it had cloned the first human child–named “baby Eve”–a claim that triggered an intense international debate surrounding the ethics, politics, legality, and religious implications of cloning. Although no child was ever actually produced, the claim generated numerous strong condemnations from political and religious leaders on all sides, ranging from President George W. Bush to numerous democratic congressmen.

For a little more context on my own interest in the high strangeness afoot, this post about my family history with UFOs, and this post about the weirdness surrounding the movie Southland Tales, are both relevant.

Now, PLAYBOY! And please pay attention to the correlation of a certain former president along with this UFO cult:

For the Raëlian explanation of this Playboy appearance, here’s a screen-shot from their website:

I’m going to pivot now to The Dark Historical Roots of ‘Starseeds’, by Jules Evans. This article is fascinating, albeit from a perspective that’s more critical than I would be if I was writing it, but it led me to some books I’ve added to my library, and some thoughts on the origins of the Starseed concept popularized by Timothy Leary, who was influenced by Aleister Crowley. From the article (emphasis mine):

I’d never heard of starseeds before January 6 2021, when one of them stormed the Capitol building in DC. In the days after, I was researching Jake Angeli, the ‘Qanon shaman’, and discovered he ran something called the ‘Starseed Academy. Like other ‘starseeds’, Jake thinks he is a highly evolved soul from another planet. I wondered what a psychedelic hippy alien was doing mixed up in a quasi-fascist insurrection.

Since then, I’ve dived deeper into the phenomenon of starseeds, and realized the idea of ‘starseeds’ has deep historical links with fascism and white supremacy. In fact, one of the pioneers of the idea was imprisoned 60 years before Angeli, for plotting a fascist uprising in the US.
This weird history has four parts:

1) The origins of UFO mythology in the far-right occulture of 1880s-1930s
2) White supremacy and anti-semitism in UFO culture in the 1950s-1990s
3) The idea of Starseeds from the 1970s to the present day
4) Finally, I’ll ask ‘why is the idea of being a Starseed so appealing to young people now?’

While the historical origins are what interest me, the way this concept has reemerged amongst younger generations is not something I was aware of. Here’s more from the article (emphasis mine):

Starseeds are all the rage right now, particularly with Gen Z on tiktok, where starseed videos have a billion views. One viral video from 2021 featured a Heather-like starseed declaring ‘everyone asks me how I know I’m a starseed, but no one asks what is it like to be a starseed’. There are a lot of recent books on starseeds — Letters to a Starseed, The Starseed Template, Time To Wake Up Starseeds, Activation from 7 Star Races, and so on. There are starseed shows on Gaia, and endless online quizzes where you can discover what alien race you are (I’ll share one at the end). Even Cheryl has declared herself a fan of Dolores Cannon.

So what explains the popularity of starseeds today?

Perhaps Gen Z and millennials feel like they’ve been born into such a heavy geo-political situation, the best solution is extreme dissociation: find a happy place in another galaxy, far, far away. Perhaps the Qanon shaman, Jake Angeli, is an example of this dissociative flight to cosmic safety — he says he first realized he was a starseed when his father made him smoke drugs when he was a boy.

If you can stomach the modern iteration of what it means, to some people, to be Starseeds using light language to speak to aliens, this video is…quite something:

At this point you might be wondering WHY SHOULD I GIVE A SHIT? Well, in my humble opinion, there are going to be some very strange things happening in the not-so-distant future, and in order to NOT be conned by these strange occurrences, understanding where ideas like being a Starseed come from is actually important.

If you appreciate occasionally strange posts like these, Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF) supports my NON-alien content creation, while the donation button at my about page is for general support. I’m happy to report my TIF fund now has 15 supporters who have donated a combined amount of $1,525 dollars!

Thanks for reading!