A similar scene - festival syncronicity

Sounds like a similar scene to our roadtrip gang under investigation.

It occurred to this investigator recently that the mid-atlantic interference pattens hypothesized as being the reason behind the recent almost concurrent US/UK festival presence of BSS and various beards may have been tried before: Woodstock and the Isle of Wight festivals in 1969 were a similar length of time apart. It has been suggested to this investigator that perhaps woodstock/isle of wight was an initial experiment to create interference patterns from the drifting soundwaves of the two transatlantic sound sources. It is unknown whether the experiment was successful, but it seems a similar experiment may have been attempted by costa and various associates in the music scene this summer. Purpose of purported experiment remains unknown but such interference patterns are thought to have the potential to confuse global radar systems.

In Response

"Changing others behaviour, without letting them know why or even that
you are doing it."
This sounds like a classic obfuscationist and manipulativist trick straight from the marketing department. Your supposition that it was a female using this technique suggests Costa/Cortez to me. The wolf in sheepswool clothing. But then, Parrish has been demonstrated also to have been involved in marketing with the military. Whether two people or one, the MO is the same, TBS.

The walk in the woods is fascinating and timeous. The message was what you found in the beehive; nothing more than the message. the message was what you sought...
The message is the honey and the bee.

The collection of floral fabrics by cargo cult road trips suggests to me the collection of nectar (and unintentionally, pollen) by bees, for transformation into honey back in the michigan hive. To feed new bees. But who is the Queen bee? Perhaps one of the adroit witches is a second queen, in which case, where has the swarm accompanied her to, in its search for a second hive?

Turbulence

Your last missive gives me the impression that things are beginning to unravel. Are you working from a new base now? A change in situation often allows things to be seen viewpoints hitherto unviewed. Maybe your move will provide you with a different view of the case.Thunder and lightning is filling the sky as I type. Low pressure. Electricity. Turbulence. eight young tomato plants are currently being rained on.

So, the beards are coming to town. It seems our guitar-slinging cowboys are will be active in the UK at a similar time to Costa's Broken Social Scene hitting the Candian road. Is this coincidence? Not if Bob Palindrome's maxim is anything to go by; 'there's no such thing as coincidences; there's only incidences, and they all go in the casefile'. He also used to say 'a casefile is like a good stew; you chuck everything in there, keep a low heat on it and see what rises to the surface'. I always took this as a good metaphor but once I got to know the man I realised that he also meant it literally.

Once I had visted his apartment I soon realised that he would destroy old closed casfiles by boiling them up in a pan of water in his kitchen. This explained the scald marks on his hands I'd previously wondered about. The man, resourceful as ever, used this method of data erasion as it provided him with the raw material for his hobby of making lifesize paper mache sculptures of his favourite birds of prey. The man had these things, hand painted, all over his house. A bald eagle hung above the main doorway, neck craned down and beak out so as to almost peck your left eye out while you waited for the door to open. A pereguin falcon, wings hunched back in a dive pose sat on his bureau acting as a mail holder, envelopes stuffed between the two raised wings. I digress...

Although the dates of BSS and the beard troupe's performance are not the same, they are only a couple of weeks apart. There is the possibility of using winds, possibly the trade winds one of our investigators mentioned earlier, to allow the sound to travel over large distances. This obviously takes time. I am consulting Dr. Epstein on this and am waiting for confirmation, but rough calculations show that it is fairly likely the soundwaves from both touring circuits will collide and interact at some point around the start of august. Perhaps there is some underlying plan for the two soundwaves to mesh in a certain area, interfering with one another in a way similiar to that you tried to achieve with the dual spin sources.

This could be another Black Cat style experiment, done in reverse fashion to the dual particle example. This time, they are starting with two sources, which are intended to meet up in one location. causing some kind of effect or outcome.Due to the butterfly effect, turbulence, it is hard to predict with certainty the when and where or even if of what may happen, but Epstein did say 'it could be possible'. Of course, I may be looking in the wrong direction and this could just be nothing. If, on the other hand, it is the case, then we are dealing with some advanced Obfuscation techniques.

The Nebraska Connection

So many elements have recently been attached to the case that this investigator is wondering where exactly he should be focussing his energies. Should I concentrate on closed-loop systems or be looking underground? Should I be looking for leads relating to Stairs' activities in Ohio or be trying identify large areas in the Detroit region with the potential for large-scale liquid storage/absorption? Should I be looking south of the border or walking the statelines? there are so many angles to this case that a 3D rendering of it would be one of the most ambitious engineering projects ever undertaken by man; up there with the Georgia Guidestones or a planet-sized particle acceleration donut. Perhaps Searly already knows how the case will end and is building such a 3D case model in his bungalow on the outskirts of Boston?

With regard to your planet-sized nut theory, I do not know how feasible this is, or what the capabilities could be, but it strikes me now that perhaps donut law applies to Black Cat. Remember, this was an experiment with an unidentified central location - perhaps this central point is as invisible and non-physical as the centre of a donut and as such may never be found. Perhaps it is, as one investigator suggested, actually in space, and therefore 'empty' by common standards.

Last night, while listening to Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska LP, I picked up on the following points in the song Highway Patrolman, which I feel echo elements of our case...

The song tells the story of two brothers from Ohio and involves a scene where the patrolman of the title chases a suspect in a Buick through Michigan, deliberately allowing it to escape over the Canadian border as it is being driven by his brother.
Hearing this sequence of events unfold in the song immediately made me think of the case: The chased Buick and activity in Michigan and Ohio having particular resonance, along with an escape over the Canadian borderline.

This brings to my mind the idea that perhaps Searly was 'allowed' to 'disappear' intentionally by at least one individual or some small splinter group within the larger operational group. This would imply different members of the group had/have different agendas. The most likely explanation for this is, as suspected, that both an independent group and the military were working in the same area of operation; either working to the same aim but with a different agenda, or working in a similar field with different aims.

I am leaning toward the idea that either the military started the operation, recruiting help from academia circles who, somewhere along the way, began to use the operation for different ends to the military's intention, or the Michigan craft club started proceedings which the military subsequently became aware of and infiltrated for their own purposes. Of course, the two groups could have had the same idea independently at the same time. Perhaps this is the case and Project31 is related to the Black Cat experiment[s] in this way.

As explained here, the Nebraska LP is actually made from the Boss' own 4-track home recordings rather than been done in a studio. Such an approach ties in with Costa's recroding methods, as heard on the mixtapes so far discovered. The song is set in the '60s but was actually written and released in the early '80s, which would have been an influential period for members of the Michigan soft-core, many of them being in the adolesence at this point. More details of the song's content can be found here. As explained here, the song was used as the basis for the film 'The Indian Runner' released in 1991, again a likely period of influence for Project 31 members.

Springsteen hails from New Jersey, which falls within the bounds of our theorised North-eastern donut of activity and is a likely candidate to have had influence on members of the Michigan group at a critical period prior to the project's beginnings. With Neil Young being from Canada and Dylan from Duluth, it would seem that we are looking in the right area, musically speaking. Even Monk hails from North Carolina, which borders on the South-eastern edge of our theorised donut of activity. I'm sure even this great jazz pianist has held a harmonica to his lips on occasion.

Droitwich Fix

Enlightening wool knowledge there. I now wonder how wool knows which way is inside and which way is outside, and thus which way its heat transferring properties are to be implemented.One thing I forgot to mention - my initial suspicion regarding the girl you came across singing about 'Boston Mass' was that she was Costa, possibly on a recreuitment drive in the UK, or else meeting a connection there and filling in time playing solo spots as some kind of coded call to arms to any UK followers she may have.

However, in light of the BSS Ca-nad/lafon-ian tour, it seems unlikely she would be in the UK sans band, unless she was undertaking some low-key gig practice to work on her solo performance skills prior to the tour dates. It is entirely possible that she is no longer in the band, having trained them to function autonomously, though possbly still receiving her instruction from afar.

Another explanation as to the identity of the Boston Mass singer is that she is the religious studies student who had assocations with Costa in the '90s. She was known to be UK-based (at least during her studies) so would no doubt have acquaintances there- people who could provide her with shelter and find her work if needed. The fact she sings of some kind of 'mass' suggests that she is/was religiously minded, possibly abandoning Christianity or whatever her denomination was, in favour of some more fringe-based belief system. I certainly don't think she is connected to the religious right dogsquad, but I may be wrong.

Perhaps she is in the UK to locate contacts in the Droitwich reason (the theory was mentioned to this investigator that the 'Droitwich Fix' is a specialist stitching method used for heavy-duty repair work when a woven object's lifespan seems othewise at an end. A variation of this theory is that the term 'Droitwich Fix' refers to using an otherwise impaired object to serve a function different to that it was originally designed for - ie. using an old hat which no longer fits the owner's head as a tea-cosy, or fashioning a steel-bodied guitar from a broken oil drum (something this investigator has personally seen evidence of). Such things could be examples of the Droitwich Fix.

Either way, this theory, as put to this investigator, identifies the Droitwich Fix as a method of extreme object salvage when all other hope seems lost - something out on the edge of the repair/reuse/recycle culture which has been subordinated and marginalised by modern capitalism and its constant promise of shiny new goods to those who subscribe to its culture.

Festival Circuitry

This investigator took the weekend off the case to indulge in some much overdue sunshine of impressive intensity and only now has he picked up the impending development in the case, ie. the immediacy with which BSS are 'touring' from Canada to California.

This strikes me as pertinent for the following reasons - we have already established that festivals and musical touring circuits are ideal ways to move people and goods around the continent in a fairly undetected way. We also know Costa is either in BSS or has close links with them. This suggests to me that Costa may use a BSS tour as a means to achieve her own ends, with or without the band's complicity (she is a known Obfuscationist, remember, and as such would have no problem hiding her true intentions while being close to the band).

The band may even be a front to hide less universally accepted operations, such as the promotion of wool-based lifestyles or products of closed-loop synthesis, with promotional methods possibly adapted from those used by the Minnesota thinktank (I recall Costa being quoted in a marketing journal from years ago, which suggests she either worked in marketing or pretended to work in marketing to gain knowledge of their obfuscatory techniques [i strongly suspect the latter]).

It seems to me that the BSS tour is likely a smokescreen to transport a portion of the Michigan operation (people or products) down to California for some purpose, or perhaps to collect something from the southern state to bring back north. The California connection cannot be ignored - Searly's act of philanthropy at the Reno Steak-n-Cake suggests the California route has been active for sometime, and Melinda Packett is registered to a Bay Area address.

The California connection could well be a base or stop-off point for managing the South American connections - this investigator for one is definitely aware that products made from llama wool are readily available in the fields designated for corporate-sponsored rock festivals, though how popular such things prove to be in the california heat, this northerly located investigator cannot confirm.

Old Laughing Lady

Our Boston man’s dispatches fit perfectly – road trips either cease or go more underground in 2005. The theory of Costa’s low key festival circuitry is 99.7% likely, I feel. Slipping back into the fog when the band ‘make it’. Chinchilla fabric – a ‘hold-all’ term capable of containing the natural and the synthetic without revealing whether one or the other or else ‘wool mix’ combination.

The speed adjuster controls of a good mixer double turntable set up are indeed a potential means of achieving a variety of beat frequencies from waveform interference.
In the city squat this investigator abandoned overnight recently, such a two turntable set-up was included among the original paraphernalia present. The investigator recalls the fullsome sound of such interference some years previous. I have recently been researching non-electric wind-up turntables (originally called grammaphones, due to their frequent presence in the upper year social rooms of grammar schools, where 15 year olds would listen to swing, ragtime and early jazz). Standard grammaphones would have an analogue variable speed control. Later machines would have an analogue 3 way control between 78, 45 and 33. What I could do with is something capable of going lower – say 22. That way I could do the ’45 played at 33 speed’ trick on 33s, and listen to a whole album at ‘mong-out’ speed. I know of no modern manufacturer of wind-up, non-electric grammaphones. There may be one.

Approx 40 min ago, this investigator was on a bumpy old-tarmac / dirt track road, a regular tourist walker route towards the base camp of a large mound of highland mountain, when rounding a puddled corner there was an elderly lady, of short height, blocking said road, arms waving in air. I came to an easy halt among the puddles. She held a walking stick – Walking stick in one hand, wrinkled healthy-looking complexion, vibrant face, wavy white hair, with a look of eccentricity and foreignness to her. I walk over to her, sidestepping between puddles on this barmy hot day. In what I think is the broken English of an northern/eastern European accent, she asks for a lift, in upfront, confident terms. I reverse to give her a puddle free access route to passenger side of the vehicle, though she heads towards driver’s side at first – a giveaway of one used to left-hand drive cars. I run her towards a village restaurant – she has been up in the foothills, and is parched and hungry – overheating. I half understand her side of the sparse but friendly conversation. Just before reaching destination, she reveals that she is a tourist from Oregon.

But where are you from originally, I ask. I expect her to be German, for example. She says she is originally from Canada – that is the accent, she explains. West Coast? I ask. Yes, the west.The strange appearance in the road of this elk convinces me I have something to learn from the encounter relevant to the case. A Canadian, with an accent I could have sworn was European, who lives now in Oregon. I suspect that she is the Old Laughing Lady, who can be seen in many mythic sources including the cover of Neil Young’s After the Goldrush album. This album is about the exodus of the hip culture from the US west, or the passing of that culture into hiding.

On the cover image, the red Indian laughing lady is moving in the opposite direction to Neil, however the overlapping alignment between them on the ‘great shot’ makes it appear that she is actually riding in Neil’s backpack (and so actually going in the same direction as Neil, but facing backwards – like a rear gunner). With every movement I feel an opposite flow probably occurs, as per Newton’s third law. So, if this Canadian woman went from Canada to the US, she is the reverse of the movin’ up country hippies who went to Vancouver to avoid nam. Just like Neil, in fact, who travelled from his roots in Canada to the US west.

Long Floats

The reference material sent on Closed Loop fibres revealed a detail which may be of note regarding the fibrous aspects of the case. See mention of a special fabric as follows...

Cinchilla: A cotton, wool, and even synthetic fabric of sateen or twill construction with extra fillings for long floats.

This is a fabric which can be made from natural and synthesised sources and bears a cutely disguising name. Note the talk of 'long floats'. Combining this with the name of the fibre suggests to me a Flotilla, something highly pertinent to this case. Perhaps the Michigan crew were looking at shipping/manufacturing such a fibre for use in their various operations. Perhaps your novel simultaneous spinning experiments are something akin to this manufacturing process, though may need some kind of modification or change of variables to get the desired results.

Are you aware that certain models of turntable favoured by audiophiles and disc jockeys have a pitch adjustment facility which allows, by means of a slider, many (14) speeds of rotation. It enables music to be played between the notes of conventional key structure, similar to the effect of de-tuning an instrument, but on a song-wide scale. I hypothesize that perhaps an unorthodox rotational speed could create some kind of resonance between the two spin sources, allowing for a qualitative change in results. This could operate as some kind of vibrational/resonant cipher - find the right combination of rotational speeds in the two sources and information may be gleaned from the beat notes of the resulting cross-rhythm like some kind of low frequency morse code.

With regard to working out some kind of timeline of 'disappearances', Perhaps Costa's mid-90's 'disappearance' was her dropping out of the state education system to form a band (possibly an early guise of Broken Social Scene), with the interim years spent touring the low-level festival circuit until the band's profile was raised enough to force her to return to the overground. As previously noted, the festival circuit can be a great way to fall of the radar should one wish to do so. Though, as a known Obfuscationist, she could easily disappear and yet be active at the same time, most likely under a pseudonym. Happy said the mixtape couple stopped visiting circa 2005. He doesn't recall when they first began appearing on campus, but says he became aware of them a couple of years into his studies, around summer 1995. I do not know how this fits with your theories.

Timeline

Timeline has now been produced, ranging from formation of the earth through the pre-cambrian, the cambrian, the pleistocene, the age of atlantis, into the dawning of the age of aquarius, to current modern times, taking in the construction of the water-weathered sphinx and the great pyramids, calanais and stonehenge, the guidestones, and the assumed beginning of construction of soft Michigan. Also taking in Ronald Searly’s poetry competition and the often forgotten ‘bin-fire’ incident, of 1982, at which the probably teenage Searly claimed no involvement in said bin-fire. An incident in which I have great interest.

The main new lead I have from laying out known knowns upon an axis of time, is as follows:
In the mid nineties, a Canadian Religious Studies student went from North America to the UK, and there left a map of the great lakes seemingly questioning the location of ‘Keegan and Rosta’ (Regan and Costa). Previously we had surmised that this implied a disappearance of Regan and Costa at that time (in advance of the main soft core disappearance around 2005).

However, it was not until 2004 that material was released by Broken Social Scene, which we know to have been penned by Costa. Three theories could explain this. Either, Costa disappeared in the 90’s, but her material was in the hands of the Toronto music scene before then, later being released by BSS, or Costa disappeared in the 90’s but nonetheless disseminated material to BSS after her disappearance, OR Costa did not ‘disappear’ in the nineties at all. On this third theory, which I favour, the following scenario is possible:

The Canadian RS student, possibly already acquainted with Costa (and Regan) directly or indirectly, is seeking out Costa and Regan, in the UK. She travels there specifically to find them. Whether she succeeds or not is unclear. Costa, possibly with Regan, possibly also with the Canadian RS student, returns to Michigan, and is involved in ensuing road trip activity as part of the beginnings of the soft Michigan project. Costa is also involved with the Toronto music scene directly or indirectly, in years/months directly leading up to the 2004 release of her material by BSS. It is then not until 2005 that Costa becomes untraceable, either from retreating into Soft Michigan, or else from going ‘underground’ to evade various groups, eg. military Project 31 operatives.

I must however check dates suggested by recent Boston contacts including Zac Happy. Did anybody disappear in the 90’s? Melody? When did Zac say the travelling mix-tape couple stopped coming by? When did he say the road trip activity began?

Dream Arcs

2 recent developments/thoughts...

1: last night, after travelling through the inner ring-road routes of Edinburgh, I became embroiled in a close-up battle in a small warehouse building. I along with 2 others took on the shapeshifting morphing government agent type beings. The fight went our way eventually, after some moans of fear audible to the none-dreaming. The episode involved particular use within the battle of angling projectiles/energies along curved arcing boomerang-like flow lines. These same lines I had earlier constructed atop of a map of the US, as an alternative transport network for road trips and as representations of curvy ley-line-like energy routes. The image will be copied to you shortly. Its whorling fingerprint shapes are convincing. The use of similar line-forms in the battle struck me as meaningful.

2: You had asked about the source of ‘needle and the tailoring done’. I do not recall much about how I got it. Your estimated timescale etc I feel is accurate. From the vocals I feel it to be by a UK-based singer. I do remember, however, the third verse of ‘needle and damage done’ contains a reference to a girl in a red dress [baby wears red and I think of home, baby wears blue and I know she’s gone, baby where’s the keys I need to get me some]. I wonder if this is a reference to the dual nature of Costa/Cortez the songwriter – the wolf in sheepswool, the yin and the yang combined, the red and the blue on the same person. However would she write these lines about herself, or someone else write them about her?

All American Smile

I've just driven round an early evening Boston, having listened to the mixtape twice as the sun came down. Great sunset - from an intense orange to an intense purple, it was like a colourshifted aurora borealis. Anyway, I digress; first the tracklisting, then the theories...

"All American Smile"

Side 1
1. Start at the seam
2. Ode to a lost cardigan
3. Cablestitch
4. Poet's Shirt
5. Waving, Not Drowning
6. Soak That Rag
7. Rode Trips
8. Loose as a Moose (Woddy Allen skit)
9. Melissa and me
10. Knit it, don't quit it!
11. Double Back
12. Cottonpickin' blues

Side 2
1. Tape-stry
2. Breakfast Song
3. Scarf-Ace
4. A friend in tweed is a friend indeed
5. Soft on the outside, hard on the inside
6. The needles and the damage done (with added 3rd verse)
7. Come in no. 31, your time is up.
8. Why I Ran
9. Luminous Fibres (extended)

Now the theory: All the songs on the tape are home recording, very much in the vein of the previous tape we acquired knowledge of. Most of the songs feature vocalised lyrics, mainly female voice, but occasionally male (particularly backing vox) which seem to be giving some kind of instructions.

At first listen they seem to be based around knitting patterns, but the instructions don't seem to relate purely to knitting as I know it, rather, they seem to allude to something grander, of which knitting is only a part of. It's hard to tell - the home-quality recording makes for a muffled listen, something only compounded by the age and condition of the tape.

Side 2 has untitled interludes between most tracks, which seem to be spoken word poems with unrelated lines in alternate French and English; for example:

vous vous asseyez à la table
i am not going to worry...about a thing.
il y a un restaurant minuscule
but so worth it.

It sounds to me as if a French/Canadian man is saying the English parts and an English/American girl is saying the French parts. My knowledge of French is limited, so it is hard for me to draw conclusions until I have had an interpreter review the tape. My theory of the tape(s) is thus: These mixtapes appear as innocent compilations made for a niche group of people of limited import or interest; but it is my belief that their intended purpose was to provide disguised instructions only decipherable by a select group of people who were familiar with the key to break the code.

This would provide a great way to send sensitive information across the country(ies) without it being detected. Even if discovered in transit, the authorities would most likely assume the tapes to be wholly innocent and of no special interest. Which college kid hasn't spent evenings sat with finger hovering over the pause button of his stereo, curating and creating a private 90-minute megamix of favourites to pass among friends. Nobody, upon finding such an item, would be likely to suspect that it may be of greater importance.

So, I am picturing a core group of people recruiting peopleacross college campuses, nationally, then disseminating instructions to said recruits via a series of mixtapes delivered to campuses at regular intervals. This would explain the box of tapes 'Cate' was inposession of when Zac Happy made his amorous approach. At this time, I have no further thoughts, but realise I have forgotten to mention one thing of note - the innerside of the mixtape's inlay card spine bears the inscription 'compiled by Mr. Crafts'. Surely this is something of great interest to us. Who was Mr. Crafts? Is this a name used for Searly, or is it someone else? Kozyra?

In Reply

Your recent diggings in Boston are rich indeed. I would like to believe the young couple are batting on the left side of the crease, but in the back of my mind is the warning – don’t trust the girl in the red dress. Fifties glamour could hide a black suited interior.

I would never have come up with the theory of a Searly hostage situation. I feel it holds some degree of plausibility, but my gut instinct is against it. A third possibility is simply that Searly’s library card ended up in the possession of the young couple (perhaps via members of the Michigan core). A further thought – is it possible that the couple are actually members of the core, eg. Grant and Cate?

To follow my mind’s windmills on their course, given my instinct to beware the hidden interior of the girl in the dress, and earlier thoughts on Costa as a music-scene wolf in sheep’s-wool clothing, perhaps Cate is Costa???

In Reply

That’s one for the soft Michigan set then. I wonder if Costa et al are involved in this band too. ‘Cock Rock’ I assume means macho posturings on electric guitar, but that doesn’t mean no female hand in the melting pot. I was listening to Patti Smith this weekend – beautiful electric guitar work on there, yes, though one might argue quite gentle and feminine, while Patti’s soaring high-emotion Rambo-Rimbaud ranting could itself be described as butch and masculine, perhaps.

Maybe Ellena Costa/Cortez is less the soft fluffy chick and more the dangerous outlaw female. Maybe the soft has a hard interior. Women can be more kick-ass alpha scary than most men, just as half the guys down at the gym are gay. Malajube may well be a girl band, and Costa could be its ringleader.

Note From Lone Wolf

Invaluable find there. Happy must be kept on file and on the quick dial.

Just re-read earlier message from me... didn't qualify why i re-iterated the Regan thing... Melissa Parrish rang a bell with the Melissa Doll. Some elements are recurrent in the research and have been highlighted by recent findings here. It's hard to step back from it right now, but here's my potted thoughts for the moment...

Dreams and dreamers. Was put onto some something Freud said about the dreams being the 'royal road to the unconscious mind'. Been in discussion with doctor of art, conceptual artist and thinker - some good stuff coming through, and it all lands right in the middle of what were looking at. Also. Concept of the Third Mind. Specifically in relation to the collaboration between two people. There is the idea that a Third Mind is in play whenever this occurs. Have some research to type up about Bill Burroughs and a contemporary working in cut up and how they stated this third mind idea. Also that 'cut up can predict the future'. Regan and Costa worked independantly but collaboratively. Kozyra as a physical and facilitatory 'third mind'? i have some interesting visual evidence from the Wolds to further add to this.

From Kojak asa400

The attached image is from Harry Delacroix. The reference to Keegan and Rosta is clearly either an accidental or deliberate misnaming of Regan and Costa. Harry claims the map is from the personal belongings of a Canadian-born Religious Studies student who spent a few semesters in one of the new ‘prefab’ universities in the UK, in the late 1990s. A contact of Harry’s got the map from the R.S. undergraduate’s washbag while canvassing her halls of residence for an RPG club. He also claims to have seen an abundance of knitting paraphernalia in the room, and a Joni Mitchell album sleeve pinned to the wall, with ‘joni for ever’ written in the bottom corner in biro. Apparently, the undergrad was forced to abandon one course unit because some of her theories were too far out for the professors. She reportedly told them: ‘I can prove this’…
The ‘where have they gone?’ question on the map possibly refers to Regan and Costa rather than the larger disappearance circa 2005, if the dating to the late 90’s for this artefact is correct. Unless it refers to something else altogether.

Further thoughts on the case so far

Many of the links between Searly and the Michigan group seems to involve de Leon, Vandeloo, Vermott and James/Robert Long.

Were these people Searly's go-betweens? His trusted messengers? I am increasingly leaning toward the theory that Jack Vermott and James/Robert Long are psedonyms for Jack Vandeloo and Jose de Leon. The only traces of Long and Vermott are entirely connected to appearances of de Leon and Vandeloo - it seems they are aither a tightly-knit group (excuse the pun), or two people with aliases. The similarity between the names Vermott/Vandello and de Leon/Long incline me toward the latter explanation, something which I believe we should take into consideration when viewing the wider picture.

Also, while trying to indentify the mid-point between Costa and Regan during Black Cat, it struck me that the only known link between the two individuals is Paul Kozyra. Kozyra is their go-between, the middle-man, and most likely was found at the mid-point between the two during the experiment in question. It occurs to me that in all likelihood Black Cat was Kozyra's gig and Regan and Costa were possible collaborators but more likely pawns in his game. Perhaps by looking more closely at Kozyra we will reveal the required knowledge of Costa/Regan and more importantly, the details of Black Cat.

I must hurry now as I am due to fly to Boston in a couple of hours to pick up the scent of Searly, starting at the library.

Note from Lone Wolf

It may be that Costa was associated with the Canadian music scene. A song "Anthems for a Seventeen Year-Old Girl appears on the album 2004-09-17: Austin City Limits, Austin, TX, USA. Broken Social Scene is a Canadian indie rock ..." group formed in 1999. (source: internet.)

However the similarity between song titles (one singular, one plural) may be a coincidence. Costa's singular version makes much more sense, for a single song. Alternatively, it may be the same song. Perhaps she ghost wrote for Broken Social Scene or was even a member of the band. I don't know how close to the great lakes scene the band was located. I feel they were either very close, or else vancouver-based.

In Reply

Midway point between them: I assume you are suggesting midway epicentrally, ie. on the world’s surface, rather than euclidean midpoint which would be somewhere within the earth, at a depth depending on their distance apart, and increasing with distance apart to a theoretical maximum depth if located at opposite sides of the world (midpoint then being the core). Alternatively it could be a non-euclidean midpoint. Or perhaps a point located so as to form a (curved) equilateral triangle upon the world’s surface. This would produce two possible locations, if we knew their positions, dependent upon the latitudinal orientation of the triangle. I think of the supposed right angle triangle formed geographically by Stonehenge, the location in the Blue Mountains from which the stones were taken, and the mysterious island of Lundy (Island of the moon).

Perhaps the third point between Regan and Costa may even be a point in space, eg. a satellite?

To get a fix on this third location I suggest we revisit the instinctive insights of our colleague, centring on the Droitwich area. (The mysterious ‘Droitwich Fix’.)

I feel a new cosmological theory is close, leading to the postulation of a third state to accompany wave and particle, thus mirroring the solid, liquid, gas triplicacy. But is it a liquid zone between the solid particle and the gaseous wave, or is it a hazier state further beyond the liquid of the wave? We shall see.

Mid Point

THE IDEA of a marketeer being an expert in elusivity is not such a paradox when viewed in light of modern marketing techniques.

In the nineties, the due to advances in satellite broadcasting, the population of the general western hemisphere became oversaturated with 24/7 advertising pitches and began to see through the mechanisms of sales persuasion. The marketing industry's response: to go covert - obscure the message; advertise without mentioning the product. Sub-conscious persuasion by evasion and mis-direction - car adverts with no mention of the product, except for maybe a manufacturers logo silently displayed ad the end of the commercial, are a classic example. It is a basic trick of the Obfuscationists, so beware. When they say 'look left', you better look right.

Further thoughts on the case so far: It seems I was presumptuous in my proposal that Kozyra was funding Michigan operations. there is no evidence to suggest this - as yet. One thing that struck me though, in light of the Black Cat experiments occuring in two locations at the same time. Following the theory behind the dual particle experiments I mentioned earlier, it seems possible that the real Black Cat experiment was actually taking place at the midway point between Regan and Costa's locations at the time; Regan and Costa's actions being a by-product of a much larger experiment being carried out somewhere equidistant from the two Obfuscationists. This surely merits some further investigation. If we can pinpoint Regan and Costa's exact locations during the Black Cat experiment(s) then we should be able to indentify the location of the midway point where the possible larger experiment would have taken place.

Zero Carb

The paradox of a marketeer, normally involved in promoting something into the limelight, being a seasoned pro at being elusive, makes sense to me. Know one thing and its opposite becomes natural too. It certainly ties in with project 31 – promotion of the false in order to hide the genuine. One story I feel to be apocryphal is that Costa herself infiltrated the soft core and struck up a personal friendship with Cate and Grant, the Michigan couple responsible for the ‘conception diet’ regime of low to zero carb. Costa took the strictness of this diet more seriously than the others (many of whom talked about it excitedly while also eating Hersheys on the side), and the story goes that this proved too much for her, leading to her abandoning the soft core and returning, one dress size thinner, to Earl Regan.

The adherence to strict diets could itself be a connection to Ronald Searly:

Recall the acquaintance between Searly and Captain Beefheart (a man who we should remember surrounded himself in aliases, and never called a man by his real name). Beefheart legendarily imposed a strictly controlled diet of plain pulses upon his musicians during recording sessions. Perhaps Searly taught this technique to Beefheart, or else learnt it from Beefheart. Either way, Searly may then have had a hand in the dietary impositions years later in Michigan State.

But what is the real purpose of such a regime?