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I refused to write the new Mothman book


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I have to phrase the title like that because it's not my project, I can't cancel it all I can do is refuse to be a part of it. I'm posting because I had previously said in a post that I was writing the book. How all this started was I was writing college papers for single parents who didn't have the time. I refuse to write like major thesis papers, I just do small to medium sized papers in Biology, Sociology,Physics, Philosophy, Archaeology, and Psychology. An example is once I had a woman who was working full time, going to college part time, had two kids, and was going through a divorce. She didn't have time to do a paper about challenging our society's normative ideology by doing things like bringing Taco Bell inside a Burger King or taking someone's groceries out of their cart that they hadn't paid for yet. So, I figured "Most colleges have a writing lab, I've seen them. You take your paper there and they darn near write your paper for you any way, so why not help the ones who can't get to or don't have a writing lab?" I can't pretend that this is a totally selfless act, because I do charge, plus it makes me feel a little better about sinking years of time and money into a major I no longer pursue. Anyway, one of those people had a parent in the publishing biz. He had a thesis about the Point Pleasant Mothman incident and a bunch of sophisticated equipment, but he wanted someone to do the writing and legwork. So, I was to get a paid trip, my name on the title, AND get payed to do interviews, walk around nature, and play with expensive toys? Sign me up! So, what happened?

I conducted interviews, collected specimens, dug through archives, all types of stuff; it wasn't as hard as I expected. But then I really got to know townsfolk and fell in love with them and the area itself. I also found field notes from a woman who came before me tasked with debunking Mothman and it really got me to thinking. Can a person really turn skeptics into believers, or vice versa? The place does just fine promoting itself.If my evidence was negative, why would I want to damage a place's claim to fame? These are good ole small town types of people, much like myself. In addition, the person who stands to be hurt the most by this book is me. I can be either "That weirdo who believes in and chases monsters, aliens, MIB, ghosts, and fairies" or "That jerk who tried to destroy Point Pleasant's nice little tourist trade". Ether way hurts my business.

In conclusion, something did really happen in Point Pleasant, West Virginia. The town didn't have a meeting and say "You know what? Let's create a wild story to create tourism", nor is Mothman the rantings of the town drunk who was out hunting and mistook a crane for a monster. But the facts behing the Mothman folklore is a tale to be told by someone other than myself.

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OK

One – you will not be the first, nor the last, to write on this topic. But writing a published book of any kind is a feat worth putting on a resume or CV. Besides, the topics you will get in the future will not be any different and may be even worse than this.

Two – that was a very intriguing introduction for the book. You seam to have a ton of ideas and opinions on both sides of the subject, so just open Microsoft Word and start typing everything that runs through your head. You’ll edit it out later. Maybe even find something worth telling the rest of the world. Copy-past the above material and start from there.

Three - Nobody is asking you to take sides. Just write a book worth buying and reading. Use the data you collected to pass it on to interested readers. Maybe some one will find it useful and time saving.

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I can see that if you continued to work on it, and ended up debunking mothman, you'd face an ethical dilemma: telling the truth vs. damaging the tourist trade. My moral intuition would have me tell the truth, because engaging in deceit, well, I feel that would be presumptuous and patronizing to say that the town would be better off if the falsehood is upkept, even if it did bring short-term prosperity in a tourist trade. You can't see all ends, the town and it's people may end up better off. On the other hand, it could cause financial damage to the town to tell the truth. So in dropping the project you avoid the dilemma.

 

Still seems like a waste to just drop it cold though.

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  • 2 months later...

Well, it doesn't just seem to be a waste to drop the whole project, it also sounds flaky. But there's a reason why I had to drop it like a hot potato. It had nothing to do with taking sides. It sounds like a cop-out, but I can't talk about it, and I'm not allowed talking about why I can't talk about it.

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Well, SX, since you had such interest, I did some research on this, and found little loopholes. I can't talk about MUCH, but I can talk about a few things that I didn't think I had the freedom to before. This project wasn't mine, I don't have the rights to any research, findings, or even my own field notes. What I can say is I refused to write certain things in certain ways, and the whole project was taken from me, as well as the right to do research on my own. Dudes, seriously, some times ya gotta read that fine print. But here's where it gets fun. I can't talk about the project, or what happened, but nothing says I can't talk about thoughts, feelings, incidents, and discoveries of mine before I got in this project. HaHa!! So, SX, here's a little nugget of fact for you.

This story starts in 1998. I was frogging late one night, with a flashlight and a gun little more powerful than a bb gun. They were frogs after all, you don't take a machine gun to hunt little critters. On the other side of the property, I heard ungodly sounds and my hunting dog throwing a fuss. When I got there, I saw the strangest, ugliest damn bird/bat type thing tearing the crap out of my poor dog. I loved that dog, she was in her twilight years. So, it's with absolutely no remorse that I type that I shot this thing right in the eye. Didn't kill it, but I hope the freaking thing gives a second thought about attacking old dogs in the future. Anyway, I did a lot of research. It's a simple fact that we're finding critters that we thought were long since extinct. Most of them are fish, but one of them is this pterodactyl looking thing. The difference is pterodactyl's don't have arms, but the thing I shot, as well as some of the reports, describe little stubby T-Rex type of arms. Here's another fact: we know the military stored chemicals by Point Pleasant, and it's already known for fact that they leaked into that river. We also know that chemicals can mutate wildlife, it's not just fiction for sci-fi and Sacred. They've pulled strange critters out of that water before. So, my sincere belief is that Mothman is a mutated critter, perhaps it was once something like the pterodactyl-type of deal I shot in '98. No aliens, no supernatural demon, no Indrid Cold, just nature being mutated by chemicals humans stored away.

Edited by Gilberticus
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This story starts in 1998. I was frogging late one night, with a flashlight and a gun little more powerful than a bb gun. They were frogs after all, you don't take a a machine gun to hunt little critters. On the other side of the property, I heard ungodly sounds and my hunting dog throwing a fuss. When I got there, I saw the strangest, ugliest damn bird/bat type thing tearing the crap out of my poor dog. I loved that dog, she was in her twilight years. So, it's with absolutely no remorse that I type that I shot this thing right in the eye. Didn't kill it, but I hope the freaking thing gives a second thought about attacking old dogs in the future. Anyway, I did a lot of research. It's a simple fact that we're finding critters that we thought were long since extinct. Most of them are fish, but one of them is this pterodactyl looking thing. The difference is pterodactyl's don't have arms, but the thing I shot, as well as some of the reports, describe little stubby T-Rex type of arms. Here's another fact: we know the military stored chemicals by Point Pleasant, and it's already known for fact that they leaked into that river. We also know that chemicals can mutate wildlife, it's not just fiction for sci-fi and Sacred. They've pulled strange critters out of that water before. So, my sincere belief is that Mothman is a mutated critter, perhaps it was once something like the pterodactyl-type of deal I shot in '98. No aliens, no supernatural demon, no Indrid Cold, just nature being mutated by chemicals humans stored away.

 

whoa.jpg

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I think you overreacted a bit. Your book would not prove anything to anyone (the believers have their own culture, and the skeptics will require something more concrete). The town's fame would not be damaged, in all likelyhood quite the opposite.

 

These wild stories are not really about the truth, but more about entertainment. Look at the Loch Ness monster crowd, they know it's bs and they don't care.

Edited by Antitrust
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You know with all this stuff about Mothman and the town the first part of your first post never really sunk in.

 

 

How all this started was I was writing college papers for single parents who didn't have the time. I refuse to write like major thesis papers, I just do small to medium sized papers in Biology, Sociology,Physics, Philosophy, Archaeology, and Psychology. An example is once I had a woman who was working full time, going to college part time, had two kids, and was going through a divorce. She didn't have time to do a paper about challenging our society's normative ideology by doing things like bringing Taco Bell inside a Burger King or taking someone's groceries out of their cart that they hadn't paid for yet. So, I figured "Most colleges have a writing lab, I've seen them. You take your paper there and they darn near write your paper for you any way, so why not help the ones who can't get to or don't have a writing lab?"

 

That was my job as a graduate student for two years; working at my university's writing center/writing lab (there were actually two but the latter was basically just a computer lab). And after that teaching ENG 101 for a year before I felt like hanging myself so I quit. I dunno about other places, but we were taught not to do the work for the student, but to help them be able to do the work. "Teach a man to fish..." and all that. So no, a proper writing lab doesn't just write your paper for you.

 

I can't tell you how many people came in and just wanted me to "mark everything" or "rewrite the bad parts" and just "write an outline". So many times I had to drag someone kicking and screaming through the process of, lo and behold, manufacturing their own ideas, organizing them, and teaching them how to spot why the sentences or paragraphs they wrote needed to be rewritten, or how to use proper citation style for their discipline.

 

That's been 7 years ago but I still feel defensive of the process of writing and teaching to write. Common students, and probably even moreso average people seem to have little regard for being able to organize and express their thoughts in writing. Christ, just try to read almost anything written on public forums. I wouldn't be doing anyone any favors by just doing the writing for them. I'd still get my paycheck and they might pass the class, but they wouldn't deserve it, and now they're out in the workforce, supposedly qualified for a job when they haven't even learned to organize and express their ideas clearly.

 

And even after all that, I have done stuff like that on the side, doing assignments for others, not for pay, usually just for friends or co-workers (like after I quit teaching and worked at Books-A-Million for year). And yeah, it felt very wrong, mainly because it made me feel like education was just a joke.

 

Although I will say this:

" a paper about challenging our society's normative ideology by doing things like bringing Taco Bell inside a Burger King or taking someone's groceries out of their cart that they hadn't paid for yet."

 

That sounds like just an awful crap assignment and I don't see why anyone should have to do THAT. That sounds like just a really bad curriculum to me. Unfortunate for the mother...

Edited by Flix
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  • 2 weeks later...

How about throwing kids school lunches away because the parents hadn't paid for it. That has been done for sure in Arizona and Minnesota, probably all 48 other states as well.

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School officials taking kids hot lunches out of their hands as they go to sit down to eat and throwing the food away because the kids didn't have enough money in their accounts to pay for it. A very public shaming among other things horribly wrong with that behavior.

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