I am not writing this blog for the 7 people that will read it. I don't expect comments on this blog because it is solely a blog to make me feel better. Apparently according to the google blog tracker most of my readers are from Germany not the United States. What? Why is that happening? Oh well, I love Germany so that's awesome. I want to move to Freiburg, Germany. The really cool sustainable Eco City! I wish America was more like Germany in this way. How many more German followers will I get now for sucking up?!
I love you Germany!
Anyways, the reason I am writing this blog is for me to one day open up, read again, and think - you know, yeah that's right - crop circles are just really cool artwork made by humans.
Let me explain:
Not more than six or seven years ago I was obsessed with UFOs, ancient aliens, abduction stories, and crop circles. So much so, in fact, that I had a crop circle tattooed directly onto my forearm following my ulna bone vertically. The crop circle I decided to get tattooed on my body was from a picture I found in a crop circle book. The picture showed a field in England (some 90% of all crop circles are found here) with a design of an arrow cutting through a circle (which apparently was supposed to mean the Earth) and the caption below the picture said Hopi Indians translated the crop circle to mean ... (wait for it!)
Mother Earth Cries
So there ya go. Another young American white boy gets a deep meaningful tattoo from some other culture tattooed visibly on his body. Don't get me started on my Chinese writing tattoos. That was a crazy time period when I was younger - getting Chinese symbols on your body. I have one that translates to English as (HOPEFULLY!):
Set Apart
... and another that says in English
Temple
I am not full of myself or so self-centered to get something like that, if you were once an Evangelical Christian teenager you will understand. I know plenty of people that went with the crown of thorns tat or the praying hands tat. It's OK. I own my past, but of course eventually I want to have these tattoos covered up with something a little less religious to say the least. I also have the "dove of the Holy Spirit" as a sort of tribal tattoo (gag) around my right arm. If any of you grew up in the Christian alternative rock scene you may remember a Christian hardcore band named "Unashamed". This design was taken from the back of the band t-shirts.
Needless to say, the crop circle tattoo wasn't my first "new age" tattoo. In fact I have a another one - a very large forearm tattoo of Quetzalcoatl. This is the Mesoamerican "feathered-serpent" god that was linked to some of the New Age books I was reading on the Mayan 2012 prophecy. Of course that day came and went and no plumed serpent god came down from the sky. Fun Fact: Apparently some Mormons interpreted Jesus Christ in the Book of Mormon as Quetzalcoatl visiting the North American Natives after his resurrection. Weird. Just found that out while writing this.
So if we let the skeptics take on crop circles, let's see what happens. If you would have told me when I was getting crop circles tattooed all over my body that crop circles were nothing more than some crafty corn artists I would have laughed. HOW?! How could they make such complex patterns so quickly (sometimes even overnight!) What about those balls of light found. I never once questioned - why circles in the first place? Clearly circles means man-made right from the start. If you watch a simple compass experiment with planks and rope in a field you will see what I mean. In 1991 self-professed creators of most crop circles Doug Bower and Dave Chorley came clean with the public and created a crop circle using just those simple tools in front of journalists and cameramen. Since then the copycat artists have taken off and there has been nearly 10,000 crop circles reported in the last third of the 20th century.
Crop circles are essentially graffiti in corn or barley fields. Just as owners of residential or business buildings are pissed off at graffiti artists for tagging their walls, farmers are pissed off at crop circle artists for smashing their crops. I mean, come on! Who wants to eat smashed corn?! If agribusiness engineered pest resistant corn (BT corn) then they should be able to create crop circle maker resistant corn. No? Does that joke work here? Anyways, just like with really good graffiti, art attracts tourists and this can be problematic to everyday business.
The crop circle designs became increasingly more complex. This is where I stepped in as a believer. This is what convinced me. Well, this and the myriad of "documentaries" on extraterrestrial origins of crop circles. How can these complex geometrical designs be man-made with some boards and rope? The crop circles in the early 2000s were very complex and had fractal designs. However, it can be done. Some have suggested that the circle makers use GPS and lasers to create these intricate mathematical crop circles.
I would not have understood things this way back when I was not-so-skeptical about things, but the fact of the matter is crop circles are most likely made by circle maker artists of human origin. All one simply has to do is weigh the evidence. There is countless evidence of "pranksters" or humans creating crop circles. In 2004 a circle maker was caught in mid-creation of a crop circle in the Netherlands. Bower and Chorley explain how they made circles in the English countryside. Many other examples of humans creating crop circles count for evidence of a human origin, obviously. On the other side - the paranormal side, we have no scientific evidence presented. The scale is lopsided and we can clearly distinguish who the author of these crop circles are by looking at the evidence or lack thereof. As cool as it is to think it is either just the "hive mind" of collective humanity telling us to stop global warming or space ships passing through our dimension, the real artist is a man with some boards and rope. Throw in a laser and GPS or two and you'll have your culprit.
Sadly, I did not learn this before tattooing a big black crop circle on my forearm. But oh well. All joking aside, I still like my crop circle tattoo. It shows character and it reflects a time in my life when I felt so passionately about something I thought (and many others with me) was a deep mystery. I can also view my crop circle tattoo as cool crop graffiti made by some rebellious artists in England. His or her heart must have been racing as they smashed the crops down quietly in the night with boards strapped to their feet after tracing out patterns prepped before hand. These is the modern Nazca Line artists. It is meant to be seen from high above and it's really prettying cool. I like my crop circle tattoos and I think I'll keep it. Now time to get that "the Moon landing was a hoax" forehead tattoo removed.
This was one of the most powerful paranormal crop circle documentaries I remember:
"Crop Circles: Quest for Truth":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4e_wlLb_kk
Meet Germany's sustainable Eco-City:
http://grist.org/slideshow/2011-07-29-freiburg-a-model-city-in-germany/
Here's my tattoo:
