Compelling or Comical?

I get tired of the "News". In fact I think the concept of a "news cast" like I grew up with has vanished.

It used to be events of the day would be gathered, researched and ultimately reported on the 6:00 news cast. The first thirty minutes was devoted to stories of local interest and then at 6:30 the local station would network to the National News, which was also 30 minutes long. 

No more. 24 hour news cycles and instant availability to video all over the world makes it a voyeuristic "peeping Tom" experience to poorly researched, over editorialized transmissions.  I just get tired of having current events manipulated as a bate and switch for prescription drug commercials.   

This is why I prefer to watch programs on the Discovery or History Channel.  I used to call the History Channel the "Hitler station" because there were so many stories of WWII, but those programs have now moved to the Military Channel.

Now the History Channel is full of Ancient Alien stories. I have to admit that the evidence is compelling to consider that ancient astronauts might have landed on Earth and been mis-interpreted by humans as gods or deities.  There are cave drawings that seem to depict strange creatures in the crude art.  And in fact the Aztec people thought that Coronado was an alien god when he arrive in South America.

So, given that an artist draws what he sees and had no reference for things that were out of his scope of knowledge, it would be easy to confuse an airplane with a bird.  A train was the iron horse to native Americans.  The idea that crude drawings of humans depicted on stone walls with strange animal heads could just be the interpretation of ancient artists fascinates me. Case in point.

The Hindu God Ganesha is a human creature with an elephants head.  Here is another artists drawing of that deity. 

Of course the godly image and myth has been refined, stylized and symbolized through the ages.  And the original drawings made with crude tools could not provide a lot of details from the original observer.

I wondered if an astronaut could be confused with this Hindu god.  I looked up several images of astronauts on line and found a couple that were interesting.  I drew my interpretation of what I saw and came up with my drawing on the right. I had modern pen and modern paper to work with while ancients had rock and stone, so my detail is more specific. But there could be an argument that they are similar.

I don't know. No one does. It isn't news.  It isn't a story on the latest global crisis to run in fear of. But I would rather spend my time wondering about this than what Justin Beiber is drinking or what Richard Sherman is saying. And most importantly, not once while I was creating my drawing did someone try to sell me a prescription drug to improve my life. 

As you were,

Jay