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“... beautiful people, you live in the same world as I do ... but somehow I never noticed you until today ...”<br />
No Wrong Questions<br />
So it begins.<br />
Welcome to <strong>Penn</strong> <strong>Magazine</strong>, named in<br />
honor of <strong>Penn</strong> Jones, Jr., one of the first<br />
investigators into the murder of John F.<br />
Kennedy. Jones ran a small weekly newspaper<br />
in Texas, 25 miles from Dallas.<br />
I was going to call it MIKE’s <strong>Magazine</strong>,<br />
not really, but maybe and it might have<br />
fit, given how many of my own stories<br />
I’ve got in here, but maybe you won’t notice,<br />
but then again I hope you do because<br />
if nothing else, my books have some<br />
amazing artwork, not done by me, and<br />
they are mostly still in pristine condish<br />
after all these years, untouched by human<br />
hands or eyes, clean one-owner, only<br />
driven by grandma on Sundays to buy<br />
oak wheat licorice black smoke beer.<br />
The idea behind this is that there are no<br />
wrong questions. That was my premise<br />
when I started The New American Dream<br />
website in the days of the first Obama<br />
election, and then in 2011 Chuck Gregory<br />
and I began The New American Dream<br />
Radio Show, same idea.<br />
If you are sitting at the Thanksgiving<br />
adult big table and you try to bring up<br />
JFK or 9/11 or the moon landings, heaven<br />
forbid you mention Bigfoot, well, your<br />
brother-in-law Brad is going to try to<br />
send you to Siberia with a roll of his<br />
eyes.<br />
That is what happened around the time<br />
of 9/11. We were not allowed to ask<br />
questions. You are either with us or you<br />
are with those guys with the box-cutters<br />
and nobody wants to be with the guys<br />
with the box-cutters, for sure you will sit<br />
by yourself in the cafeteria if you go that<br />
route.<br />
And another thing you are not supposed<br />
to do is bring up Bigfoot when you are<br />
trying to talk about things like Sandy<br />
Hook, Boston, Las Vegas, 9/11, Oklahoma<br />
City, because if you do talk about<br />
Bigfoot at the same time you are talking<br />
about those things, then you are crazy,<br />
and worse, so are the other guys who are<br />
talking about those “serious” things.<br />
But that’s crazy because that’s the thing.<br />
If we were to talk about all those things,<br />
on the Nightly News, at dinner, at church,<br />
or in the newspaper, we wouldn’t be as<br />
stupid as we are now.<br />
Another thing is this: I talk about 9/11,<br />
Sandy Hook, Boston, Bigfoot and UFOs.<br />
I consider myself a liberal, I guess, more<br />
than I do a conservative, blech.<br />
But when I talk about these things, my<br />
old liberal buddies call me a right-wing<br />
conservative gun knut, and I don’t get it.<br />
Why?<br />
Why would people who want to stop war<br />
and things not want to know the truth<br />
about 9/11? Why would you not want<br />
to understand what goes on, behind the<br />
scenes, as it were.<br />
So, here we are.<br />
In this first issue we talk quite a bit about<br />
The New American Dream Radio Show.<br />
We have regular guests and we feature<br />
them here. I don’t know exactly what<br />
all these people think about Bigfoot and<br />
9/11. Just because we are all on this radio<br />
show doesn’t mean they have to think as<br />
I do, Allen The Alien forbid.<br />
Same with my co-host Chuck Gregory.<br />
Just sayin’.<br />
Okay, I guess that’s it, for now, from me.<br />
Oh, one more thing, the Columbo question,<br />
not a question.<br />
On Fridays, Ruth and I often go out to eat<br />
and maybe I have a few beers, then we<br />
come home, usually by six-thirty and I go<br />
back to my computer and listen to music<br />
on YouTube, maybe with the window<br />
open listening for Bigfoot, and hoping a<br />
flying saucer might — for once — land<br />
on the septic tank mound and hang out.<br />
Well, one recent Friday I somehow found<br />
some songs by Melanie, and I don’t know<br />
how I missed her during the ‘70s, but I’m<br />
from Nebraska and apparently I did, but<br />
now here she is, and she’s singing this<br />
song called Beautiful People and wow,<br />
and I’m thinking wild thoughts because<br />
I have had my quota of three pints or<br />
glasses or whatever of some October<br />
Minnesota craft brew something-something<br />
beer, and I’m thinking that’s what<br />
we need, buttons.<br />
Yes, we are all divided now, and we<br />
don’t talk about some things and we hate<br />
some people and all that and maybe it’s<br />
always been that way but right now is the<br />
worst because it is our time and everything<br />
has to be the worst and the best because<br />
this is us, but after we get the truth<br />
out there and everything is good because<br />
all that good stuff happens, the real goal<br />
would be to talk to everybody, like you<br />
would at a high school party after you<br />
have had a few and you love everybody<br />
and everybody loves you like you want to<br />
but you can’t during the week, well that’s<br />
what we’re shooting for here.<br />
Buttons.<br />
Beautiful people with buttons and the<br />
buttons are all the same and you feel<br />
good and okay because your button is just<br />
like theirs and you also like them because<br />
they are good, they are just like you.<br />
— Mike Palecek<br />
<strong>November</strong> <strong>2017</strong>/<strong>Penn</strong> <strong>Magazine</strong>/3
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