Released 21 November 1983
Seven and the Ragged Tiger is Duran Duran's third studio album, released globally in November, 1983. It would prove to be the last studio album for the band's original lineup until 2004's Astronaut.
Simon Le Bon said the album "is an adventure story about a little commando team. The Seven is for us -- the five band members and the two managers -- And The Ragged Tiger is success. Seven people running after success. It's ambition. That's what it's about."
I woke up the other morning thinking about the song “New Moon On Monday” from that Duran Duran album, “Seven and the Ragged Tiger.” I was thinking over and over that there was some sounds in that song that sounded like mortar rounds exploding, which led me to thoughts of the Vietnam War. So I listened to the track a few times and I decided that it is the sound of jets flying over someone and then sounds of anti-aircraft machine guns, and then the sounds of explosions, possibly from bombs dropped from the jets. At 03:04 on my player during the song, there is a distinct sound of what sounds like an explosion and I associate that with a bomb being dropped from one of those jets. I wonder if those are sound I recorded from the ground during the Falklands War, which was the year before that album released. Or maybe I was in Afghanistan fighting with our allies there. I am quite certain I was fighting with the mujahdeen in Afghanistan as my U.S. military assignment, but I can’t remember a lot of details yet. The sounds on that “New Moon On Monday” track aren’t too realistic, but they are recognizable, and I wonder if I modified the real sounds I recorded to make them less recognizable, or they were sounds I reproduced with instruments. I have been wondering if this represents me standing there at night with the Moon overhead, knowing I had been out there, and pondering the absurdity of war as a battle raged around me. I would ponder many times of how there are important fights, but I would also wonder……..I can’t remember how I want to finish that sentence.
I examined the release date for that song and I think it points to the first time I flew a fighter jet on 5/1/67. Going back 5933 days, inclusive, from the release date was 8/25/67. That was 3 months, 3 weeks, 3 days, after 5/1/67. There is also a girlfriend in my symbolic “memories” that has an 8/25 birthday. Her initials were T.G. and I have interpreted that to represent “Top Gun.” Her last name was Grabski and that makes me think of “grab sky” as in to pull oneself into the air.
"New Moon on Monday" is the tenth single by Duran Duran, and the second from their 1983 album Seven and the Ragged Tiger. It reached the Top 10 on both the British and American music charts.
DURAN DURAN LYRICS
"New Moon On Monday"
Shake up the picture the lizard mixture
With your dance on the eventide
You got me coming up with answers
All of which I deny
I said it again
Could I please rephrase it
Maybe I can catch a ride
I couldn't really put it much plainer
But I'll wait till you decide
Send me your warning siren
As if I could ever hide
Last time La Luna
[CHORUS]
I light my torch and wave it for the
New moon on Monday
And a firedance through the night
I stayed the cold day with a lonely satellite
Breaking away with the best of both worlds
A smile that you can't disguise
Every minute I keep finding
Clues that you leave behind
Save me from these reminders
As if I'd forget tonight
This time La Luna
[CHORUS]
I can’t fully remember the complete picture about the person referred to next, but I think it is connected to my experiences in the Vietnam War, similar to what I have written about the U.S. Navy helicopter pilot Clyde Lassen. I made some observations a while back about how USS Lassen is hull number 82 and how that connects to my 1982 graduation from the U.S. Naval Academy. Based on details I found, I assume I was at the controls of that helicopter and that it was my decision to turn on the landing lights while we were under fire in order to help the pilots we were trying to rescue get to the helicopter. So anyway, I think this award for Lt. Thomas R. Norris has something to do with me as well. I don’t know if he is the place holder for me on that award, or if he really was there with me, or what. I find myself thinking about that kid that lived down the road from us on Hicks Road - all of which are symbolic and artificial memories - who was named Ray Norris.
I also find it curious what I wrote in my journal a few months before I was even consciously aware of Thomas R. Norris and I had made that journal entry just after I woke up, which is excerpted below and I am not sure if I was that pilot that was being hidden on that boat or that I am remembering him not wanting to be covered up like that while the enemy patrol is talking to me while I am in disguise as a fisherman. I have been thinking that Gerald Ford presented the Medal Of Honor to Thomas R. Norris during that time as some kind of symbolic connection to my activities in space at the time of that ceremony. I think that it was sometime after I left Mars on 1/23/76 for deep space that I hit the meteor storm and lost a lot of oxygen. President Ford arranged that ceremony to reflect that it was around that time in 1976 that my mission to intercept the comet had turned into a one-way flight.
JOURNAL ARCHIVE: Journal June 12, 2006, Supplemental
...
...The scene changes to some military office. A company officer, I think that would be considered a Major, wants to see an Admiral. The Major appears to have just come from a battle or something, he has mud on him and his uniform isn't really presentable. He is arriving after enduring 12 hours of being trapped in an overcrowded, dark bunker with a blistering, fierce mortar barrage from the enemy outside trying to break the bunker and then he is on a transport, some kind of windowless conveyance that is also overcrowded and hot and filled with the maddening and endless quietly blaring Muzac while the civilians around him are blathering on with moronic idiotic conversations that he can't help but overhear no matter how much he wants to tune them out and there is a communication panel where he wants to send a message to his family because he can't remember the last time he talked to any of them but some moron is doing something moronic on it. He eventually barges into the Admiral's office and the scene is reminiscent in certain artistic elements to an ancient Admirality environment, that type of environment that reminds me of HMS Pinafore, although I don't think I haven't actually seen that play. The Admiral and someone else are sitting around in some kind of stuffy, formal meeting, maybe even sipping tea with their pinky fingers extended, that seems to be a waste of time to the Major. He is frustrated because he lost several men in some kind of battle earlier. The Admiral doesn't want to be lectured because, as he points out to a machine across the room that is stamping his signature on death notices for next-of-kin, he is well aware of the loss. He tells the Major then that they are receiving a Master Chief unit in a few days to help turn the tide in their losing conflict. There are only 12 units so they are sent where they are most needed.
Thomas R. Norris
...
Norris received the Medal of Honor from President Gerald R. Ford in a White House ceremony on March 6, 1976.
...
Lieutenant Thomas R. Norris
United States Naval Reserve
For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while serving as a SEAL Advisor with the Strategic Technical Directorate Assistance Team, Headquarters, U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam. During the period 10 to 13 April 1972, Lieutenant Norris completed an unprecedented ground rescue of two downed pilots deep within heavily controlled enemy territory in Quang Tri Province. Lieutenant Norris, on the night of 10 April, led a five-man patrol through 2,000 meters of heavily controlled enemy territory, located one of the downed pilots at daybreak, and returned to the Forward Operating Base (FOB). On 11 April, after a devastating mortar and rocket attack on the small FOB, Lieutenant Norris led a three man team on two unsuccessful rescue attempts for the second pilot. On the afternoon of the 12th, a Forward Air Controller located the pilot and notified Lieutenant Norris. Dressed in fishermen disguises and using a sampan, Lieutenant Norris and one Vietnamese traveled throughout that night and found the injured pilot at dawn. Covering the pilot with bamboo and vegetation, they began the return journey, successfully evading a North Vietnamese patrol.
I just watched the “Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace” movie again and noted a couple of details. I can remember watching that movie when it premiered on 5/19/1999, which was a few months after I started my undercover assignment to Microsoft. I remember sitting there in the movie with a intense feeling that I wished I had a space ship like the one “Darth Maul” was traveling in when he landed on “Tatooine.” I can’t remember for certain, but I feel that ship in the movie resembles the two shuttle craft I had attached to my Project Orion space ship.
I also noted how the kid who portrays “Anakin Skywalker” in that movie resembles the photo of myself from my youth in my cover identity. I “remember” where that photo was taken and it was all in the context of my undercover identity so that means it is symbolic and artificial.
The most important detail though, is the woman who portrayed “Anakin Skywalker’s” mother in that movie. She distinctly resembled a woman I worked with very closely at Microsoft. I mentioned her before but I just now realized why they had her working with me. I knew she was important somehow in the Microsoft-Corbis treachery because her nickname was A.J. I asked her one time why she was called A.J. but she never told me. The reason is because one of my daughter’s is Angelina Jolie. Her initials are A.J. The first name of that woman at Microsoft was Ecea, but I can’t remember her last name.
She was pregnant when she first started working in my group. I worked closely with her on technical issues because we both focused on Microsoft Windows Messaging products, such as Microsoft Outlook. The last I heard, she was being forced to leave the country and return to her native country of Turkey. She moved back there and took a teaching job at college. She definitely resembled “Anakin Skywalker” as a youth and I think that “Anakin” was modeled after how I looked at that age. The character of “Anakin Skywalker” also has some resemblance to “Captain Picard’s” nephew.
Who watches the watchers?
Do you know?
