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Posted: 10-06-2002 15:53 Post subject: The Mayday mystery

For the last twenty years, cryptic ads have appeared every May 1st in the Arizona Daily Wildcat, the student newspaper of the University of Arizona in Tuscon.

The former webmaster of the online addition was fascinated by the mystery and has put up a website with scans of the ads.

Is it all just an elaborate hoax? Or does this group really exist and believe what the messages seem to imply? If nothing else, the ads are interesting curiosities and baffling puzzles.

Posted: 10-06-2002 16:19 Post subject:

Whatever it is, it's fanatastic. I suspect some Robert Anton Wilson influenced ontological pranksterism, but then again...some twenty year long alchemical ritual? Coded instructions for a hitman? A wonderful on-going piece of outsider art?

Posted: 11-06-2002 06:50 Post subject:

Wow, I cound't bring myself away from that site for a couple of hours. Weird stuff!

Posted: 12-06-2002 03:44 Post subject:

I just took a quick look at this before I return to it in more detail, and picked out May 1st 1997 at random. This one features a picture of a burning skyscraper....

Posted: 12-06-2002 04:47 Post subject:

Students in my old high school newspaper used to make nonsensical clip-art collages all the time. In fact, I made a few myself when I was an editor. Truth be told, we usually did it for filler when we ran out of text material.

Posted: 16-06-2002 13:51 Post subject:

I'm sure I've seen that 'smiley man' before somewhere. It nags at the back of my mind somehow. Perhaps I've merely seen a previous reference to this affair, but there's an association with the UK rather than the US.

I've only had time to look at the earlier texts, but they do remind me of some of JG Ballard's collages from the 60's, though the themes are different.

Posted: 15-07-2002 23:14 Post subject:

I cant believe this thread has gone to sleep, has the mystery really been going on so long or is it just a big hoax?

Posted: 15-07-2002 23:31 Post subject:

Thanks for bumping this one up, PY. Must have missed it first time. Looks interesting.

Posted: 21-07-2002 23:42 Post subject:

Absolutely fascinating - a sort of lo-fi Paul Laffoley Wink

Posted: 22-07-2002 01:03 Post subject:

For some reason, I find it vaguely distressing Smile

And if the mystery was solved and it did turn out to be some sort of secret thing, would he be unable to tell what was really going on on his website? That would be rather frustrating! Wink

Posted: 26-08-2002 05:48 Post subject:

Just took a look-see at random, went into Sept. 20th 2000, and some initial reactions.

The first thing that I thought was the whole page reminded me of Michael Moorcock's Second Ether series (Blood, Fabulous Harbours and The War Amongst The Angels so far), especially the references to 'Capt. Morgan's' activities. Made me think of Captain Billy-Bob Begg aboard the Now The Clouds Have Meaning and Captain Quelch of The Linear Bee. Spiny

The English-language section of the addendum for May 1, 2001 feels much the same.

The second thing that struck me were the references to the Brasher Doubloon, which features heavily as a McGuffin in -IIRC- a Raymond Chandler story (I forget which one and I've a lot of Chandler I'd have to plough through to check: think it was a Marlowe though. Not that I will look it up: that way lies madness!). confused

Enough. I have enough to perplex me as is. Blah

Posted: 27-08-2002 14:36 Post subject:

ooh, but wasn't The War Among the Angels annoying? The first two were doing pretty well, but that one went far off into sudden shifts of narrator and time to the point I found myself just not caring or interested after a while.

Posted: 01-10-2002 17:56 Post subject: unscheduled update : 9/26/2002

Looks like there's been an unscheduled dispatch from 'the Orphanage'.

Here's the early warning message sent to Brian Hance.

Here's the ad itself.

Interestingly, the big-eared smiley face has six hairs this time. I'm sure it's a secret message of great import.

Is "Opsaal" really Afrikaans? The online dictionaries I could find seemed pretty feeble.

Posted: 06-12-2002 23:29 Post subject:

***bump***

A new 'mayday' ad in the Arizona Daily Wildcat.

See also : the related emails from 'the pimp' as Brian characterizes him.

This ad seems a little different in that the four(?) different 'levels' aren't obviously marked -- it seems that the majority of the text is tagged as level III. Whatever relevance that has.

The way these 'puzzles' relate back to previous ones makes we worry that the later ones can't be fully understood without first totally unravelling the earlier ones.

I keep bumping this thread up every time I learn of new developments in the story. I'm a product of the American educational system, and hence lack the depth to do any more than nibble around the edges. I keep hoping the thread will bring this mystery to attention of people who would have better success unravelling things.

Posted: 02-05-2003 15:47 Post subject:

Another Mayday, another ad : http://maydaymystery.org/mayday/texts/03-may1.html
This one combines several forms used in recent ads.

Recent developements : http://maydaymystery.org/mayday/recent.html

Is anyone else on the board even interested in this? I see a notable lack of comments in this thread.

I'm particularly interested in any theories of the significance of encoding the message into levels I,II,III & IV.