Doppelgängers are always a problem
typed for your pleasure on 6 October 2005, at 1.46 amSdtrk: ‘Cosmic country noir’ by Stereolab
Although I missed it by a couple of days, I observed on rotten.com (caution: not safe for anything) that 4 Oct was the 19th anniversary of the infamous ‘What’s the frequency, Kenneth?’ incident, where television news anchorman Dan Rather received an unforseen thumping from professional psychotic William Tager. This shit still unsettles me to this day.
“What’s The Frequency, Kenneth?” – Not Just an R.E.M. song!
The Assualt: On the evening of October 4, 1986, Dan Rather was attacked by William Tager who, contrary to popular belief, had a very good reason for attacking Rather.
Bill Tager was born in the year 2265. Bill Tager is from the future. Bill Tager is not from our planet. Well, technically he is from earth but not from our earth. Tager comes from an earth in a parallel universe and was sent here by the government of his planet. On Tagers earth, the entire planet is under the control of one government. Tager’s world wide government has been experimenting with travel to other parallel universes (which involves a warp of the space/time continuum) for almost 150 years. Bill Tager, a convicted felon on his planet, volunteered to be the first human test pilot on the condition that he be given a full pardon if he returned safely.
On Tagers earth the Vice-President of the world is a man named Kenneth Burrows, who just happens to look exactly like Dan Rather. (I should explain here that most everyone on our earth has a double on all of the other earths in all of the parallel universes.) Before Tager entered the travel chamber he was paid a visit by Vice-President Burrows and was told that he had a transmitter implanted in his brain and if he chose to remain in the section of time/space that he was being sent to and didn’t return at the designated time, he would be barraged with messages to return until he came back and reported on his mission. Then, and only then, would the transmitter be removed and he be given his full pardon.
Tager’s trip was successful and he landed in New York on September 1, 1986. All was going as planned and Tager was preparing to return to his own time and world when he was mistakenly arrested for putting coins in expired parking meters. After spending 30 days in jail (and staying on our planet 14 days longer than he was supposed to) Tager started receiving extremely hostile messages from Vice-President Burrows telling him to return immediately. His window of opportunity had passed and he would have to wait another week to try to return but there was no possible way to let Burrows know this. The constant voices were driving him insane. He wasn’t even able to sleep at night. If there was any way Tager could find out the precise frequency that was being broadcast to his brain he could possibly override the voices and be able to sleep at night until he was able to make his return trip.
As he walked the streets of New York late on the evening of October 4, 1986, Tager saw a man who he thought was Vice-President Kenneth Burrows. He quickly came to his senses and knew that Burrows would never make the risky trip himself and figured it must be Burrows’ double on our earth. However, he thought, what were the chances that out of over 5 billion people on this planet, he would meet the twin of the man who had been sending hostile messages directly to his brain for over two weeks?
Tager called out to the man, “Kenneth! Kenneth Burrows!”. To his surprise, the man, whom we know to be Dan Rather, turned to see who was yelling and was knocked to the ground. Tager repeatedly kicked Rather as he lay on the ground and yelled “What’s the frequency Kenneth?” hoping to learn the frequency of the signal being broadcast to his brain and stop the voices. When Rather didn’t respond, Tager realized he had made a terrible mistake and had indeed attacked Burrows’ double on our planet. He fled the scene and later missed his second, and last, chance to return to his home planet.
Years later, in 1994, in an attempt to get in contact with someone who might be able to identify the frequency and put an end to the voices that had haunted him for so many years, Tager shot and killed an NBC technician outside the “Today Show” studios. Today, William Tager sits in a prison in New York, the voices, now an automatic message that replays itself every 20 minutes, still play in his head.
While in prison, Tager wrote various stories and drew odd cartoons depicting his adventure.
I also still can’t believe that that incident occurred almost 20 years ago! Furthermore, I would kill to see Tager’s stories and cartoons. Well, ‘kill’ is too strong of a word; I should probably say ‘assault’.
NOTE TO SELF: Don’t go outside, there’s loonies from parallel dimensions about
Random similar posts, for more timewasting:
Roll up your windows on December 25th, 2006
Adventures in Outsidevania on February 5th, 2009
October 6th, 2005 at 2.49 am
Bizarreness!
Kind of reminds me of that Kevin Spacey movie, KPAX.
Wait, that looks like a radio station. I mean Kpax.
Maybe kpax, who knows?? You know, don’t you?
Anyway, it also could have been the premise for South Park’s “Stan from the Future” episode, which seemed to be a fraud, but at the end, Cartman’s double proved it’s true!
I’m going to hide in the house now.
PBS & Lily
October 6th, 2005 at 8.56 am
I don’t remember this at all. I never approached any REM songs intellectually so never wondered at the meaning behind the song lyrics.
What does the automated message now say?
I can’t believe I received Carte Blanche, and I can only hope that’s somehow similar to Kate Winslet.
October 6th, 2005 at 11.55 am
The voice says “Don’t put salt in your eyes, don’t put salt in your eyes…” and so on.
I think we should have had Tager take us to the point where he would be able to return to his world and send one of our own, then they would come back here to verify his claims. Then, we could go into the parallel earth and steal their oil for our own uses.
October 8th, 2005 at 3.04 pm
PBS&LILY –
Isn’t it ‘K-PAX’? That looks like call letters, too. Hrrm. I don’t know either! I never saw anything more than reviews about it: ‘A man, who may or may not be from another planet, may or may not do something that may or may not affect someone or something, someplace, at some time. Starring Kevin Spacey, and some other people who may or may not be famous’. Or something!
SafeT –
O, I couldn’t stand that song, but I really don’t like REM in general. 😉 But of course the year it came out, you couln’t get away from it. And since it was back in the late Eighties, there were a couple of not-altogether-repellent radio stations in the area that played alternative, but since REM is alternative as well, I heard them more often than I would’ve liked. 😐 But I’d read somewhere about the origin of that song, and it kinda stuck with me, as that sort of thing would..
KQ –
Maybe Tager was trying to hit the Time Traveler convention and really bollocked up his coordinates?