Obama has a Cone of Silence

The idea of going into a third official war in the Middle East (not counting the drone strikes in Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, etc.) really sucks and all, of course. But the upside is that we get just that much more coverage of all the cool tech that goes into our latest military intervention.

So for example the BBC has this article about how the President has this special tent. So does Q’addafi, but this one is way better because it’s basically like a cone of silence from the old Get Smart TV series, except it actually works 99% of the time. They have to say 99% of the time because apparently someone was able to sneak in a camera and take a picture of the scene inside.

In order to make sure it’s as secure as possible, they have to bring their own air supply. And this tent is made of a “secret material” which keeps emissions in and listening devices out. It sounds like it was invented by a 10 year old trying to make a better imaginary pillow fort, which I guess is why I find this stuff kind of cool.

Murphy can haz Congress

WNYMedia somehow got word that BEAST EIC Ian Murphy has the Green Party’s nomination for taking Chris Lee’s seat in Congress in the upcoming special election. Jack Davis is also running. Walter Sobchak has something to say about Davis’s candidacy:

 

WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE

The Earth-Spirit exposition is this flea market of New Age products and ideas which pops up around once a year. So I felt I had to go to find out what it’s all about.

The way we originally wanted to cover this at The BEAST was to register as a vendor, get our own table, and sell “Hitting You In The Face With A Stick” therapy. But this would require actual money up front, so it never ended up happening. Also you might have noticed we’ve been busy with other issues at the moment.

I met up with a few other skeptics, wearing clothes which I imagine are similar to what rich people wear. My shirt had buttons. Rich people wear those, right? Anyway, the point was to look like I had money so that vendors would have more patience for my questions. These people might wear lots of hemp jewelry and talk about love and peace a lot, but they’re just as capitalist as any used car salesman.

The main area had 7 or 8 rows of vendors’ tables, and off to the side was a separate room for a speaker. Each speaker had an hour, and I showed up just as the one I really wanted to check out was starting. It was called “How To Make Superquantum Healing Music” with this guy:

At first the four of us were the only ones to show up, so he sat backwards on a chair facing us to show us that, although he was well past middle age, he’s still “hip” and “with it.” Then he took some questions about his superquantum healing music.

“How does it work?” I blurted out. This prompted a random jumble of pseudoscientific buzz words which you could put in any order you liked and it would still fail to answer my question. Pretty much any question we asked was met with that kind of non-response. At one point in the middle of this, he mentioned that he used crystals in his songwriting process, some of which were from other star systems. He told us about how he had been working with crystals since the 1990s. I didn’t doubt that. Then he said that he had been talking to the crystals, and that they talked back to him. I asked if he discovered the interstellar origins of his crystals by communicating with them via psychic means.

“Yes, but that’s not that important,” He responded quickly in what had to be the only straight answer he’s ever given in his entire life. And then he was right back to his carnival barker’s sales pitch of indecipherable gibberish. Some of my friends who blow glass have this saying: “It’s OK to talk to the glass; but when it talks back to you, it’s time to check your ventilation.”

An aggrivating factor about this guy is that in college he was studying to get into electrical engineering. But he explained to us that he found that TOO BORING LOL AMIRITE?

After he let us go, it was time to check out the rest of the vendors.

This guy was standing like this, alone, the entire time I was there.

The first place I hit up was a supplement salesman. He was selling iodine. He made sure I understood it wasn’t magnesium iodine, which is POISON. So this was different from what you get in most stores. The way you can tell if you’re iodine-deficient, apparently, is to put a drop of his elixir on your hand. If it dissolves within four hours, that means that you need to buy his product immediately! After I took my test droplet, Rebecca Watson from Skepchick tried it, but spilled most of what was in the dropper instead of just the one drop. I’m not sure if this was accidental, but if not I have to congratulate her for thinking on her feet like that.

Some of my old friends from Lily Dale‘s Fellowship of the Spirit were there. So were some Reiki practitioners. But I felt like I couldn’t keep up my poker face with them so I just watched from a distance as some sucker laid down while a quack pressed his middle and index fingers against their temple. This went on for like a minute before I started feeling too voyeuristic and had to leave.

One of the things I learned from the superquantum healing music guy was that there are really 12 “chakras” and not 7 as many of the rest of the New Age people would have us believe. Was there dissent amongst the ranks? Is this a controversy? Was my new friend being persecuted by a dogmatic elite in the Woo-Industrial Complex? I decided to get to the bottom of it by asking some of the vendors.

The first thing I found regarding chakras was a plastic bag with some rocks in it. It was a “healing kit” and the cover promised that there were rocks inside along with instructions on how to “use” them with your seven chakras. $35. The woman selling them confirmed that there are in fact 12 chakras, 7 within your body and 5 more extending above your head. She made a gesture, presumably to let me know what the concept of “above your head” meant visually.

Another vendor confirmed the 12 chakras idea, but then elaborated that there were really many, many more. But then some of them were called “meridian points.”

“If I just pointed to a random spot on the human body, would it probably be one of those?” I asked. This is a touchy subject for acupuncturists because it essentially implies that anyone can stick needles in someone at random points and will inevitably hit a “healing point” of one kind or another. She paused for a minute and said that that was probably true.

The last vendor I visited was definitely my favorite. They’re called Eckankar and they had charts:

I quickly became kind of fascinated with Eckankar. They have this leader named Harold Klemp and they’re very into dreams, reincarnation, and songs about the “light and sound of God.” The soft-spoken people I talked to explained that Eckankar was very different from a religion because religions became dogmatic and controlling. This was not the case for them because they just have rigid beliefs about the “higher realms” and require a $130 annual membership fee, which are neither dogmatic nor controlling. Right?

A seemingly nice lady explained to me that other religions are just influenced by the true “holy spirit” while they had managed to tap into the real divine essence itself. I asked if maybe the whole Eckankar business was doing the same thing and that it was just packaged in a way that appealed to them personally, similar to how they perceived other religions. She said she could see what I was getting at, but that she had personal, spiritual experiences to back up her feelings about God, aka SAGMUD.

“But all religious people say that,” I shot back, probably with a little too much belligerence. At this point I felt like I’d hit my limit and really needed to get away from these people as soon as possible. Our conversation devolved into them resorting to the “Take it or leave it” approach. Besides, as my frustration with these people increased, the possibility of being revealed as a non-believer (which would probably result in some kind of Invasion of the Body Snatchers-esque point-and-scream mob scene) increased proportionally.

After saying goodbye to my fellow investigators, I stopped by the iodine supplement salesman to show him that I still had an orange mark from the test droplet I took earlier. It looked almost identical to how it did a minute after I applied it. In fact I was starting to get kind of worried that he would be spinning around a large plate across the table with a blue test tube on it, saying “And now, Dr. Jones, you will give me the diamond” in exchange for the antidote to the poison I had just applied. But it turned out that he just wanted $35 for a bottle of iodine.

“It’s almost faded. You definitely need this!” He insisted. I told him that I just had to run to my car to get my wallet. In reality I just went to my car to get the hell away from this madness. He’d have to settle for a payment on the astral plane, or in my dreams, or in a past life, or some other such nonsense.

Robot Jim

I had some pretty strong feelings about the watering down of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, but now I think the other side is starting to win me over. These people make some excellent points:

Here is where to go to contribute to this important project.

WI updates

1. Capitol building’s closed, Capitol building’s open. Never a miscommunication.
2. According to the right-leaning polling company Rasmussen, Gov. Walker’s approval rating is down to 43% amongst likely WI voters.
3. Even Forbes magazine is saying that Walker has lost the collective bargaining battle.
4. Murphy went to Madison.
5. So did Michael Moore. Here is the speech he gave at the Capitol.
6. Anonymous can haz boycott of Koch Industries products.
7. The Wisconsin AFL-CIO is using excerpts of the Walker/Koch call in an ad.
8. Voters are starting a campaign to recall 8 Republican state senators. If you live in WI, consider helping by collecting signatures.
9. Mary Lazich is one of those 8, and she is a co-sponsor to a bill which would make it illegal to impersonate someone else over the phone if it hurts someone’s feelings.
10. The 14 out of state Democratic WI state senators are again appealing to Gov. Walker for a meeting to negotiate.
11. Robert Jauch (D-Poplar) says they will be returning soon anyway in order to give up and let the Republicans win, hoping that it will result in a backlash. Not too surprising since capitulation is just what Democrats do when the public is on their side.
12. But the 14 senators themselves are denying the above report, saying they have no intention of returning anytime soon.
13. The WI state Democratic Party is going to file a complaint to the state Government Accountability Board calling for an investigation into things Walker said to fake Koch of questionable legality.
14. Scott Walker will speak at an annual tourism conference today. Hopefully he will take advantage of this opportunity to claim that the whole thing was a big ploy to get people to visit Wisconsin in the winter.
15. Another poll, this one by a right-wing think tank, shows that the teachers’ union has a higher approval rating than the Governor.
16. Democrats in Wisconsin are exceeding their signature-collecting goals for the recall campaign.
17. And in totally unrelated news, the state senate’s GOP leader is trying to make the case for the illegitimacy of the recall statutes.
18. Walker uses government power to enforce new rules of behavior at the Capitol, probably because he’s a socialist. Now visitors will not be allowed to talk, have signs, read books, smoke, eat, drink, carry backpacks, bring chairs, take pictures, record audio, have cell phones on, or pretty much do anything else at all.
19. Sen Jauch says 6 of 7 Republican state senators don’t want to strip public unions of their collective bargaining rights. Don’t know if that’s for real or another political trick though.

Stuff

• Environmental Graffiti: 13 Most Incredible Geological Wonders on Earth
• BoingBoing: Bahrain: anti-government protests continue despite brutal crackdown (big photo gallery)
• Matt Taibbi: Why Isn’t Wall Street In Jail?
• Greta Christina & Ashley Paramore: Heterosexual Questionairre
• BuzzFeed: The 45 Best Protest Signs At The Wisconsin Capitol
• About.com: The Glenn Beck Conspiracy Theory Generator

Repent Amarillo guy will run for mayor of some town

Hey, remember those distinguished gentlemen from Amarillo, Texas who like to execute Santa Claus in effigy and harass patrons of swingers’ clubs? Their leader is running for mayor of Amarillo. Here is a video of him in what looks like a church, announcing his candidacy:

At the 1:47 mark, you can hear him say this (emphasis mine, factual and grammatical errors his):

“It is time that Christians rise up and start taking responsibility of their civic duties seriously and start running for office.”

Yes, the time has come for Christians to start running for office. They must start doing this. For too long, only non-Christians have been running for office.

He prefaces all this with a long reading from Romans 13, which I initially thought was the one the KKK likes so much. But after checking back to where I heard that, it turns out it was actually the 12th chapter of Romans. So it’s totally different! Oh, except he has the exact same “Christian flag” as the “Grand Wizard” of the Klan in the Safran video.

KKK Grand Wizard Chris Johnson showing off their Christian flag

David Grisham of Repent Amarillo announcing his mayoral candidacy

I don’t think this means Grisham is a secret Klansman, or even that he’s necessarily racist. The Christian flag seems more like a dog whistle than the established flag of any particular Christian extremist organization. If you go to the Focus on the Family HQ in Colorado Springs, you will see it there also:

According to Wikipedia, it was first designed in early 20th century Brooklyn, probably by Satanic hipsters trying to be ironic. So again, Grisham’s not necessarily a Klansman just because he and the KKK share a flag, just like he’s probably not a communist just because he seems to strongly imply in his campaign video that he’s going to try to use government power to shut down what I’m sure is Amarillo’s totally happening bar scene. But still, very creepy, especially if he ends up winning.

In which I’m forced to mention Charlie Sheen

Last week I did an interview with Alexander Zaitchik about his new article in Rolling Stone, which was about conspiracy talk radio host Alex Jones. As brief of an interview it was, I was kind of proud that we didn’t talk about Charlie Sheen at all. See, when Sheen started ranting all his crazytalk, that was when he was calling in to the Alex Jones happy funtime radio show. They’re old friends, connected through their belief in the idea that 9/11 was an “inside job.” So now, funnily enough, Jones has sort of been in the spotlight because of the instability of someone else and not himself.

But now really my hand has been forced and I’m going to have to actually mention Charlie Sheen because he went and pissed off a “warlock.” And the warlock is going to cast spells on him. And his name is Christian Day. And he looks like this:

I learned about Christian Day from the Daily Telegraph. He is a “real-life warlock” who was totally offended by Sheen’s claim to be a “Vatican assassin warlock,” which, as it turns out, is not true at all.

In other news, film scholars criticized Sheen’s sloppy analysis of Apocalypse Now, engineers at Boeing deny manufacturing Charlie Sheen and claim that he is in fact a sort of human being and not an F-18, and Venus and Athena took great offense to Sheen’s claims that his porn star girlfriends were “goddesses.” They are not.

Christian Day and his crappy knock-off Misfits skull patch were so offended by Sheen’s use of the word “warlock” that he has decided to take vengeance. Here is what he said to TMZ, according to the Daily Telegraph:

“I am going to magically bind Mr. Sheen, not to harm him, but to simply prevent him from using this word in such a negative manner in the future.”
Day continues, “If Mr. Sheen is open to it, our coven would be willing to perform a cleansing on both him, his home, and his career.”

Fucking warlocks. Always so haughty.

There, now if this wasn’t just a big publicity stunt, warlocks should “bind” me from “using this word in such a negative manner in the future.”