This post is a collaboration between Mike Brownstein of Politics and Pucks and myself. I’ve been staying on Mike’s couch the last couple of days.

The night was growing old. Mike was playing Return to Dark Castle; I was going on Wiki-walks. We were chatting politics, as we generally do, usually about the crazy Republicans and their horrid pasts. Michelle Bachmann popped up into the conversation, like she does.

So, we wiki’d her, and saw that Michelle Bachmann has been a keynote speaker for “You Can Run But You Cannot Hide International,” which is apparently the Christian Spinal Tap. You Can Run But You Cannot Hide International, or YCRBYCHI (no, seriously) is a ministry that goes into high schools and attempts to reaffirm “disappearing” Judeo-Christian values via the Christian rapcore/nu-metal band Junkyard Prophet. We could, and probably ought to write about them, but it’s a lot more effective to let them damn themselves by talking to you:

Junkyard Prophet (previously known as Reign of Kings) is the crux of their ministry and their primary media outler. Their leader, drummer, Bradlee Dean, is a de facto Tea Party advocate, with a “degree” from the Institute on the Constitution. He also has put together a movie entitled My War, which is apparently a documentary about many different facets of society as seen from Dean’s perspective. Fortunately, their ministry appears to have been contained to the Phantom Zone of reason which is the Midwest, and the deep South. Presumably the international part implies and only refers to the occasional jaunt into Canada, much like Erie International Airport.

You might also have noticed around 2:33 in the video, that this ministry is located in Real America, meaning Anandale, MN. Their headquarters is a storefront, next to the Pizza Works & Deli, across the street from a bowling alley, and around the corner from a Snooty Fox Adult store. So this neighborhood is surely one to be saved. Not to mention this is actually located within Rep. Bachmann’s Congressional District.

By their own running tally, they’ve performed 331 of their high school assemblies. This is one of their singles, “Betta Beware”

If this is truly their message, they should avoid the following:

-        Sean Hannity

-        Glenn Beck (actually, everyone should, in an abstract, general sense)

-        Fox & Friends

-        Infowars

-        Alex Jones

Because this group cannot heed their great advice, they have engaged the media. by recently, suing Rachel Maddow for defamation. The funny part is that the defamation suit can’t actually point out an act of defamation. You see, when there’s public information, and someone uses said public information negatively towards you, while citing it — that’s not “defamation” — that’s “news.” If Maddow claimed that YCRBYCH kills thousands of newborn children each day with their legions of invisible pink unicorns with laser-beam horns, that would be defamation*.

Bradlee Dean has been a guest on Alex Jones’ Infowars, and others shows that wish to support this right-wing patriot, who is trying to save America from its doom by endorsing the genocide of the LGBT community, noting that:

Our position is not libertarian because we cannot accept the idea that sex is a private language. But we are not authoritarian because we do not believe that persecution is going help homosexuals.

Okay, so that is kind of hateful towards GBLT individuals, but that’s not all!

Bradlee Dean is also a regular contributor of “Sons of Liberty,” an AM talk radio call-in show advocating a world where America is to defend itself from other governments to prevent the creation the New World Order.

So if these guys are using the media to put out their message, we figured that we might as well see what they have done on-line as well. To do this, Mike suggested using Klout scores**. Bradlee Dean has a klout score of 46, which, after some goofing around, was determined to be equal to the early-90’s monstrous balladeers, Nelson. Ryan still listens to some of their singles, even though he holds them accountable for the fall of hair metal.

“Really? I score better than Nelson — I mean, c’mon!” said  Mike, incredulous.

We kind of lost track of things for a while, wondering where they laid on the scale of influence. Then, we went one step further and compiled our findings into a table. We were kinda in the zone.

The point is, Michelle Bachmann is running for President of the United States. She has crazy friends, and that these skeletons will come out since she’s kind of out in the open. The fact she has not even made a press announcement about how she is going to distance herself is not surprising and should be taken as a note of merit for her background. Her silence speaks volumes. She endorses this behavior. She wants your kids to be subject to this during school hours — instead of learning science, math, art, music, or metal shop. These are the tomorrows she will create all over this great land. We must stop her, because metal shop was awesome.

————————————-
* Unless Maddow thought it to be true to the best of her knowledge after careful research.

** The Klout score is a poor metric, but Mike didn’t tell me until afterward, as I was having to much fun.

I didn’t think yesterday was going to be epic, oh, but it was.

I went to work and plotted some points, and managed to leave work such that the rain started right when I opened the door to my building, and made dinner such that I was done right when the tornadoes started. After that, I read some journals, and washed the dishes, and read more journals. And then, right around midnight, Mike Brownstein left a post on my Facebook. A link to a one-line news article that said that “Touchdown Jesus” off of I-75, was on fire.

Then, like that, I grabbed the ol’ SuperFunAdventureCodex, and crossed one more item off my list.

A transcript of the list is given below.  (The items are listed in order of importance.)

Things I’d Like to See:

• Christopher Walken performing a spoken-word version of David Bowie’s “Heroes”
• Ally Sheedy naked
• Jesus Christ on fire
• solid room-temperature superconductors
• Nuclear power renaissance
• identity of “Deep Throat” revealed
• functioning and economical EUV lithography system
• destruction of the Roman Catholic Church
• a cure for diabetes
• Labyrinth II
• electric cars gaining widespread popularity
• the Kurzweilian Singularity
• the domestication of the Komodo Dragon
• old-school breakdancing making a comeback
• the identity of who killed Laura Palmer
• Sarah Palin running for office again, so we can continue to make fun of her.
• Dolph Lundgren fighting Jet Li
• Reliable jetpacks
• Gene Hackman in drag
• Concise, coherent, and preferably closed-form solution to the Problem of Evil
• Collapse of the Kim Family Regime
• Passage of the ERA
• Passage of a amendment to legalize same-sex marriage
• Men everywhere wearing fedoras and flat caps at all times, like they did in the 1920’s
• Freddy Kruger fighting Jason Voorhees
• all my friends living happy and fulfilling lives
• repeal of fireworks laws
• to see BP go under

For those of who have no idea what the hell I’m talking about, a little backstory.

Shortly after I moved to Ohio to start grad school, right around the time the neo-cons and Christo-fascists went mad with power, the Solid Rock Church spent $500,000 to build “King of Kings,” a 62 foot bust of Jesus Christ facing I-75. The statue was ostensibly to help people by serving as “a beacon of hope and salvation,” but in practice, the colossal eyesore merely served as a navigational marker to lead people to the flea market. Within minutes of its dedication, the people of the greater Cincinnati area rechristened the statue “Touchdown Jesus,” for obvious reasons.

Well, last night, Touchdown Jesus was struck by lightning by the same thunderstorm that not-killed me with tornadoes, cloud-to-ground lightning, and baseball-sized hail, proving once again that Yahweh is some linear combination of retarded, incompetent, and/or drunk.

Also, their was apparently the Hustler Hollywood sign for the adult store across the street was completely undamaged, signifying that Larry Flynt is truly favored by the Lord.

Also, apparently statues can catch fire.

That kinda threw me for a loop, for we tried to set literally everything in the universe on fire back in Boy Scouts. Then I found out Touchdown Jesus was made of styrofoam, and everything made sense. It was a giant metal frame, next to pond, covered in styrofoam with a fiberglass skin. Apparently it had a lightning rod, but it didn’t work. I’d like to take this time to point out that lightning rods are a proven technology and have no moving parts.

The comments for that YouTube video are priceless, by the way. I could say more about this, but I’m going to let Percy Shelley take over from here:

OZYMANDIAS

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

I was on Facebook, minding my own business, when I saw that someone had posted a link to my buddy Dan’s wall, which I thought to be amusing.

It seems that the Japanese, being from Japan, had managed to one-up the Snuggie by creating a footie sleeping bag. With this, kids at slumber parties can just  pass out anywhere and be golden, and Jake and Lenny would not have almost been mauled to death by that bear at camp that one time, a funny story I should tell you sometime.

That’s not why I’m writing this.

No, because I saw something bewildering on the side of the page.  I clicked it, somehow forgetting my last fifteen years of Internet experience, telling me that something should not be clicked. Apparently they a make vagina-scented perfume now.

Once again to reiterate, you can buy a vial of human cooterstink. As perfume.

You should be revolted. I however, could not be revolted. I, being an engineer, instead immediately asked: “Whose cooterstink are they bottling?” and “By what process does one extract and refine human cooterstink?”

This persistent analytic worldview is a blessing, and as shown, a curse sometimes.

Yesterday, in a stunning blow to freedom and justice, gay marriage has been re-illegalized in Maine. This anti-civil rights campaign was received large amounts of funding from a number of notorious hate groups, such as Focus on the Family and the Catholic Church, in another example of the Religious Right being neither.

Sure we read in Leviticus 18:22 (and Leviticus 20:13) that “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination,” but that doesn’t say anything about girl-on-girl. And why would it? Yahweh is said to be male, and therefore, by definition, is a big fan of lesbian porn.

Leviticus 11:12 tells us to avoid Maine lobster, and Leviticus 19:27 bans shaving and haircuts, but we ignore those. Why? It all comes from a little thing theologians like to call “exegesis.”

Exegesis is the process of sticking one’s hand up God’s ass, in order to make him talk. Since the Bible is the compiled mythology of wandering Bronze-age goat headers, it cannot be made applicable to modern day without creative interpretation. Say I wanted to convince people of something, like that I had the power to fight off a pack of crazed unicorns (Pslams 22:21), or to go about rationalizing the destruction of an entire race of people, like those fucking Hittites two doors down from me (Exodus 34:11-14). Well, the Bible is a pretty thick book with a large number of whacky statements, so I just need to leaf through it and cherry-pick out some lines, and then pepper them in to my next hate speech/homily to make my personal agenda sound like it’s God’s agenda, much like how I’m about to do.

See, in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus explicitly states that homosexuals should be able to legally marry in the State of Maine.

No, seriously. I just leafed through the one of those little green Gideon’s Bibles which tend to pile up in my office, and I saw it there plain as day:

Sure, your bible may be a different edition, and that line may have a different wording, or not be presented in my large, effeminate, cursive script, but it’s just as true as anything else the Bible has to say. God divinely inspired the hand of [this] man to write [in] the Bible. So although it was written by [this] human[‘s] hands, it is is none the less the inerrant word of God. This is true, and I know it’s true… for the Bible tells me so.

James Bond is simply better than you. Period. Thus, to emulate him is to be great.

Jenny was so delectably shy that she would vapor lock whenever I came to call on her. We sat on the sofa, I was grinning, and she was trembling, and fidgeting. Typically you just wait a shy girl out, and she’ll open up on her own, but the nuns really did a number on this chick, and Jenny was tough nut to crack. The last two weeks was an epic exercise in patience; we knew we liked each other, and at this rate it was only a matter of time before one of us was driven batshit insane from our situation.

Clearly, this called for the high-test Sean Connery-grade awesome.

“We need a change of scenery, c’mon, let’s go to the Circle,” I told her.

“Well, I don’t know what to say…”

“You should say: ‘Yes,’” I unhesitatingly replied.

“Well, okay…” said Jenny, with a grin. It was the contented grin of a girl desperately trying to keep us both from drowning in her vaginal moisture. At that moment, I had won.

Once there, Daryl poured me a Labatt’s, and Jenny and I found a table. Then, I took her hand, looked her straight in the eyes, and gave Oscar-quality monologue telling her how I felt about her, and the world, which resulted in me becoming the captain of her heart.

I was able to make a quiet and awkward evening into the beginning of the happiest relationship I’d ever been in, all thanks to the fact I have, at my command, a complete and encyclopedic knowledge of every James Bond movie. In this case, it was Terence Young’s 1962 classic Dr. No. Based off of the sixth novel, Dr. No was the first of the United Artists/EON era films, and the first time Sean Connery portrayed 007.

However, this can, and has, backfired, since you will also assimilate every other line in every one of these movies, and use them as responses as well.

We were on one of our Tuesday dates, walking back to our cars from Uptown when we stopped by the sundial to see the glorious panorama of the South Quad, highlighted by MacCracken Hall.

“Wow! What a view!” said Jenny.

“To a kill!” I unhesitatingly reply.

“What?” said Jenny. “That doesn’t even make sense! …is that from something?”

“Yeah a movie,”

“…was it a Bond movie again?” she said with a grin, knowing I have been trapped. (We had already watched Dr. No together at this point.)

“Yeah…” I sigh.

“Which one?” asks Jenny, as I sigh again.

“…A View to a Kill…”

“…aaaaand you honestly thought that would be smooth?” she asks.

“No, quoting Bond movies is just kind of a reflex…and… I …don’t want… to talk about it…right… now…”

I had major plans for July 11. We’re set that Saturday aside for celebrating my birthday, and I had a full schedule of fun planned. I was going to a karate seminar at August‘s new dojo, go to a cookout, watch UFC 100, and get the fuck drunk.  I was only able to do three of those.

About three hours into our training, Mr. Capella was having us work on harai goshi. I was going pretty well. I was a judo player when I was studying at Oxford*, and harai goshi was one of my signature moves. I was kind of leery when people were practicing on me, because four years and nine days earlier, I had dislocated my left shoulder in a harai goshi accident.

I was practicing with August for a while, then I went to work with Joe for a bit. He was throwing me, but it wasn’t harai goshi. He was having problems with working the swinging leg into the equation, as Joe throws are typically of the “pick them up and drop them” variety. They work, but tits not compatible with the sweeping part, which makes harai goshi a faster and more brutal throw.

In order to help Joe get the feel of rolling the opponent over the hip,  Mr. Capella was showing him how to do seoi otoshi, which is basically the standard body drop (tai otoshi) executed from a front stance rather than a side-facing stance.

Seoi otoshi is a good move to have.  Seoi nage, the standard judo throw, can be easily countered if your opponent places the palm his hand on your hip when you comes in to throw him. This way, you never get close enough to have good leverage, and your opponent retains his balance, making him impossible to throw. If this counter is used you on,  the setup for seoi nage can quickly be changed to a seoi otoshi setup, allowing you to counter the counter.

Rather than pulling me straight forward, Joe pulled at an angle, so rather than fall forward, I fell at and angle. On my way down, my arm hit his knee.

I laid face down on the mat motionless.

“Ahhhh,” I said lackadaisically. I didn’t feel a thing, but I knew something was wrong. My arm was numb and paralyzed. I couldn’t feel my arm, but if I could have felt my arm,  it would’ve hurt.

That’s when my day got weird.

___________________________

This is Chapter I of the Shoulder Saga. Please read Chapter II.

Babies won’t mind if you abort them, so go right ahead. Sure, they might haunt you, but since when was that a bad thing? I mean, they owe you.

Don’t look at me like that. Don’t shoot the messenger. No, seriously, don’t shoot me — I don’t think this way. These are the thoughts of Doreen Virtue, a “fourth-generation metaphysician and clairvoyant spiritual healer, with B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in counseling psychology,” a faculty member of the American Institute of Hypnotherapy, and an advisory member of the Depossession Institute.

In addition to multiple TV appearances, Doreen Virtue has written a number of articles in popular publications, and penned forty-eight books and cartomantic aids with a lowball combined sales estimate of 500,000 copies. Among these, is The Care and Feeding of Indigo Children, which is one of the seminal texts in Indigo studies. As I will demonstrate later, there is a shadiness to many of these claims.

The nefarious Dr. Virtue channels the power of the Dread Dormammu to cast "Magic Missile," dealing 1d6+1 points of force damage.

Stevie* was the one that introduced me to the machinations nefarious Dr. Virtue, as she bought her books, attend her workshops, and became one of her evil henchmen. It’s all she would talk about, and she became more and more detached from reality with each phone call. For every problem, Doreen sold a product, and Stevie was sold on its central theme, that if you bought enough of them that you’d gain a couple of extra senses or mental powers “like the X-Men.”

I thought that these chinsy Hay House books, like Doreen’s were silly nonsense enjoyed by harmless hippies. After seeing what they had done to my friend, did I see their true, malevolent nature — that it is indeed, a monstrous institution, like some sort of low-budget Scientology.

I knew what I had to do.

I began to look into this Dr. Virtue, and it became eerily captivating. Imagine if Hunter S. Thompson were to watch Tetsuo: The Iron Man, through a kaleidoscope. This accurately describes how Doreen must view the world. That’s when I landed upon this gem:

Several years ago, a woman named Melissa became pregnant by a man she adored and loved. However, the man wasn’t interested in a relationship or a baby. Melissa didn’t tell her young son, Liam, that she was pregnant. However, one day Liam drew a picture and handed it to his mother, explaining that it was a portrait of his little brother (Melissa only had one child at the time).

Ultimately, Melissa made the difficult choice to terminate the pregnancy, without telling Liam. About a week later, Liam said that his little brother told him, “I decided not to come yet, but I’m okay, and I love you.” The little brother said that he was taking care of Melissa like a guardian angel until he was ready to be born as a child. When that time came, both the little brother and Liam would take care of their mother.

–Doreen Virtue; excerpted from The Crystal Children, pg. 49.

I figured that was a good place to start as any. From the notes that I’ve taken from the couple of her books that I’ve stumbled across, I believe that I can generate six months worth of posts.

Rest assured, gentle reader, my story with Stevie has a happy ending. I, and later, her boyfriend kept poking at her, asking more questions than she could find adequate answers for. Then, by the grace of Carl Sagan, through the noble works of the Amazing Randi and his Foundation, she was freed from oppressive yoke of crystals, trinkets, and doublethink. Having repented her ways, Stevie enrolled in a Ph.D. program in biomathematics, where she furthers mankind through her studies of plant interactions.

For this, I am fortunate. I realize that this situation only turned out well because she was surrounded by people who had the tools and the talent to deal with the situation.

I’m a scientist. It’s my job to ask questions and solve problems. But not everyone has had the training I’ve had. Some young lad somewhere may be in the same situation I was, and would seem powerless to stop it. He is not powerless, for I will aid him.

In a world where blind obedience was made the highest ideal… and questioning is reprehensible… justice will have a new name!

I, Ryan Coons, as part of my Crusade of Justice, and acting as the Purveyor of Truth, vow to stop the machinations of the nefarious Dr. Virtue!

______________________

*Name has been changed as per her request.

One day back in undergrad, I was peacefully watching Adult Swim in the dorm lounge, working on some electronics homework, when Stevie entered and declared me to be one of the Indigo Children.

I closed my book, to give my undivided attention to stopping the rape of reason that was to follow.

I’ll go into details later, but she’d read in a book that there were these people, “the Indigo Children,” who were “rebellious, purposeful, highly intelligent; creative, intuitive, frustrated with authorities and bureaucracy; and psychically powerful” people with “big “wise” eyes.”

I don’t see how my eyes are “wise” though; all they do is record the light reflected from objects and give cool squinty-action hero stares to scare off popped-collars at bars, while WD40-ing women’s nether-regions.

Stevie argued that since I met all criterion for being an Indigo, I had to be one. I explained to her that I had no psychic superpowers, and that I was “…just a man and his will to survive.”

Her eyes lit up.

“See? You’re rebelling against the labels that people give you! That’s such an Indigo thing!”

She was spared my wrath only because she was a friend, and I wanted to commit egregious acts of carnality upon her person.

I was no stranger to this argument. As a youth I was enthralled by NBC’s Unsolved Mysteries, and tales of UFO’s, Area 51, and the like. The conspiracy theorists were notorious for creating logic traps. They would use loaded statements as the basis for an argument, so that the outcome would be what they wanted to hear, guaranteed. For the sake of argument, let us ask if the US government has covered up the fact it’s hiding a crashed UFO in Area 51. If the government admits there is a UFO, then we know it exists. If the government denies the UFO, then they acknowledge the cover up, and the fact the UFO exits. This argument is and was the core of UFO documentaries, and is a textbook logical fallacy.

This is bifurcation, commonly known as the black-and-white fallacy, the either/or fallacy, or the false dilemma fallacy. Assume that we are given three things, p, q, and r. We must choose between p, or q. Now if p is also r, and q is also r, we would then select r regardless of our choice of p or q. I have illustrated this point in Table 1. This is all a fancy-pants way of saying that “I want you to be something, therefore, you are.”

Stephen Colbert would later go on to make this a running gag that he used on damn near everyone. The use of loaded questions is a tried-and-true method for generating responses which, though meaningless, can appear convincing as long as the audience doesn’t think about what is being said.

I explained to her why she was wrong, even drawing the truth table, but this was only further proof by her reasoning. Undaunted, Stevie referred me to a website, which I read. I knew she was too good to be true.

I knew what had to be done.

I, for one, am constantly sickened by hucksters and their feel-good bullshit, demanding all of your time, money, and only receive doublethink in return. Besides, I was Christian at the time, so I already chock-full of doublethink. I couldn’t possibly take on any more.

That is why, I, Ryan Coons, as part of my never-ending crusade of justice, and as part of my required duties as the Purveyor of Truth, will expose, torment, and mock the people behind the Indigo Cult. I just want them to feel bad about themselves, and make their world a darker, bleaker, place, until they collectively acknowledge that they have done this to me, and make amends. I am fully aware that this will not happen. This is similar to the Planck problem, that:

“An important scientific innovation rarely makes it ways by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: it rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul. What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out and that the growing generation is familiarized with the idea from the beginning.” — Max Planck, from The Philosophy of Physics (1936).

Though I cannot cure Indigoism, I can hopefully contain it and prevent it from spreading. Those currently infected with this thinking will eventually die off naturally, and their hopes and dreams will go with them.

Hey, it seems to be working on the Shakers.

_____________________________________

Not Awesome: an Indigo/Crystal/Rainbow Child

Awesome: a Wild Child

Yesterday marked the passing of actor David Carradine, who was partially responsible for the mainstream popularity of the martial arts today through his popular TV show Kung Fu, and his unpopular TV show Kung Fu: The Legend Continues. Carradine also enjoyed a film career, which is highlighted with the title role in Tarintino’s Kill Bill, but should be better remembered for the huge amount of senseless fun movies like Lone Wolf McQuade and Death Race 2000.

He was found dead in his hotel room, an apparent suicide. Then today, more details were released.  Carradine was great; he doesn’t deserve the news article describing his passing to start out with the phrase: “…whose body was found in a hotel closet in the Thai capital with a rope tied to his neck, wrist and genitals.” That hurts, but unfortunately, the truth does that.

I could comment on this, but Joe, August, and Luc would likely slit my throat if I did, so I’m going to let George do it for me, because A) he’s better at it, and B) he’s already dead, and thus immune to bodily harm.

Do you know who’s the happiest guy in Hell right now? That dude from INXS, because now people will stop making fun of him.

For those of you fortunate enough not to live in Indiana, you may have missed this story.

A 750 pound woman died in Indy last week, of terminal fatness. Since there is no specific procedure for bloated hambeast carcass disposal in Indiana, the cops and the coroner were forced to play it by ear.

The authorities dragged her lifeless body, still attached to its mattress, across the courtyard of the apartment building to the road. However, since the coroner van was designed to transport humans, the lady wouldn’t fit.

So, the cops called the auto wrecking yard, and they sent over one of them flatbed tow-trucks to load the 0.38 tons of moldering, and likely unwashed flesh onto.

The cops then tossed an old carpet over her unsightly visage to keep the birds from picking at it. Her boyfriend and thirteen year-old son were watching this as it was going on. They, and some other people in the area, apparently have a problem with this procedure.

I for one, do not.