Yeah, it is. But I wanted to keep tabs on New Madrid before I spoke up.

See, I’m more qualified to report on this than some of the proper media outlets, because I actually know what was going on, because I’m friends with Jennifer McCreight. I joined her Non-Theist Society about three years back, and in that time she lead me on some wacky adventures, which really helped me grow as a person. I also learned a lot about her that isn’t reported elsewhere, such as her inability to ride a bicycle.

Jen only ever invited 50 people, whom I was one of. I didn’t invite people, because I can’t go around asking chicks to show me their cleavage without looking like I was Creepy O’Creeperson or something. In the meantime, the intertubes caught fire and all hell broke loose. By the time the day in question came about, about a million people were invited. As in 10^6. Granted, [at the time of writing] only 213,918 participated, and an unknown (but presumably significant) portion of which were dudes, but that’s still larger than all but 94 cities in the US.

I did go to the meeting by the bell tower, which Jen setup after several media requests to have something film-able. Girls in low-cut tops milled about as geology majors set up seismographs to monitor the Boobquake epicenter. Fun was had by all. Still, before going out, I used my Facebook status to inform my friends of my final wishes, in the event of death by misadventure, as that shifty Yahweh has been after me for some time.

For the record, if I were to die:

1) All of my worldly goods are to be sold on eBay, with the revenue generated to be used to commission Jan Hammer to compose a requiem for me — so that I may live forever wherever synthesizers and moderately-priced causal dining meet; and

2) I don’t want to be buried in a Pet Sematary; I don’t want to live my life again. Oh no. Oooooooh noooo…..

The Purdue Exponent managed to succinctly capture the zeitgeist of the moment in a single headline. Jen managed to summarize it even better at the bar a week later:

“The media is retarded. I knew this before, but this only reinforces the belief.”

No seriously, look at this shit:

The problem with twenty-four hour news channels is that news doesn’t really doesn’t happen twenty-four hours a day. There’s maybe twenty-four hours of news in a week. Granted, that’s how Jen & Co. managed to get on, but Jeanne Moos interviewed Jen for two hours, and the finished product consisted of random annoying people on YouTube, YouTube footage of the event itself, a camera being held up to a monitor that had YouTube clips playing on it, and part of a Skype interview. Even TV realizes there’s nothing good on TV, and plays on the computer instead.

I refuse to comment on Jeanne Moos’ Chroma Key boobs, because I wish to maintain my willing suspension of disbelief, and pretend that shit never happened.

Also, old media camera guys are dicks. Did you know that? Yeah. They just walk up to chicks and say: “Show us your cleavage. C’mon, show us your cleavage.”

Hey now! I happen to know those cleavages, as well as they women they’re attached too — and that’s no way to treat women. Hell, the camera guys didn’t even give them beads, like in those Girls Gone Wild videos. Hell, they didn’t even politely goad them for twenty minutes, like in those shitty knock-off Girls Going Crazy videos.

In the end though, Boobquake was a good thing. In the Soviet Union, the intelligentsia enjoyed broad creative freedoms that the remainder of society did not. The reason is that the intelligentsia posed no threat. Churches and countries come and go, but many of them can endure the most profound of philosophical treatises, but the legitimacy of any regime is easily eroded by a joke that catches on. For this reason, atheists, agnostics, pastafarians, et.al. everywhere can only profit from making fun of people.

“Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions…” -Thomas Jefferson; excerpted from a letter to Francis Adrian Van der Kemp, July 30, 1816

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…”

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.

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

Click that fucking link, now. Be sure to adjust yourself accordingly to account for the massive boner that will ensue.

Holy fucking goddamn motherfucking shit damn fuck shit damn fuck crap titties damn fuck labia poop crap fuck shit! A tactical fucking corset! It’s every Freudian complex rolled into a single garment. They need a Nobel Prize or some shit for this. There just may be some hope for the human race after all.

If you are an attractive, shapely female, buy one of these. Now. Buy several, so you always have a clean one.

If you are an unshapely female, eat less food, move around some, then buy several of these.

If you are an ugly female, bring meaning to your existence by cloistering yourself in a sweatshop to make these goddamn brilliant articles of clothing.

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.

I met Erica in the first week of college, when we were watching movies with my friend and neighbor Steve Balsomico.  She became a member of the tight-knit group of movie buffs who assembled every Friday night to watch bizarre films in the Earp Hall lounge. She had that wonderful whacked-out Italian hair, you know, it looks kind of wavy and greasy, but it’s not either.  She also had the most spectacular, exquisite ass that I had ever seen — and I’m not even attracted to asses — but there was something about that ass that beckoned me.  It was a truly magical ass. We’d eat brunch together every weekend.  After several months of this, I thought I would ask her out.

So after spending several days trying to amass the testicular fortitude, I finally call Erica. I get her answering machine, and left a message, unaware that they did a Seinfeld on this very subject.  Erica was the first girl that I ever asked out, and I was nervous. I go with a simple:

“Hi, Erica? This is, uh…Ryan Coons, the Yellow Hat Guy, I was wondering if you could call me back at…”

Then it hit me –I’d never even given a girl my phone number before — and that’s what killed me. I had never given it out before, hell — I didn’t even know it! I called a girl, wanting to ask her out, and left a message, and I didn’t know my own home telephone number. I totally disintegrated:

“… call me back at…732-49…um…ah…um…oh…umahblahphenadadayeaaba (continues for twenty seconds, when the machine cut me off)…”

It was horrible. I dropped the phone and curled up into a fetal ball on the cold, cold tile — and somehow, when things could not possibly get worse, somehow they did. After five days go by, I hoped that she forgot about it or that her roommate deleted the message. From the many nights that have since followed, I have replayed this scenario over and over again in my mind, and I found that everything that could have possibly gone wrong did.

As I sheepishly approach her table for Saturday Brunch, she looked up from her sketchbook and told me: “I got your message.”

It gets worse. You see — I hate this story so much — Erica was actually in her room when I called. She was sleeping because she was groggy with the flu, and I woke her up.  I didn’t wake her completely up though, just awake enough to hear me babble into her answering machine, and to make her think it was all a bizarre dream. Well, at least until she woke up and found the message. She just laughed and laughed, and told me to my face while cracking up.

I was mortified.

We were still good friends, but it wasn’t the same, the magic was gone. At the end of the semester, when I went to resell my psychology book, I saw her in line, trying to resell her psychology book.  She told me that she was transferring to somewhere in Buffalo.  There was an awkward goodbye, and I never saw her again.