Now, I stumbled upon this while looking up something called "ORMUS" that Christopher had told me about while out for coffee, and ...

Well, lets go back a bit...

The conversation had turned to "Coast to Coast AM", which was/is(??), for those who don't know, the default AM radio station for cross-country middle-of-the-night road trips in the latter part of the 20th/earlier part of the 21st century. 

I mean, it was interesting. A proper whorehouse of uncritical thinking, it's format a guest, call in with questions, then an open mic where anyone across the USA or World even could call in and share their first-hand accounts of Bigfoot, UFO's, cryptids, time travelers, fairies, you name it, chances are they were waiting on the phone to talk to Art Bell or George Noory.

Which made for interesting road trips...

And anyways Chris was telling me about ORMUS, which apparently was advertised on the show and was some sort of miraculous panacea, and I made a note to look it up, and - getting past all of the fluff-trying-to sell you these other quack remedies and some tea tree oil found the skinny on it.

Which I'll share with you here:

ORMUS 

(Orbitally Rearranged Monoatomic Elements) and m-state materials, is a fictitious group of substances exhibiting many miraculous properties, such as healing powers and superconductivity at room temperature. They were supposedly discovered in 1975 by David Hudson, a cotton farmer from Arizona.

  • Cure all forms of disease, including cancer and AIDS
  • Correct errors in the DNA
  • Act as a superconductor
  • Emit gamma radiation
  • Partially levitate in the Earth's magnetic field
  • Read a person's mind
  • Have a "weigh-ability" different from mass, which probably means an inertial mass different from the gravitational mass
  • Be fused into a transparent glass
  • Act as a flash powder, causing "explosions of light"
  • Make severed cat tails grow back

 I could go on but you should read the article yourself: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/ORMUS

Now, you'll probably notice that while the site is set up to look like Wikipedia, the writing style is not, and it's far, far more humorous. With a writing style closer to "Cracked Magazine's" editorial standards it's doing a fine job of poking fun at those people who really should know better, and a lot who do know better but are making a killing off of those too lazy to ask questions.

The "Penis Enlargement" is a great article, and from there I jumped link to link to arrive at "Alpha Course" and from there it was a natural to end up at "Evidence for the historical existence of Jesus Christ", which, at maybe a mere 10 pages or so, is the best written refutation (not critical - in the sense of the religion, merely in terms of the evidence supporting it) I've read yet on the topic. 

Now, this site is a goldmine - I'm pretty sure I've discovered it before, but didn't explore it as thoroughly as I should, you can find a short list of the topics they address here: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/RationalWiki:Contents and visit the main page here: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Main_Page.

It really should never have come to this, but there's been such a demise as of late of critical thinking that it has, it really has. 

 

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Which, as I discover, has attracted a wide body of worshippers. A full house. 200 people, easy. Now somehow I misunderstood "Social", the social, it will follow after the half hour of singing, the worst "hymns" - if that's what they could be called - that I've ever heard. I mean, get an AI on it, pronto, there's probably no more than 20 different words in each one, repeated over and over...

There's a helpful Karaoke display on a big TV at the end of the room, in case you can't remember the lyrics, but I'm pretty sure you could, only the mind rebels at this level of inanity. 

I mean, Gospel at least rocks. 

And the congregation, this congregation, they've got to be - on average 70+ years old.

There are the regulars, from the restaurant, one, 60+ years old, is doing a "flag dance" with different colored flags, it's all a bit WTF, the low rent rave, and I'm thinking this party would benefit a great deal from some MDMA laced Kool-Aid and edibles...

Another, younger pastor, good looking, fit, but - well, it doesn't take long to figure out that he's found a great beard in Jesus.

There's a couple of short sermons, and then we're all instructed to get down to the serious business of Prayer. Now being raised Catholic I'm a little unused to what follows. 

They assemble themselves in groups of 6, I'm with 5 other 70+ ladies.

We're given the prayer agenda for the evening -first of all, it's come to the attention that while other local  towns have godbothering ratio of up to 53%, this town, this infernal little hell hole, is coming in at less than half that.

Which, all things considered, still seems a bit high, I mean, there are so many more interesting paths - there's the crystals, there's yoga, there's Buddhism, I'm guessing that the practicing Christian base is dying off largely due to the fact that there are better parties, much better parties, but that's my opinion...

Topics for prayer are, in order today, to beg for more Churchgoers, Good God needs more people to enter the fold. The next topic is Doctors and hospital staff, like every city & town in Canada, and the solution proposed is to allow the unvaxxed doctors and nurses to resume working....

I know. 

And the next, well, a group prayer for one another.

This takes - all of them together, forever, and the group prayer is the worst...

But I'll start with the first one. God and Jesus both need better ambassadors to bring people into the fold. The pastors, both that I know, work for, are kind, reasonable people, but they're not coming up with the solutions people need.

The second, more doctors? Blame the politicians who spent the pandemic driving them out of the hospitals. Blame lack of funding. And - instead of praying for more doctors, pray for better health.

Then get off your asses and go for a walk.

The final one, well, you sit in a prayer circle with a group of 70 year old women praying for one another in that passive-aggressive "Jesus you were great getting me that last car, but I need something better..." and "I knew you meant well when you took my husband..." and "Lord help her to bear her suffering...." and you get the idea.

Basically the Lord has to listen to the complaints of older ladies that have exhausted and worn out their caregivers and friends.

No shit, this was brutal.

So, finally at the end, the "Social" part, say hi to the people you need to say hi to, talk to Tats briefly, he's found a new friend, Tats Color, with even more Tats than Tat and his all in glorious color, and they're comparing the illustrated biblical scenes they've each covered themselves with...

Visit, visit and meet a few others, then - time, time to help put away the chairs, dishes, time to wrap this roadshow up and get the hell out of there...

Later, at home on my sofa, unpacking, as it were, and it makes sense - after a fashion, I've not went down this rabbit hole, not since the internet made research so damned easy (but I will, I will), and I'm reading my current book, a 1923 book titled "Primitive Mentality", and this, an excellent read on the mindset of primitive stone-aged peoples, picked up the other day, can be no coincidence...

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Category: People

Out on Thursday, on my way to the Library, and, while standing and having a cigarette outside before entering whom should I encounter...

...but "Tat". I'll call him Tat because of his very obvious Tattoos. He's an old regular from the restaurant, super-nice guy, and we're talking briefly, he's working a job, just on his way to lunch, maybe I should come along? He'll buy...

...and I'm in the process of politely declining, don't care to be a bother, have work to do, bleah bleah bleah when he tells me it's at the Soup Kitchen. You know, the place above where I volunteer..

Now I'm in. Pride be damned, there's a reason it's a deadly sin, I'm in, like Flynn, I've never gone, I've never been, but - lets see where my labors are going...

 

So, first, a varied buffet of sorts, served up by volunteers, of whom there's a host upstairs I've never met.

It's busy, and I know quite a few of the people, it's busy, maybe 70, 100 people, there's the the Pastor that runs the Charity and another one that assists, and there's some of the street people and a host of other people that I know to see but not so much to speak to.

The "Church", if I can call it that, a large room that weekdays is the soup kitchen and on week-ends is home to the 'congregation', but - we'll come back to that.

So, catch up with Tat, move it from acquaintance into friendship, and I discover that his Tats are actually spiritual sigil's representing his belief in Christ...

OK.

OK.

The hook is set, and - clearly, I have my own interpretations, understandings of it all, remedial at best and certainly not worth sharing, it's far more interesting to hear what other people think...

And soon we're sitting with Pastor.... and Tat is catching me up and I'm asking about his ex and his kids and getting all this, and discovering a lot about JC that I never new, for example that Black Sabbath really weren't a bad band, I mean, read their lyrics (and here he's pulling some up on his phone) and wow- what do you know? I should pick up some of their records...

...and so forth, discovering that Tat knows various of the other customers from the restaurant, the Sunday Crowd, and that Tat has the gift of prophecy and can channel the Holy Ghost and that cute so and so is pretty good at speaking in tongues...

...and we're discovering a surprising number of people we have in common, mutual acquaintances, he knows Dan from the restaurant, Dan's been a good friend to him, and so on and so forth...

Meanwhile I'm trying to get a handle.

Discover that Tat knows so and so, great customer from the restaurant, and that - while I knew that So and So went to Church I'm discovering that Tat goes as well, and that - believe it or not...

...and wow, how long have I worked under this rabbit hole without ever suspecting it existed...

...it soon becomes apparent that the Pastor is the sanest one in all of Christendom....until he speaks, but for the moment he's largely silent, working off his charismatic reputation...

This is apparently one of the town's better kept secrets, although I've clearly known about it all along, it attracts a wide variety of the towns non-homeless and relatively normal people...I've heard from girls who've told me of guys wanting to take them there on a first or second date, and damn, I'm jealous, I've always prided myself on the low bar I've set for dating but apparently I can limbo down a little further, adapt a little better to the Kootenay life...  

And so it goes, and I'm glad of the society, glad to know everyone a little bit better, and - "hey - there's a non-denominational worship tomorrow night are you going to come out?"..."of course, why would I miss it...." and this question will answer itself in another post...

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Category: People

Found these interesting (via reddit): 

I mean, it seems a bit much, having to commit to one thing and one thing only so early in the game....

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Category: Miscellany
  1. This Fucking Computer...
  2. About the Author
  3. Julio Cortázar - Hopscotch
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