Empire of the Odd

Will Smith is reportedly recruiting members for the Church of Scientology.

The ‘I Am Legend’ actor – whose wife Jada Pinkett-Smith is a follower of the bizarre sci-fi cult – has reportedly been handing out cards offering free personality tests at Scientology centres to cast and crew on his latest movie.

A source is quoted by the New York Daily News newspaper as saying: “Will has joined the ranks of Hollywood power players actively recruiting for the Church of Scientology. Big stars traditionally distribute wrap presents to crew members after completing a film. His recent gift after wrapping next summer’s comedy ‘Hancock’ was a free personality test at a local Scientology centre.

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After six years of childless marriage, John and Cynthia Burke of Newark decided to adopt a baby boy through a state agency. Since the Burkes were young, scandal-free and solvent, they had no trouble with the New Jersey Bureau of Children’s Services’”until investigators came to the line on the application that asked for the couple’s religious affiliation.

John Burke, an atheist, and his wife, a pantheist, had left the line blank. As a result, the bureau denied the Burkes’ application. After the couple began court action, however, the bureau changed its regulations, and the couple was able to adopt a baby boy from the Children’s Aid and Adoption Society in East Orange.

Last year the Burkes presented their adopted son, David, now 31, with a baby sister, Eleanor Katherine, now 17 months, whom they acquired from the same East Orange agency. Since the agency endorsed the adoption, the required final approval by a judge was expected to be pro forma. Instead, Superior Court Judge William Camarata raised the religious issue.

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I. The Setup

Our nations capital has always been a hotspot for odd sightings. Residents have been known to bear witness to roving bands of congressionally hired prostitutes. Paper currency literally seeps from the pores in lobbyists skin. Joggers along the Potomac have snapped blurry photos of a mysterious creature known only as Ted Kennedy. And if you walk down any Washington, D.C. street, you’re likely to see something you won’t see anywhere else: American citizens with absolutely no federal representation.

It’s a weird place for sure. Compared to its normal supply of signs and wonders, something like the 1952 UFO flap seems downright pedestrian. After all, what are a few unexplained radar blips and contradictory eyewitness reports when stacked up against the kind of genetic anomalies that result in Rep. Henry Waxman’s face?

But if you were to read one of the ubiquitous UFO books clogging Barnes & Noble’s “New Age” section, you’d think the so-called “Washington incident” was actually interesting. You’d also probably find a few Penthouse Forum-esque accounts of steamy woman-on-lizard-alien action, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. (Unless you want to stop reading this now and go check out the emerging literary field of crypto-erotica. And believe me, you do.)

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Well –  sort-of! The illustrious Rickster promises to do yet another live pod-cast type thing tonight at –

http://www.nowlive.com/memberasp/member.asp?id=100255030

Click on the “My-Show” button and “yes” to the”are you over the age of 18 question. Then set back and listen to Lord Rick being”. Lord Rick!

This stuff is NSW and not safe for small children!

I don’t know the exact time, 9 OR 11 EST I think. I’m going to try to make it tonight ( you can watch the Odd Emperor get banned) or I might just relax in the fine silk sheets of the Imperial bedchamber.

Just in case some of you don’t know, Lord Rick is a self proclaimed “ghost buster” and expert on everything. He moves around the country allot, we don’t know why but it might have something to do with his lifestyle, his debts, his inability to hold even a menial job, his complete lack of consideration for the people around him (even his immediate family!) His constant brushes with the law or his prideful and public drug use,

Lord Rick and the Odd Emperor have gone around and around a few times. He’s convinced that I’m the leader of a raving group of lunatic haters located at this site.

If YOU happen to think I’m a lunatic hater, why don’t you go here where you can find helpful links to many of Lord Ricks million webpages.

In reality, I don’t hate Lord Rick. He’s kind of a joke in and out of the paranormal community, but he’s not the only one.

He’s just one of the most amusing!

I wander around the Internets in wonder of what they contain. Snarks and Bojjums, mystics and fakirs, swamis, frauds, fanatics and fanatical people of all stripes. Also honest, sober researchers but for some odd reason I don’t focus on these. Real people, people with lives, careers and a life outside of the paranormal do not fascinate me as much as those other people. The ones who ruminate on ghosts and goblins, spirits and demons, things that go bump in the night and sinister oozing that just might come from another planet but, probably don’t.

What fascinated me is the structure, the overriding meme that some of these people convey. It’s a bitter, anguished desire to validated, liked and even worshiped. There’s virtually no difference in the so-called researchers of UFOs, ghosts and other such jazz. The attitude remains the same, it’s almost cult-like in it’s dynamics and in it’s problem solving methods.

First there is the “us against” them thing. One person recently called it a “skeptic – believer war.” I was in a conversation with her and she accused me of going to war with believers, then implied that most skeptics do this. It’s not the first time I’ve gotten this attitude from people in the UFO/paranormal biz, far from it!

A war? Why a war then? I don’t think I’m at war with anyone. A couple of people seem to want me to to go to war with them but I’m really too busy for that kind of tommyrot. I sometimes challenge people into thinking (and behaving) in new ways, but a war?! Naa!

Generally speaking, any war has some overriding purpose. Usually wars are to eliminate a threat. Most of the time wars are over land or resources. I don’t have any land and virtually unlimited resources so that can’t be it. Wars can be caused by fear but I don’t fear believers, why should I? In fact, I’ve never met any skeptic who fears people who belive in whatever. I’ve met many believers who seem to fear skeptics though.

Why it is that very few skeptics think of this as a war while many (if not most) believers consistently put it into those terms? What is the point of going to war about this UFO crap anyway? What could the objective be? Are skeptics a threat? Is skepticism so dangerous to a believer that they must band to gather and go to war against it? Of course you can’t go to war against skepticism no more than you could go to war against terror (although some recent politicians in the US cannot seem to grasp this fact.)

Believers therefore tend to go to war against the agents of skepticism, the people who tend to bring a skeptical argument. It is quite fascinating to see it happening.

Since I don’t think skeptics are at war with any one person, it’s very difficult (as a skeptic) to understand what the war is all about. skeptics are more into this to find out something new, some solution to a mystery, a bit of knowledge that is heretofore unknown. This is what drives “skeptical” people, not debunking, not crushing knowledge or squashing the known. It’s quite the opposite! Skeptical people want to find out new stuff! Many of them have a passion to discover.

Believers on the other hand (these are the people who talk about skeptic/believer wars) seem to have a different bent .To them, knowledge is something that is already achieved, either by themselves or someone else. Sometime the holders of knowledge are some unseen authority. Some sinister portion of the government, aliens or mystical group. The knowledge itself is not known, but we all know that governments – large corporations etc keep secrets so they MUST be keeping secrets that will make an automobile run forever on a gallon of water.

The main point is, many people think that there is no particular reason to seek knowledge because we already know what’s going on, the task at hand is to inform the rest of the world of our superior knowledge and squash any nay-sayers. To me this seems opposite of open minded behavior. To my way of thinking, open minded people are delighted when new ideas are introduced, even ideas that go against prevailing thought. It is a hallmark of open minded people that while they might not accept every idea that comes along they do consider them. We might find flaws in an idea but that does not mean we disrespect the idea or the person who puts it fourth.

Considering an idea does not always mean accepting it. For example, a friend of mine (he’s a retired military man) claims that he was abducted by aliens and regularly sees “spacecraft” in the night skies above his rural home. While I’m sympathetic to his beliefs the prevailing facts are,

(1) it’s extremely unlikely that the Earth has ever been visited by craft from other solar systems. The distances are far too great unless they travel faster than light. So far, there is no evidence that this is possible.
(2) There is absolutely no hard evidence *publicly available* that suggest alien craft or extra terrestrial beings have ever landed or conducted activities on the Earth.
(3) No witness has ever submitted more than anecdotal testimony of their observations of so-called extraterrestrial *aircraft* in the skies of Earth.
– Finally,
(4,) Of all the so-called evidence, (photographic, physical or what have you,) none comes close to being compelling evidence of artifacts or activities arising from entities coming from another solar system. All of it has a mundane explanation which is far more probable of being correct than the postulate that “it” is an artifact from another solar system.

And so it is extremely unlikely that he is seeing aliens no matter how strong his belief or how stridently he advocates his belief. Unfortunately, those are the facts.

No belief no matter how vociferously defended can stand up to fact. It is this where the believer and the skeptic part company. For a believer has already decided (or proclaimed) what the truth is, they know what the facts are because it happens to be whatever they believe. Belief therefore becomes an asset to their facts and how violently they defend their beliefs becomes their evidence. Hard evidence is no longer necessary for why does one need any when the “facts” are already known?

To most skeptics (and anyone who takes a more hard-nosed realist view,) this is nonsense. You can’t manufacture “fact” just by believing something. Belief (or “knowing” as I like to say) must *MUST* be based on a preponderance of *real* evidence. No testimony, no strident defense of belief or circular argument can stand up to the preponderance of real evidence.

So the war is not about aliens or ghosts, it’s not about skeptics and believers. It’s about *methods.* Skeptics don’t need to believe for their facts and believers must cling to beliefs because they have no other evidence. They don’t need any! Why look around for evidence of something that is already “known?” then those other people, those “skeptics” come along and say something like “that’s not really evidence,” or “ I can’t base my beliefs on your strident defense of your own.”

Skeptics on the other had need a little more than just a preponderance of belief; faith in other words! They have faith that aliens have landed in their backyards and involved THEM in some Earth shattering program to improve human race (or some such.) They have faith in the *fact* that they are special, touched by angels, above all of us mundane people who simply raise families and work for a living. They have faith and this faith is validated by their peers –

just like in ANY religion!

Believers , the faithful don’t need compelling evidence, why should they! Evidence is for the weak and the ignorant! Why try to prove something when you already know the answer.

There is a very amusing thread going on Regan Lee’s blog right now. She and contactee Jeremy Vaeni are debating whether or not to get regression hypnosis to verify their so – called experiences. The question Regan asks is, “what happens if nothing happened? “

I have to chuckle, nothing happened! (in all probability.) Now, it is quite probable that they both experienced something, something significant perhaps. They have memories of various UFO type of phenomena and a nagging feeling that they are special and gifted. I sympathies with them but really, doesn’t everyone have those feelings from time to time? It’s not aliens or ghosts, it’s just human nature. Isn’t it? Most of us don’t try to explain it with exotic encounters with ghosts/aliens/bigfoots/god or whatever.

Those other things might be a *part* of human nature, or *apart* from human nature, that’s a question I find fascinating. That is the real question to my mind but, I have the advantage of being able to look at this stuff objectively, M’s Lee (among others) cannot be objective as a researcher or as a writer because she’s a believer. She’s too close to it now and all she can do is validate her own beliefs. I think the question she asked is a red herring because if she got regression hypnosis she would discover all manner of little mean-grim in saucers (orange or otherwise) have beset her all of her life. It’s almost a gimme that she was abducted, likely more than once. How could it BE nothing?

In a way, I envy her steadfast defense of her own beliefs. I usually doubt my beliefs and this causes me to question, perhaps a little too much.

So what it comes down to is this, there is no war between skeptics and believers. The only conflict is with the believers as they desperately try to create a reality more to their liking. A reality populated by all kinds of strange and wonderful beasties, ghosts, witches, goblins bigfoots and aliens. It’s a place where people routinely “cross over” and talk to the dead, where magic spells are cast upon the unwary and where strange alien beings cross billions of miles to perform vile experiments in the middle of the dewy night.

We can be sure that these things don’t exist, they are not in our offices, our automobiles and our supermarkets. Things like this would not *only* exist when we are alone, in the dead of night. They don’t bother our politicians (despite evidence to the contrary.)

These things inhabit our dreams, our imaginations, not our real space. And so the narrow skeptics universe is my playpen, not ghosts, not aliens or bigfoots, not free energy or government conspiracy. I’m a dreamer and the real universe is bigger and better than all of that stuff!

Why should I limit myself to my own imagination, when I can have it all?

I think it was Arther C. Clark who said;

The universe is not only more incredible than we imagine, it’s more incredible than we can imagine.

Every person on earth is assigned a guardian, be it called alien, ancient, angel, spirit, of our soul. There are many levels of existence. There is a level of existence where the greater good is effortlessly used to fight in a contest for right and wrong. This place happens when there are natural creative forces located in one place at one time. These opposing forces have different levels of creative force and some are called dark and light. Among the angellic hosts there were some who rebelled against the creative force of the masses and were cast away from the location. These forces were considered under the circumstances to be in opposition to the creator, or God’s will. Some believe that we are still fighting that war on earth. Some believe that we are still influenced by good and bad. Some believe that we are engaged in a spiritual contest in which our soulds are tested for courage. Angels of good influence would surround those spirits on earth who are good in times of need. Angels of bad could entice in evil ways adn afflict spirits with the powers of evil which tries souls. Some secretly believe that this is the reason for all of lives to visit earth to be tried, weighed, and found tested. In today’s time of knowledge and awareness of technology, some believe that this was simpy evidence of primitive demonology. We were taught that this was simply a level of mental cases among subjects who were less than our perfect society in morals. Perhaps they were. Strange things are continually happening and we still do not have all the answers of which we seek.

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Susan Blackmore A Roper Poll claimed that nearly four million Americans have had certain “indicator” experiences and therefore had probably been abducted by aliens. But a study of 126 school children and 224 undergraduates shows knowledge of aliens is related more to watching television than to having the relevant experiences.

If you believe one set of claims, nearly four million Americans have been abducted by aliens. This figure has been widely publicized and is often assumed to mean that millions of people have been visited by members of an alien species and, in some cases, physically taken from their beds, cars, or homes to an alien craft or planet. Personal accounts of abduction by aliens have increased since the publication of Budd Hopkins’s books Missing Time (1981) and Intruders (1987) and Whitley Strieber’s Communion (1987). There is considerable variation among the accounts, but many fit a common pattern. Wright (1994) summarized 317 transcripts of hypnosis sessions and interviews from 95 separate cases and concluded, “Numerous entity types have been visiting our planet with some regularity” (Part 2, p. 6). However, the “gray” is clearly the most common alien and over the years a typical account has emerged (see, e.g., Mack 1994; Schnabel 1994; Thompson 1993).

The experience begins most often when the person is at home in bed (Wright 1994) and most often at night (Spanos, Cross, Dickson, and DuBreuil 1993), though sometimes abductions occur from a car or outdoors. There is an intense blue or white light, a buzzing or humming sound, anxiety or fear, and the sense of an unexplained presence. A craft with flashing lights is seen and the person is transported or “floated” into it. Once inside the craft, the person may be subjected to various medical procedures, often involving the removal of eggs or sperm and the implantation of a small object in the nose or elsewhere. Communication with the aliens is usually by telepathy. The abductee feels helpless and is often restrained, or partially or completely paralyzed.

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From everyone at the Odd Empire, we wish each and every one of you, a safe and prosperous new year!

2008 is sure to be interesting and packed full of new surprises! We don’t expect bigfoot to land via a flying saucer on the White House lawn but we are hopeful that a little sanity will.

And that would be an amazing sight!

By NICK PISA – More by this author » Last updated at 16:34pm on 29th December 2007 Comments (8)

Satanism on the rise: Pope Benedict has unveiled plans to set up specialist exorcism squads

The Pope has ordered his bishops to set up exorcism squads to tackle the rise of Satanism.

Vatican chiefs are concerned at what they see as an increased interest in the occult.

They have introduced courses for priests to combat what they call the most extreme form of “Godlessness.”

Each bishop is to be told to have in his diocese a number of priests trained to fight demonic possession.

The initiative was revealed by 82-year-old Father Gabriele Amorth, the Vatican “exorcistinchief,” to the online Catholic news service Petrus.

“Thanks be to God, we have a Pope who has decided to fight the Devil head-on,” he said.

“Too many bishops are not taking this seriously and are not delegating their priests in the fight against the Devil. You have to hunt high and low for a properly trained exorcist.

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