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From: Blather - Daev Walsh <daev@blather.net>
Date: Tue, 04 May 1999 21:57:15 +0100
Fwd Date: Tue, 04 May 1999 23:38:23 -0400
Subject: Blather: Unconventional Means 1

______________________________________________________
B  L  A  T  H  E  R

p a r a n o r m a l   p r o v o c a t e u r i s m

By Dave (daev) Walsh daev@blather.net
Web: http://www.blather.net
_______________________________________________________
May 4th 1999, Dublin, Ireland   Vol 2. No. 42
_______________________________________________________

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located in the heart of County Kildare in the Emerald Green
Island of Ireland. Surf along to their website and feast your
eyes - and order via our secure server!
http://www.lilyobriens.ie/
______________________________________________________

Unicorn Jones is the new band comprising David Banks, John Beck
and Dick Nolan. Check out their album *A Hundred Thousand
Million Stars* at http://www.unicornjones.com/
______________________________________________________

UNCONVENTIONAL MEANS I

'We were somewhere over Manchester on the edge of England when
the drugs began to take hold... and suddenly there was a
terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked
like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around
the plane, which was going about a thousand miles an hour on the
way to the UnConvention in London. And a voice screaming: "Holy
Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?"

'I thought about telling the pilot, dragging myself up the
aisle, fighting off the lizard-like stewardesses with my
sword-stick, but no...

...no point in mentioning those bats I thought. The poor
bastards will see them soon enough.'


By 1100 hours, Blather's leading gonzo journalist staggered from
his plane at London City Airport and lurched into the steaming
fleshpots of the City. By 1900 hours he was seated by the Thames
- outside a certain alehouse near Blackfriars bridge - those
adept in conspiracy lore may note that Roberto Calvi - The
Italian financier - was found dangling from this bridge in 1982,
his pockets laden with bricks. Calvi was known as 'God's
Banker', due to his ties to the Vatican, as well a member of
Propaganda Due (P2), a right-wing, once Masonic group with
connections to the CIA and the Italian Mafia.

But we digress. Various folk of the forteana mailing list clique
sucked down ales in the bearable damp of Friday's twilight
UnDrinking, before some of us - members of the American and
Irish contingents - slunk off for a Chinese meal, during which
the waiter insisted on ripping apart a duck for our
entertainment. Fortunately, it was dead and well-cooked
beforehand.

After hours of sampling the late night drinking dens of Soho and
slugging back garlic-chili-vodka shots, we made for home,
grabbing some fitful shut-eye in for preparation the
UnConvention weekend ahead.

Long-time Blather sufferers may recall last year's UnConvention
reports - a two-day conference on the weird, wonderful and
paranormal, staged by Fortean Times, the *Journal of Strange
Phenomena*. Last year's event covered such topics as
Goat-Suckers, giant elephants, thunderbirds, grim-reapers, Elvis
cults, hollow earth, Men in Black amongst other oddities. This
year's UnCon - which took place in the Commonwealth Institute on
Kensington's High St., had a different thread - 'Monsters,
Madness & the Millennium'. We shall try to furnish the
readership with a brief rundown of the events...

When Damian Thompson, author of the excellent *The End of Time:
Faith and Fear in the shadow of the Millennium*, kicked off his
talk, the atmosphere was comparable to the first day of school
term. So intriguing was the Thompson spiel, we're giving it an
exorbitant chunk of column space.

A week before speaking to the UnCon, Thompson had been in Peru,
visiting the 'The Israelites of the New Universal Covenant', a
new religious movement in the Andes, now with allegedly 200,000
members. The talk was accompanied by interesting photographs of
the the group. He described the sacrifice of a heifer by men in
'old testament clothing', surrounded by hundreds of people in a
scene seemingly influenced by Hollywood renditions of Biblical
themes, inside a half-built copy of Solomon's Temple, with a
Mexican Mariachi band playing along... He talked of 100ft
(30.48m) high letters on a mountainside reading:

'Israel in Peru'

'Peru is Privileged'

The Israelites believe that Peru is new Holy Land, that Israel
is out of favour with God, that they *are* the Incas, and that
their leader - Ezekiel - an 81-year old shoemaker with Seventh
Day Adventist influences is the Son of God, The Holy Spirit and
the Last (of the old) Inca rolled into one (this somehow reminds
of Jan Bockelson, the 16th century M=FCnster (Germany) tailor who
became a local Messiah figure after 'running naked through the
town in a state of ecstasy'. See *The End of Time*, page 85.

The Israelites seem to be a mixture of Andes peasants, Peruvian
Indians, repentant criminals, reformed alcoholics, ex-drug
addicts and narcotics pedlars - these people are searching for a
better way of life. As Thompson states, they 'get new meaning
from life when they join Israelites'.

While Ezekiel's followers dress in a Cecil B. De Mille gone
Technicolor chic - the men in long beards, white robes, vivid
blue sashes, the women with their heads wrapped in red scarves,
the Son of Man himself (who, according to Thompson, seems
somewhat senile) wears normal black clothes, and seems almost
indifferent to his thousands of worshippers. On his birthday,
they sing to him... there's a full moon, and a mariachi band
playing outside. Worshippers appear in plastic Inca apparel, a
woman is in tears - she has met the Living God. Ezekiel seems
more interested in his food. Perhaps he's bored...

Most Israelites were illiterate before getting hold of Bibles.
Thompson states that there seems to be no fixed doctrine - any
Bible will do, and any question - never mind how mundane - is
referred to the Bible. His own visit was shown to have been a
prophecy fulfilled. In fact, Doctrine seems to be a fast
evolving concept there, with Ezekiel constantly surprising his
followers with his unpredictable whimsy - he gives Thompson
answers about forthcoming apocalyptic events that seem to be
plucked from the air.

Despite their taste for the death penalty - it's in the Bible
after all - and their sense of impending doom, Thompson seems
have a lot of time for these people. Although, like many, most,
or perhaps all religious movements, followers are being strung
along with 'false' hope, this hope may be far better than any
other existence that these people may have had to look forward
to.

Damian Thompson
*The End of Time: Faith and Fear in the shadow of the Millennium*,
1996
ISBN 0-7493-8609-6

Tony Healy was next up, with 'The Poltergeist Down Under',
referring to last last year's alleged poltergeist activity in
Humpty-Doo, in Australia's Northern Territory. We won't dwell
too much on the matter here, as while Healy's talk was riveting,
highly enjoyable and informative, much of the information has
been dealt with in both Blather and *Fortean Times* (FT116:34).
Tony Healy, and his associate, Paul Cropper spent much time
investigating one the arguably most interesting 'polt' cases
ever, a case further complicated by a tabloid TV show's
manhandling of the facts.

Despite Healy explaining - and even showing - how he and Cropper
had checked all sorts of possibilities - such as checking that
objects were not being hurled from ceiling fans - a rather
obstinate member of the audience piped up to say that it 'had to
be' the ceiling fans, and that fakery 'was' the 'only'
explanation (presumably meaning that this 'explanation' also
covered the outdoor incidences of materialising lightbulbs,
flying knives and the like - all in the presence of a toddler).

We hope that this irate (and apparently deaf) sceptic attended
Ian Simmons' talk on the 'Proof of Everything' on the Sunday of
UnCon, where he would have had his claims torn asunder - Ian had
been practising with the ceiling fan in his hotel room, showing
that objects will drop from a ceiling fan while it is
accelerating after start-up, not at unpredictable times while it
is running (unless they are temporarily fixed to the fan, which
still wouldn't explain how they can fly horizontally at face
level, from a ceiling fan...)

Blather coverage of the Humpty-Doo case, by Cheyne D. Conrad, Peter
Darben, and Paul Cropper, with varying opinions...

http://www.blather.net/archives/issue1no50.html
http://www.blather.net/archives2/issue2no1.html
http://www.blather.net/archives2/issue2no4.html

At 1400 hrs, The Duke of Mendoza, in an exquisitely tailored
suit, followed the Count O'Blather's furtive forage for
back-seats for Daniel Wojcik's 'Modern Millennial Beliefs'.

Wojcik, Associate Professor of English and Folklore at the
University of Oregon, author of *The End of the World as We Know
It: Faith, Fatalism and Apocalypse in America* and the
forthcoming *Doomsday Passions*, gave a rousing speech on modern
American end-time beliefs, showing some of the frankly hilarious
popular Christian comic-strips depicting the rapture. This talk
was a boon to those still rather addled by the whole millennial
thing, giving a good overview on the sheer ludicrousness of it
all. Wojcik's talk ended with the conclusion that millennialism
isn't about to disappear due to a mere change of millennium - he
reckons that we should expect a kind of reformist millenarianism
for the 21st century. An excellent quote (which I don't think he
knew he made until later) was:

'No Catastrophe Necessary'

Check out the Millennial Information Exchange at
http://www.endnear.com

'Theatrical Maverick' Ken Campbell came to entertain and
confound us with his proposition of a 'Wol Wontok' - a One Word
Language, i.e. pidgin English. This talk took the form of
entertainment with a message - Campbell was dressed in a strange
(hemp?) suit scribbled with pidgin - a language apparently
created about 150 years ago when south-seas tribesmen slaves,
captured and segregated from others of their own tongue by the
British. They developed a language with no tense or grammar, by
listening to their apparently Irish guards...and lo, we have
pidgin, variations of which are known as Creole. Campbell claims
that he can teach the entire language in 24 hours (Blather may
send an envoy to learn), and has re-written Shakespeare's
Macbeth in Pidgin.

Various helpers come on stage to help him with excerpts,
including Lady Macbeth 'Take my milk for gall' becomes something
(saemting) like 'Put grilli in my titti' or somesuch. Roddy
McDevitt came on stage armed with a bodhr=E1n - the Irish
traditional goatskin drum - and performed Paul McCartney's
*Blackbird*...in pidgin. This was followed by his reading of
*The Second Coming* by W.B. Yeats - which his brother, Niall,
performed in pidgin...

It's certainly fascinating to listen to and use:

ting=3Dthink
ting=3Ddeep thought (thought about thought)
blong=3Dbelong

ting ting blong ting ting
(deep thought belonging to deep thought)
=3Dphilosophy


It's a language that seems to mean very little when seen written
- but makes much more sense when heard.

As the first site below mentions, if you're at the airport, and
someone asks you:

Plen bambae i foldaon long wanem taem?
(Plane by and by it falls down at what time?)

'Don't run for cover. The enquirer is simply trying to establish
what time the plane is due.'


"Evri samting yu wantem save long Vanuatu be yu fraet tumas
bling askem" (Everthing you wanted to know about Vanuatu but
were afraid to ask) http://www.hideawayholidays.com.au/vli1.htm

Pidgin/English Dictionary
http://www.hardlink.com/~chambers/HLP/lang/pidgin.html

Lingo
http://hanaleihaven.com/lingo.htm

Pidgin and Creole Languages
http://aldus.stanford.edu/depts/ssrg/pidgins/pidgin.html

At this point in time, we ran out of steam and so retired to the
bench, loading ourselves with coffee and chocolate...and spent
time nattering to various fiendish folk who were found wandering
the grounds of the Institute. Other notable attractions were the
bookstalls, where the inimitable Jon Downes was holding forth,
various authors were inscribing manuscripts for their fans, and
people were laying out money to have their auras photographed -
if any readers had a go at that, we would be delighted to hear
their comments.

As we didn't get a chance to pay much heed to the other UnCon
periphery pursuits - such as the *The Mind Machine*, The
Seances, and The Association for the Scientific Study of
Anomalous Phenomena (ASSAP) experiments, Blather appeals to
those who did to come forward and be heard... and, as there were
always two speakers on at the same time, we only managed to make
to less than half the speakers. As a result, we missed Richard
Wiseman, David Barrett, Jenny Randles, Gordon Rutter & Scott
Russell, Andy Roberts, Neil Nixon, Emmet Sweeny, and rather
deplorably Tony Healy's Yowie talk.

Any readers wishing to contribute their comments on these talks
- feel free to pass their Blatherings to us...

- and so Day I ended, and the troops headed off to various
Kensington Hostelries for revelries...

Dave (daev) Walsh
4th May 1999

Next week: Day II of the UnConvention

Notes:

*Fortean Times*
http://www.forteantimes.com

The Association for the Scientific Study of Anomalous Phenomena
http://www.assap.org/assap

Wild paraphrasing from
*Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas*
Hunter S. Thompson

Photographs:
http://www.forteantimes.com/uncon/uncon99.html


This issue (with photographs) is archived at:
http://www.blather.net/archives2/issue2no42.html


BITS AND BOBS

What's new at Magonia
http://www.magonia.demon.co.uk/newmag.htm
30/04/99

Magonia Monthly Supplement #14
The Latest BUFORA Bust-up; The Threat reviewed; Jenny Randles on
Rendlesham (again)

Stalking the UFO meme on the Internet
Suddenly things have gone all... postmodern
by Richard Thieme

Stars & Rumours of Stars
The Egryn Lights and other Mysterious Phenomena in the Welsh Religious
Revival, 1904 -1905
By Kevin McClure

ROSSLYNTEMPLAR
'This list is set up to discuss and theorise about Rosslyn
Chapel, founded during the 14th C it is an intriguing building
with many links to the Knights Templar and from there to many
other esoteric fields. Discussion on this list is restricted to
things relating to Rosslyn, all aspects of the Knights Templar,
and anything relating to these two topics. (quite a broad remit
when you consider that Rosslyn has been given as a repository of
everything from the Ark of the Covenant to Jesus earthly
remains). If you're familiar with the writings of Baigent,
Lincoln, Haisman, Bauval, Hancock, Knight & Lomas or similar
authors then that's what we're about.'

Go to the following URL

http://www.onelist.com/subscribe/rosslyntemplar

And it's as easy as that.

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Contact: daev@blather.net
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