Tag Archives: weirdness

On the Keeping of Pet Hermits and Druids

Some of the eighteenth-century hermits employed by rich landowners were in fact characterized as “Druids.”

Campbell clearly had fun with his quest for real hermits. At Hawkstone in Shropshire, a bare-footed and venerable Fr Francis regularly posed with his stock-in-trade: a skull, an hourglass and book. Although replaced at times by an automaton, Hawkstone’s hermit – a hereditary post – may have survived into the twentieth century. The impecunious Charles Hamilton reputedly advertised for a hermit for his Gothic hermitage at Painshill in Surrey, offering a fee of 700 guineas (some reports say 500) to anyone able and willing to meet his stringent conditions over seven years: to go barefoot in a woollen robe, never to cut beard or nails, or to speak with the servant who brought his food. Although the advertisement cannot now be traced, the hermit undoubtedly existed, and Campbell’s exhaustive enquiries confirm how ubiquitous hermits were in Georgian Britain.

Maybe there is still a niche waiting to be exploited here, for either philosophy majors or designers of animatronic hermits.

Quality of British Crop Circles Sagging

Says the Daily Mail, which prints some examples.

Insiders say a number of top crop circle makers have quit following a clampdown by farmers and moved onto making sand circles, which are legal.

In previous years, impressive crop circles have drawn in thousands of tourists to southern England and some believers who saw the circles as the work of aliens.

But this year visitors have been disappointed by just a handful of crude patterns such as a square, a heart and a small uneven circle.

Former crop circlemaker Matthew Williams [not an  “energy vortex”] — who has given up his hobby because he suffers from hay fever — said the lack of competition is driving down standards.

He said: ‘The problem is that the best croppies have retired or gone onto something new, so there isn’t any competition any more.”

Hogwarts for Vampires

Maybe if I had a bookish teenage daughter I would know this, but the boarding-school-for-vampires (etc.) genre has exploded.

Here is a typical cover blurb:

Two years after a horrible incident made them run away, vampire princess Lissa and her guardian-in-training Rose are found and returned to St. Vladimir’s Academy, where one focuses on mastering magic, the other on physical training, while both try to avoid the perils of gossip, cliques, gruesome pranks, and sinister plots.

Margot Adler and I were discussing vampire books about four years ago, when her quest to read them all had passed ninety titles. Cradle-Marxist that she is, she was trying to understand the vampire craze as being somehow a critique of capitalism.

I don’t think so—and definitely not in the Young Adult classification. Check out this list of suggested titles, linked from a website of a public library near me.

It could be more work for Joseph Laycock, the go-to guy in religious studies for vampire-ology, but he has moved on to otherkin, of which more anon.

RELATED? “We are more interested in the zombie at times when as a culture we feel disempowered,” [Clemson professor Sarah] Lauro said. “And the facts are there that, when we are experiencing economic crises, the vast population is feeling disempowered. … Either playing dead themselves . . . or watching a show like ‘Walking Dead’ provides a great variety of outlets for people.”

The Future is Yours, Students

OKYoungFreemasons
This speaks for itself, but I can’t remember where it came from. But if you Google “young Freemasons world domination,” you will find all sorts of interesting links.

A FedEx Delivery from R’lyeh

It lies under the sea, sleeping, waiting, until it is summoned forth.

Life imitates art, again.

A ‘Going Out of Civilization’ Sale

The local weekly newspaper arrived in my post office box today.

I see that a liquor store in my little mountain county is announcing a new 12/21/12 pricing plan:

Bud or Bud Light six packs will cost you two chickens or a goat . . . Canadian Mist 175’s will cost you 1,000 rounds of 12 gauge . . . All wine 750’s will be traded for five gallons of gas.

People up in the county seat must be well-armed and thirsty. I wouldn’t give more than a box  (25 total) of shotgun shells for 175 ml. of blended Canadian whisky myself .

Weirdest Google Search String Yet

This brought a visitor to the blog: “grizzly bears knowing Jesus Christ is coming.”

The truth is that I did have Jesus Christ and a grizzly bear in one blog post.

1-800-SOL-EATR

Our lines are open, and Cthulhu is waiting for your call.

 

What Happened to Ufology?

When people are still talking and writing books about the Roswell Incident more than sixty years after it happened, you have to wonder if the air has leaked out of ufology.
In Britain, the Telegraph reports,

Dozens of groups interested in the flying saucers and other unidentified craft have already closed because of lack of interest and next week one of the country’s foremost organisations involved in UFO research is holding a conference to discuss whether the subject has any future.

Back in the late 1940s–1960s, I think that there was a sense of movement: first the sightings of unknown “spacecraft.” Then visual sightings plus effects, such as burnt spots on the ground. Then sightings of aliens themselves (following J. Allen Hynek’s classification scheme).

Surely the truth would be learned soon, whether the aliens were benevolent or whether they were not and Earthlings had to overcome their political differences and fight for planetary survival.

But no.

Me, I am of the Jacques Vallée school: They have always been here, living “inside the walls.”

Gandalf Style?


No, you can’t fool me. This is just Oberon Zell on his way to the supermarket in Santa Rosa.