Dear Canadian Open Net Salmon Farmers....

This is absolutely hilarious! It amazes me how this flew over people's heads. My husband said, "That William Shatner is nasty! He went on a 20-minute profanity-laced rant about FISH FARMS!" Then I actually watched it, and laughed all the way through it.

Shatner's my hero, and has been for a very long time. He's 92 years old, for God's sake, and if he can still get up and rant about anything, more power to him. I never miss his mystery series The UnXplained, nor is it lost on me that he has been a superb horseman and horse breeder all his life. Being a horsey person myself, I appreciate that.

But this is prime Shatnerian satire/parody, and like all good satire it has a very sharp point. He's not just randomly ranting, as is made plain by all the other people chiming in. And yet, as obvious as it seems, a lot of people are't getting it! I notice how seriously the news outlets are treating it, calling it a nasty rant when it's really a superb slice of prime Shatnerian satire.

Shatner has always had a sense of humor about himself, as in his "singing" career in which he was good-natured about it as people held their ears and howled. He has played parodies of himself on TV many times, and seems to enjoy it. With a 75-year acting career in stage, screen and TV behind you, I guess you can get away with it, no?

According to some people, no.

And according to the bitter, sour, dour folks in Canadian media, apparently not. BUT THAT'S JUST HIS POINT!  Canadians are afraid to speak out, afraid to be passionate about anything, so he's breaking all those old taboos in getting up and ranting about fish. But Canadians don't seem to get it. And news outlets only clipped out a few seconds here and there without giving it any context at all. 

It's both funny and dismaying to me  how my husband was just incensed with this, and said it was utterly disgraceful and even nonsensical for him to unleash a "20-minute rant laced with profanity", when if you actually watch it, it's set up as brilliantly as anything SCTV ever did. And he even changes his accent and re-instates the "hoose and aboot" of Canadian speech, even though his speech was thoroughly Americanized decades ago.

Anyway, hey, don't diss the Shat-man (or is that the Shaman?) - he has a point to make, and it's typical of him that he would use humor to make that point. It's just possible somebody hired him to make this speech, even possible he was reading from a script, but this makes it no less delicious to watch.

BUT EVERYBODY IS GETTING IT WRONG! Has the culture lost its sense of humor completely? Can't we laugh at anything anymore? Come on, Canada. WAKE UP. One of your famous sons is trying to tell you something - and not just about fish farms. Your total misinterpretation of this brilliant comic bit are only proving his point.

🍁DUDLEY DO-RIGHT: A Canadian Legend!🍁

What can I say? In the hands of legendary cartoon moguls Jay Ward and Bill Scott, the ridiculous became sublime. Back in the early '60s, the whole family gathered around the TV set (well, those under 25 did - my parents had no idea what any of this meant) to watch Rocky and Bullwinkle, and it's not because we were interested in the goings-on at Frostbite Falls, the adventures of Mr. Peabody or Fractured Fairy Tales. Those innovative animations were but an introduction to the main event: 7 minutes of rapid-fire, clever satire aimed right at the most stereotypical of Canadian images: THE MOUNTIES. 

Most Americans, if they thought about it at all, pictured the RCMP as a horde of red-serge-and-Mountie-hat-wearing anachronisms straight out of a Nelson Eddie-Jeannette McDonald movie of the 1940s. They believed the Mounties' motto was "We always get our man." Where this drivel came from is anybody's guess, but Dudley Do-Right hit all the buttons and summed up, not the ridiculousness of the Mounties, but the idiocy and ignorance of Americans and their narrow and highly-limited view of Canada. Much later there was a lame movie attempt to recreate the madness, but it flopped nearly as badly as George of the Jungle. You simply had to be there, watching Nell endlessly tied to the railroad tracks by Snidely Whiplash, Dudley riding backwards on his horse and, of course, "getting his man" (though the actual motto of the RCMP is Maintains le Droit, meaning uphold the right, as in righteousness). 

Thanks to the internet, none of this ever dies, and I have to admit I find it all hugely enjoyable. I am dredging out stuff I was sure I'd never see again. Meantime, Americans continue to assume the RCMP ride all over town on horseback, wearing their red serge tunics and those damned hats. I don't know how to tell them this, but that's only ever done for the tourists in the famous Musical Ride, an amazing feat of dressage (and I'm not sure it even exists any more, as it would likely just cost too much to  keep all those horses). 

The Junk Drawer of my Mind

There are times when I might be convinced that I remember every single thing that ever happened to me. But maybe it just seems like it. This particular pop-culture reference must have occurred some time in the '70s, but I remembered it so vividly that I wonder why that single synapse in my brain continues to fire half a century later.

It was an ad in Cosmopolitan magazine. I cringe to think that I actually read Cosmo, but I must have or I wouldn't remember so much shit about it. A couple of articles stand out in my memory, and one of them is about Liza and Jack Haley, Jr., proclaiming their undying love for each other and their plans to start a family. (They were divorced the following year.) Liza had even picked out names for their never-to-be-born kids, one of which I remember: Savannah May. Ye gods.

There was another article about - yes, it was about Warhol, or it had a Warhol connection, in that one of his "superstars" named Cherry Vanilla had gay friends. That was it, that was the story, that some women liked to have gay men as friends. This was the 1970s, folks, and people were a little slow on the uptake.

But this! This ad barbecued itself into my brain for reasons unknown, and tonight I googled "Andy Warhol white rum and soda Liza Minnelli", and THE VERY SAME AD popped up immediately. It's the kind of thing you can buy a reproduction of on Etsy and other sites. I don't know if it's so memorable because it mentions both Liza and Andy in one headline, or because it so reeks of social-climbing and empty, narcissistic self-importance that it has become a sort of period piece reflecting the cocaine-and-alcohol-fuelled disco lifestyle that rioted among partygoers, both gay and straight, until the AIDS epidemic crashed down on everyone and brought it all to a screeching stop.

In other words, it's a classic.

We die the way we live. Is anyone surprised?

The way we die is the way we live 

Or have lived. Is this news?

I have seen it over and over. A man I knew who lived fast, sucked down alcohol and smoked like a ruin died hard. At least he died quickly, opening the door of his truck by the side of the road and collapsing. He was dead by the time he hit the ground. 

Others, unable to let go, trying desperately to stay in control, stay sick for years, and years, and years. 

I’ve seen near-miracles, like the woman I knew through my former church who was terminally ill and determined to die at home. This was not a cheery or positive woman, though her saracastic digs were often howlingly funny (so long as they weren’t aimed at you). 

But something happened here, something strange and quite wonderful. This woman’s friends knew that her sarcastic quips were just a cover for a fragile and loving heart. There was a sweetness in her that contrasted beautifully with the sour. 

Without even sitting down to work it out, shifts of people  began to look after her. Towards the end, this involved bathing and feeding and taking care of her most basic needs. 

At the very end ,when she lay dying in hospital, her two sons, estranged from her and from each other for a dozen years, stood on either side of her bed. There’s just something so powerful about standing by someone, about being there. Attending. 

It’s not a fancy and certainly not a squishy-squashy word, but at the end, it means everything. 

A lot of people I know, if they are willing to name their ultimate fear, say “Dying alone.” There is something so hollow about it, indicative of an empty life with no significant attachments. 

How you die is how you have lived. 

A couple of years ago I saw something in the paper and, before I could stop myself, exclaimed, “Holy.” It’s a silly expression – don’t know where it came from - that just pops out of me when I am truly surprised. 

I won’t say the man’s name because I don’t wish to be barbecued all over again, and it wasn't his real name anyway, but suffice it to say he was a local Vancouver not-quite-celebrity, a newspaper writer for the Sun who pretty much worked in one place all his life. 

He was almost always described as “acerbic”, meaning he could be acid, even caustic, but his remarks caused gales of laughter among those who were NOT his target.  He was the master of schadenfreude and could summon it with a snap of his fingers. There is no way you can tell me he didn’t get pleasure out of it. 

I knew him as a theatre critic at first, and I noticed right away the carbolic quality which could be quite funny in a mean Dorothy Parker-esque way. Then he was assigned the classical music beat, and was away to the races.

People pretended to be OK with his excoriating remarks, even tried to see them as an honour, though I don’t know what they thought in private.  He did like certain artists,  though he was extremely picky and seemed to have supernaturally-sensitive hearing. If a violinist lost a single horsehair from his bow, he noticed, and he wasn’t charitable about it. 

His weekly column, entitled Urban Scrawl, ran for a few years and could be immensely entertaining. But that’s not the thing I want to write about today. 

At some point in the ‘90s I must have sent him something. I do remember a bizarre visitation by Liz Taylor at the local Eatons store to promote some new fragrance, Black Something-or-other. I sent him my newspaper column about it, and he actually responded: “Ol’ Violet Eyes! I might just steal that one. I only steal from the best.” 

This didn’t seem like a mean or acerbic man. Over the years I’d send him sporadic bits and pieces, and to my astonishiment, one year he sent me a Christmas card. I couldn’t quite call him a friend, but he did respond to most of the bits I sent, mainly clippings from my column. 

Then he sort of went underground, wrote a few pieces for the Georgia Straight and  disappeared, apparently into retirement. 

So that was that, until one day I encountered a very weird sight. 

The Grand Master of the acerbic quip had a Facebook page! 

I couldn’t quite believe it, but there it was. It had all sorts of comments from people, stuff he’d done, etc. It certainly looked real. 

It had been, oh, five years since I’d heard anything. I knew I couldn’t “friend” him, but tried to send a message anyway. It went something like: 

Good to see you again! Have you interviewed the countertenor Michael Maniaci? He knocked me over on YouTube the other day. Interested to hear your view. Hope this gets to you.” 

Boy, did it. 

Though I wasn’t his Facebook “friend”, he wasted no time in answering me.

“This was a mistake. I am not on Facefuck because I have no interest in joining the herd of vacuous idiots. Hope this gets to you.” 

Uh. If you’re not on Facefuck, how can you answer a Facefuck message? 

It was upsetting. 

I did find a few things out. I mentioned his name to someone I knew, one of those I-know-everybody types who was as gay as the day is long. “Oh, THAT guy. He has a reputation, you know. They tell me he’s the most arrogant, cruel, narcissistic, heartless, ruthless bastard they have ever met.” 

Oh my (again)! 

So that was that, until my “Holy!” day: I saw  a full-page spread, which is certainly more attention than he had ever received before. You have to die to get that. 

He was dead, so they ran a large full-color photo of him and articles by retired Sun employees about how “acerbic” his writing was, and how wonderful, and how he was wasted in Vancouver and should have been writing for the New Yorker. And about how he had kept his private life private. 

Colleagues mentioned his kindness, but there was a hedge-y quality to some of it. There were also stories of him hiding behind a post at concerts when he saw a friend or colleague coming his way. 

But apparently, this was OK because he was dead now and already being elevated to sainthood in that strange, strange way the dead are always elevated. I have often wondered if this is nothing more than a superstitious fear that the bastards will come back and haunt us. 

I did not react well. I was furious at all the statements about his kindness, his gentle soul, etc. The man was an asshole and I wanted the world to know it. 

I didn’t think hard about it and I did use his real name, a bad idea. The blog post was out there, though I assumed no one would read it. But I had tagged it with his name (duh: the part of me that DID want people to see it). It wasn’t long until I received feedback, not the kind of feedback you ever want to see. 

“You mean you are going to rip into this man and hurt his family before the body even hits the ground?” 

“I have never in my life seen anything so merciless. You are a sick woman.”

Message boards said things like “it sounds like she was a stalker, obsessed with him, and he had probably been trying to scrape her off his shoe for years.” 

It’s funny how in moments like this, dynamics are neatly reversed. It drives me completely crazy. Like a bizarre weather vane, there is a complete 180-degree turn,and ALL the nasty things a person has done are heaped on to the person who has been hurt by them. 

It’s insanity, and it happens all the time. 

I think I hit a nerve here, because it was obvious to me that this was a lonely, bitter old man (not THAT old – only 67, but the lonely die young) who died without inspiring much real grief.  An article I read later, written by a friend, was much more honest than the verbal Cool Whip posted in the Sun. She spoke of his kindness, but then said he frequently isolated himself and could suddenly cut off friends in the manner of Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street. 

Oh my, again. 

Then came the truly heartbreaking part: as he lay dying in hospital, a few colleagues from the old days were having trouble piecing together any facts about his life. Where was he born ? Was it Saskatchewan? Didn’t he have a brother? Where did he go to school? Nobody knew. Their colleague of 20+ years was a complete cypher, a blank.

As far as I know, there was no one from his family there, no one to stand by him as his life ebbed away. 

I will never know why he attacked me that way when I was simply trying to renew a connection, not a close one, but one that had occasionally been fun. I don’t know why there was a Facebook page set up in the first place when he wasn’t on “Facefuck” and probably despised such things. (Another colleague described his work habits as being out of the 1950s, along with his attitudes and TV preferences: all he watched was Turner Classic Movies.) 

Somebody mentioned a wake, and even said, “Will you be there, Margaret Gunning?” I really needed more acid thrown in my face. Still later I read a blog post which nearly peeled my skin off in a single piece. I was described as a loony old lady and “stinky old biddy”, and the post was accompanied by a goofy picture of me posing with my bird on my shoulder, a clear attempt to paint me as a lunatic. 

I guess I should’ve known better than to speak ill of the dead. I broke some sort of primal rule, I guess, but I was just pissed off at all this glowing praise of a man who had other traits besides kindness and gentleness. Try vitriol and nastiness. 

I did take my post down and posted a brief apology on the Straight message board. My timing had been bad. Fury has abated, to be replaced mostly with pity. I wonder about that wake now, whether it ever happened with so few people.  And I wonder if any of his mysterious, even chimeric family members would have attended, because it seems to me that attending was not their strong suit.

Just rediscovered something I wrote many years ago, on the tag-end of a piece about Paul Biscop, the small medium at large whose spirit turned out to be as mean as all the rest of him. But here's what I said about him.

Something about the manner of his dying continues to bother me. It's the same way L. D. died, and if ever a man carried a load of poison karma, it was that one. His colleagues stood around his deathbed trying to figure out if they could remember any details of his life. Incredibly, he only worked in one place for his entire career, the backwater arts pages of the Vancouver Sun, and had never spread himself out, probably because his spirit was so small and he was incapable of taking risks. They would interfere with his opinion of himself.. No one knew if he had kin anywhere - there were only vague, conflicting ideas. So what is a stroke? Something backs up on you, I think. Something in your head disastrously explodes. If you're immensely old, it makes some sense - the vessels age, they wear out - but at 67? At 67, it's a form of autointoxication.

I can't find the tribute from the "friend" who was actually somewhat honest about his true nature (if any of his nature was true), stating that he often isolated himself for long periods, and was known to dump his long-time friends in such a shocking manner that they never knew what hit them. His nickname (behind his back, of course) was Sweeney Todd, as in the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, who had his "friends" murdered, ground up into hamburger and made into meat pies which he sold to the public in his quaint little village butcher shop.

And one more thing! All those people commenting in the Georgia Straight mentioned they were going to hold a wake in L. D.'s honor. I couldn't help but be reminded of that scene in A Christmas Carol where the ghost of Scrooge overhears his colleagues (who have known him for decades) discussing his funeral arrangements. One exclaims, "I thought he'd never die!", and another states that he would go to his funeral "only if a luncheon is provided. But unless I am fed" (pats his paunch with both hands) "I stay home."

This wake never happened. It didn't. I didn't need to be there to know this. No one cared enough about this bitter, nasty old man to want to honor him in any way. The most elegant and tasteful luncheon in the world couldn't help his colleagues and faux friends to overcome this repulsion. I still don't know why this "don't speak ill of the dead" thing is still around, because it's nothing more than rank superstition based on heebie-jeebies, goblins and ghoulies, and things that go bump in the night. 

And L. D.'s legacy is macabre enough without all that.

🌹GYPSY ROSE BLANCHARD: Knockin' on Heaven's Door😮

Don't get me started on Gypsy Rose! I no sooner cut loose from the Meghan and Harry nonsense (mainly because they were so tedious and predictable) than I fell into the fire, and this thing is just beyond creepy. There is something rather terrifying about this woman and her compulsive lying, but worse than that is how the internet and media have made her into a celebrity BECAUSE she murdered her mother. No other reason. But I'm sooner or later going to have to cut loose from this one too, because I notice what a divisive figure she is and how various creators are now at each other's throats over it. I made an initial video, not as good as this one, that got over 3,000 views, and this one is scraping bottom and might have to be scrapped. THAT doesn't make sense either. There is a VERY bad energy around this girl, beyond creepy, and one wonders if she has even come to believe what she's telling people.

😱This Doll Creeps Me Out! (and here's why)😱

My troll/doll videos never get too many views, but I keep posting them anyway. My channel is now up to more than 20,300 subscribers and well over 3,000 videos, and yet, people with a few hundred subs/videos are getting thousands of views every day. Such is the weirdness of the internet, and YouTube specifically, because one of the stupidest videos I ever posted is now well over FOURTEEN MILLION views. 

Don't ask me why, or how, as I made a total of twelve videos which are virtually identical, just with different audio - yet THIS one went through the roof. I get all sorts of bizarre comments, many of them pretty gross, and in some cases people are all angry with me because the audio and video don't sync up! They say things like, oh, this is fake, folks, this is a lie, this is inaccurate, this is just a way to make $$ (though I'm not monetized and never will be).

So I keep on going, as a way to share my interests and hobbies with others, and as a way to keep a record for myself, or to make a video to send to one specific person. Nobody thinks about that.

Ryan Rewind: Glad to be a Grad (but Grandma is a little sad).

🐥BABIES EVERYWHERE! Gosling Stampede at Burnaby Lake🐥

Goslings, goslings everywhere! They were peepin' and cheepin' on our last visit to Burnaby Lake. Several Canada goose families were massed together, and the fuzzybutts had taken over the place. It's common to see goslings at many different stages of development, and one even looked like it was right out of the egg. There's also a magical moment when two gorgeous male red-winged blackbirds swoop down to eat out of my hand.

MELLADO: We're all at the Dance Recital!

 

The year-end Mellado dance recital (which we've been attending for 13 years) is always a highlight of the year. Here we are with Lauren, an incredible young dancer whose progress we've followed from the age of three.

Lauren and her Daddy, my son Jeff. Good-looking guy, don't you think?

Lauren and Grandma share a moment. There's always a theme for every recital, and this year it was Hawaii (can't you guess?)

Wallpaper version!

Before the show! Waiting for the elevator to take us there.

A couple of bonus shots: me and Bentley, and books.

👀Gypsy Rose Blanchard: MICROEXPRESSIONS👀

Faces don't lie.

My new obsession (green screen cat memes)

 

Yes. The whole problem here is that these are gifs - tiny little silent movies (which is probably why I love them so much) - which leaves out the all-important sound effects and snippets of music that invariably accompany these feline follies.

But they're still fun to watch. The green screen technology is something I know nothing about - as with everything else, I "borrow" what I see around me (most of which has been replicated thousands of times already). It's just kind of fun to muck around with these things. 

If this is real, SIGN ME UP!

 

This card was stuck in our windshield when we came back from shopping today. Up to now, such things have been ads for gutter cleaning, roofing, landscaping, or something mundane like that. But this was different.

Haven't seen anything quite like it - it seems to cover any known human issue (including Mother Katery and Removing of Obiya), a few that aren't even known yet, problems that you don't have and may never have, or CANNOT have ("Help! I'm stuck on the moon!"). I don't wish to be too critical here, as something like this may help someone, or maybe a lot of someones.

If this person has some real ability to help with SOME of these issues, or can at least provide a listening ear. . . but that's NOT what it's usually about. 

Like Benny Hinn and Joel Osteen and Creflo Dollar, this person may well be preying on the weak and vulnerable. OR NOT. The fact that this advertisement likely represents a different culture (South Asian, I think) makes me want to tread carefully - for  how do I know what it's like to live within that culture? 

Still, when a solution to EVERY SINGLE problem is laid out for you like a banquet of exaggeration, you've got to wonder. And I'd have to go all the way out to Delta to partake of this, unless it can be done by text message or Zoom (the way most "therapy" is done these days. You have to have the app.)

I can't begin to go into the times I've been taken in by people who seemed to have a genuine gift. But at some point, the "gift" became more important than they were - and the whole thing got corrupted, if it ever had any value to begin with. 

My former friend Paul Biscop, whom I met when he was teaching a university course in anthropology,  claimed to be a spiritualist medium, and even founded his own church on Vancouver Island (though that ended rather badly). But the relationship was rocky and uneven, and  eventually he dismissed all of my spiritual experiences as "fantasies" or even mental illness - which really hurt, though I can't imagine why. He said he was trying to help me with this insight, and of course I should have been grateful. But he often pulled rank, citing his two Masters degrees and his PhD as proof that all of HIS experiences were obviously valid, and mine were bogus.

Many years later, long after I had broken off the dubious friendship, he suddenly died, and what he left in his wake appalled me. His partner/spouse of 24 years (also named Paul) was left with more than $10,000.00 in debt that he had no idea existed. Far from  being left with no insurance money, he was left with a gaping hole that couldn't be filled. Last I heard he was literally homeless, and the spiritualist church Paul Biscop stomped away from was trying to help him by setting up a GoFundMe page. 

As nice as the folks at this church were, I could tell there had been bad blood there. It had become Paul's little pocket cult, and the rest of the congregation ultimately protested. When he died, his memorial was held at a local Masonic Hall, and very few from the church attended.  A table was set up at the back of the hall to sell off some of his books on anthropology and spiritualisms in order to help his surviving partner. . . survive. 

To this day, there's a page-long tribute online all about  how wonderful the man was, with none of the problematic things he did even mentioned. It almost seems like, as with Elvis, dying was a good career move for Paul. In any case, it's a cautionary tale, for it's just possible Paul set off on this spiritual journey with good intentions. Like Marshall Applewhite, like David Koresh, like Jim Jones? ALL of these men started off as relatively mainstream Christian preachers who may have thought their intentions were good. And they brought a lot of people along with them, one way or another. 

Let's just say it didn't end well.

OK then. . . what does this have to do with this card? Everything and nothing. It may be a whole 'nother circumstance, and I hope it is, but I also hope it isn't another form of Benny Hinn-ism, where people pour all their hopes and most of their savings into something that will only leave them spiritually bankrupt. 

FURTHER READING. I  went into more detail in this blog post, which deals with some of the same issues. Read it if you like.

https://margaretgunnng.blogspot.com/2022/01/the-way-we-live-way-we-die.html

Classic Cheerios Commercials Starring . . . 💥BULLWINKLE!💥

Ah, memories! These smart and funny Cheerios ads with their minimal animation still charm me after all these years.

💗FIRST Ducklings of the Season! Adorable fluffballs sitting on a rock💗

Happy Spring!

BUSTED: God's Bartender! (Or: how the Pentecostals are transforming Ireland)

(I stumbled upon this essay in righteous indignation while trying to find a photo of Rodney Howard-Browne, who is depicted above, dancing his little grey flannel heart out when he's supposed to be preaching. This is yet another protest against the admittedly stupid and self-indulgent "Toronto Blessing" thing that I had hoped had died out years ago. I guess if you want to get down on the ground and squeal like a pig, that's OK with God, but it still reminds me of something out of Deliverance. An interesting side-note: this is the third time I have attempted to upload Rodney's little dance of joy on YouTube. It has already been taken down twice for violating community standards. Not for his dancing, but because they believed I was being disrespectful to Christianity. Maybe I shouldn't have mentioned his arrest in 2020 for holding packed church services during the height of COVID!)

Carryduff Elim continues charismaniac deceit with ‘Transform Ireland’ conference

Isaiah 29:13: “Wherefore the Lord said, Forasmuch as this people draw near me with their mouth, and with their lips do honour me, but have removed their heart far from me, and their fear toward me is taught by the precept of men.”

More charismatic heretics are to be imported to our shores by Carryduff Elim Church this weekend as they host their ‘Transform Ireland’ conference on Saturday, 27 April.

Not content with having inflicted the God-defying and blasphemous antics of the self-proclaimed ‘Holy Ghost bartender’ Rodney Howard-Browne (pictured, below) on the poor people of Carryduff and the surrounding area, they are bringing more such characters to Northern Ireland.

On this occasion they are bringing in Ken Gott and Tim Dunnett from Bethshan Church in the north east of England, particularly centred around Sunderland and Newcastle.

Bethshan is yet another of the charismatic churches which has embraced the so-called ‘Toronto Blessing’ and all its outrageous claims and manifestations.

Ken Gott is a very senior figure in the modern charismatic movement in the British Isles and indeed is credited with being the man who brought the Toronto Blessing to the UK.

This is, of course, the charismatic wave in which people were noted to have fallen over with “holy laughter” and often characterised by people lying on the ground in convulsions and roaring like lions and barking like dogs, apparently under the influence of the Holy Spirit.

A farmyard scene, which anyone who has had the misfortune of attending such events or anyone who has seen such videos on YouTube will have witnessed, is in no way edifying and is utterly repugnant to the Word of God.

There is no “reverence” or “godly fear” at those sort of meetings.

Indeed, there is a report online from a man who attended one of Ken Gott’s meetings back in 1995 in Sunderland. It is on a website called ‘Banner Ministries’, which, while we do not agree with everything on the site, does feature this very intriguing, first hand experience.

This is part of his account.

It says: “The band leader, between inane choruses, encouraged us to “receive” whilst doubling up and making short grunting noises at virtually every sentence, as indeed did other members of the audience. The majority were laughing and thinking it a huge joke.

“We were also urged to ignore these strange visible and audible manifestations and to “throw off constraint”. “It is catching!” was Pastor Ken Gott’s appropriate remark, whilst he too doubled up groaning as one with birthpangs.

“Great emphasis was placed upon wording such as “River of God, sets our feet a dancing, fills our mouths with laughter” and “We rejoice that the river is here”. “Drink the new wine” was sung in prophecy by a band member.

“Strange wafting of hands by those around us broke out, and a form of backwards breaststroke – “swimming in the Spirit?” Twitching, doubling up, swaying and so forth was evidenced throughout the audience. Significant comments from Pastor Gott were: “We have come too far, we can’t go back” and “The world loves this” and “God is into parties”.

Then there is this, from the same account.

“Now for the “ministry time” of the evening. This began by clearing the decks. Chairs were moved to the walls. Then the designated teams wandered around zapping the majority of people. We were approached but graciously declined to receive. When they ran out of targets, they turned upon themselves and each other, this happening directly in front of us. Before long the hall resembled a battlefield, bodies lying everywhere, laughing, twitching, convulsing – and the teams wafting their arms over them.

“Before too long however, a large number of individuals began sitting up from the floor, looking around them bemused and bewildered, as if to say “What’s next?” It was at that point that my indignation and dismay gave way to pity for these poor deceived and deluded people.”

Getting “zapped” by the ringleaders in this deception is very much akin to what was happening in the video of Rodney Howard-Browne’s antics which we linked to our previous article on him. You can read the article by clicking here, although the YouTube video we had previously linked to the article has suddenly been removed by Rodney Howard-Browne’s ministry company, Revival Ministries International. We couldn’t possibly guess why.

Anyway, here we have Ken Gott saying “God is into parties”. What sort of a way to speak is that? Where is the reverence or godly fear?

Pastor George Ritchie and Pastor Gavin Allen (pictured, below) are the men in charge at Carryduff Elim and they bear a grave responsibility for what they are inflicting on the poor deceived attendees at that church.

They and their church were very much aware of the article we had written highlighting the utter inappropriateness of having the likes of Rodney Howard-Browne in your church’s pulpit.

Yet they were happy, despite having God’s Word brought before them to demonstrate why Rodney Howard-Browne ought not to be recommended to anyone, to persist with that event and now to arrange this one.

We can only conclude that Carryduff Elim is fully caught up in the ungodly excesses of the charismatic movement and urge anyone who truly loves the Lord to separate themselves therefrom.

More than that, we would call on anyone reading this who knows anyone who attends Carryduff Elim or who is planning to attend this conference to share this with them to warn them of the great danger posed by this ‘Transform Ireland’ conference.

Do not allow yourself or anyone you know to come under the influence of this counterfeit Christianity, which says lots of the right sounding things but is ultimately an empty vessel.

Pastor Howard-Browne's infamous "MUG  SHOT"!

Am I the same table? Thoughts on an arabesque

 

This is just one of those crazy things. A piece came into my head tonight that I hadn't even thought about in years - some sort of crazy whistling or pinging, only synthesized. Then I heard myself say, "That's Debussy." Yes, it was the  Arabesque by Debussy, but whatonearth version was this?? Hadn't I heard it on TV a long time ago? Where, and when?

All it took was to do a search on YouTube under Debussy Arabesque Synthesizer, and up it popped, over a dozen versions of the same piece: and it was the right one, the whistling, pinging one. This was created by Isao Tomita, one of the pioneers of synthesized sound.

But it didn't solve where I had heard it before.

I had to go to the comments for that.

Someone mentioned that this piece was the theme song for a short program called Star Hustler that came on PBS in the '80s, usually late at night,. Later, as the name "hustler" increasingly came to mean prostitute, it was changed to Star Gazer. Jack Horkheimer, whoever he is, would come on and blather on for five minutes about the wonders of astronomy. He was fat, cheesy, decked out in a grey polyester windbreaker, a kind of bargain-basement Carl Sagan. Star Gazer was a crash course, fast and aggressive, a kind of "learn this or else" that made you feel even dumber at the end - but the only really interesting thing about it was the theme song.

Realizing that this DID come from somewhere, that it was an actual "thing", was a revelation. I had not imagined it.

I've pulled information out of the internet like this before, and found my neurons exposed to certain things for the first time in decades. It's a weird experience. They say that every seven years, every single cell in your body is replaced. One by one, they die and are regenerated, until there's no original material left at all. In that case, it's a completely new me who is listening to this music - which means that, in truth,  I've never heard it before.

This piece also jacked open the cover on a new genre, or a new composer of a genre - new to me, at least. I must admit that I had never heard of Isao Tomita, but he is everywhere on YouTube - master of the synthesizer before anyone was using it in movies or in recordings. I had a delicious album called Moog by Dick Hyman (and I've found that one again, too) which was a dinosaur version of synthesizer, quite primitive by any standard, but which I still love to hear, because . . .  I've never heard it before!  All my cells have been replaced multiple times since I first heard it in the '60s, so it's REALLY new to me now.

I went through a time in my life when I feverishly took courses - not to get a degree, which I knew was useless and impossible, but just to try to learn something. One of the courses - Philosophy 101 or something - talked about how, if you had a table, and one day replaced a leg, then the next day replaced another leg, and so on, and so on, and then replaced the top. . . so that ALL the parts were now completely different parts. . . would it be the same table?

I am not the same table. I know I am not the same table, but I am able to hold on to the shape of the table I used to be, because of a little thing called Memory. Memory is a dense tangle like seaweed, with molluscs and clams and giant squid attached to it. Without it, I would be a piece of meat, plain and simple. But even animals need Memory, or they would not know who to flee, or where to fly.

BLOGGER'S REALIZATION. My God, the Arabesque on the synthesizer is just like the X Files theme! I mean that whistly, swoopy effect that is almost human, but not quite. Whoever composed this eerie snippet must have been influenced by Isao Tomita. Or is it possible they had never heard him before?