We are stardust, we are golden, we are billion-year-old carbon, and we've got to get ourselves back to the garden.

Quote:Oh good Lord, I only ask you forgive the self-righteous who deceive
When your words, they twist
We both know hell don't exist...
Except in the minds of the poor fools who believe!

Voltaire - Hell in a Handbasket

Quote:On day two [of the investigation into the Catherine Howard hauntings], we were joined by a woman who claimed to be the reincarnation of Catherine Howard and said that she could provide a unique first-person perspective on the proceedings (“Actually, I was dragged up the corridor, not down it”; “Not sure that the new paint job in the kitchens works for me,” etc.). Day four turned out to be especially interesting. The team (which now included the reincarnated Catherine Howard) assembled in the morning as usual and reviewed the heat sensor data from the previous night. It was immediately obvious that something very strange had taken place, with the graphs showing a massive spike in temperature around 6 AM. We eagerly rewound the recording from the thermal imager to discover whether we had caught Catherine on tape. At dead-on 6 AM the doors at one end of the corridor burst open, and in walked a figure. The reincarnated Catherine Howard instantly recognized the figure as a member of Henry VIII’s court. However, a few seconds later the proceedings took a decidedly more skeptical turn when we saw the figure walk over to a cupboard, remove a vacuum cleaner, and start to clean the carpets.

That's better than the infamous "Kreed Kafer" incident on the old Most Haunted show.

Basically, they had a resident psychic medium named Derek Acorah, who would always 'channel' and get possessed by whatever local spirit was part of the investigation for that week's episode. The show's token sceptic, Ciaran O'Keefe, though portraying a neutral stance in the recordings, wasn't taken in by Acorah's act at all. So he came up with a South African character called Kreed Kafer and developed a plausible backstory for him, then casually slipped the name and details into conversation with some of the crew.

Sure enough, Kreed Kafer showed up and did his thing. Apparently, being totally made up and an anagram of "Derek Faker" isn't the handicap you might think.

Quote:Go blow jesus out your ass.

--Me

(September 28, 2013 at 3:35 pm)Minimalist Wrote:

Quote:Go blow jesus out your ass.

--Me

You've earned it!

I like this one.

''Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.''
Albert Einstein

Minimalist, you long ago earned the right to claim that as a quotable. I swear, if someone fails to put that on your tombstone as your eulogy, I'll find out where they bury you and chisel it on your tombstone myself.

“I am very much out of my element here. There are moments, listening to the conversations going on around me, when I feel I am going to lose my mind. Earlier today, I heard someone say the words, "I felt at one with the divine source of creation." Mary Roach on a conducted tour of Hades. I had to fight the urge to push back my chair and start screaming: STAND BACK! ALL OF YOU! I'VE GOT AN ARTHUR FINDLAY BOX CUTTER! Instead, I quietly excused myself and went to the bar, to commune with spirits I know how to relate to.”
― Mary Roach, Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife

Quote:Whenever [Joseph Smith] found his speech growing too modern — which was about every sentence or two — he ladled in a few such Scriptural phrases as “exceeding sore,” “and it came to pass,” etc., and made things satisfactory again. “And it came to pass” was his pet. If he had left that out, his Bible would have been only a pamphlet.

— Mark Twain on Joseph Smith's Book Of Mormon

I know I'm paranoid - but am I paranoid enough?