Sylvia the Psychic Old Hag Spewing Chunks of Shit Out Of Her Mouth On Fox

I watch the news all morning, over the top of my tiny, Acer computerscreen, in a very half-assed manner, as I check through my daily rounds of NYT, The Cult Network, Huffington Post, A Socialist site that has some great reporting, and about five other news sources that I check Daily. .  In Chicago you can get News all night, and the biggest three then have morning shows.  I skip around between 7 and 9.  Mary likes 9 more than me.  They are ever so slightly conservative, though nothing like fox.  The last hour, between 9 and 10, Fox is the only one still playing news (obviously, the cable is out again -- another financially related break down that I will fix one of these days and get it back... I dearly love Watching John Stewart and Steven Colbert - in fact, if it were not for them, and their bitting, political humor, I used to think that the entire media just sucked.  They pretend that they are objective, then show they are subjective in ways that their dense audiences do not see -- mostly, by choosing the conservatives stories and making them sound plausible,because, after all, a nightly news on a huge station is a big deal to people and they believe... audiences want everyone to be their own personal Walter Cronkite, oozing the truth through his soothing baritone.  No more.  The law about equal exposure was tossed away a few years ago, and now the news can be used however the station owner wants....   sad but honest at least.  Fox's mental trap has actually opened a lot of eyes to the whole scam of news, which is the true irony  -  their Achilles heel.

After the news today, one of those 'human intrestie, newsie shows.  The first guest comes on and I reach for the remote, then they say they have psychic Sylvia.  I watch as this badly wigged, haggard looking, over-weight Psychic Sylvia was asked a host of questions about ghosts, basically.  She instantly 'knew' the answers, rattling them off as quickly as she could so she could get to as many shills as possible (though in this case, the station was footing the bill for this scamathon.  I watch for a few minutes, my  fingers still on the computer pad...  She is asked if she can talk to ghosts about her fate.   She laughs and says, "No, they won't tell me anything about me, otherwise I would win the lotto."

I got the feeling she had said this before many times.  She was probably preempting people who might think about this?  Anyways, her answer applies to all psychics.  Damn scammers, mostly.

Now. I actually do have a slight belief in psychic phenomena, after seeing a psychic who, ironically enough, also contacted a ghost, in the presence of myself and my  brothers.  We were camping, and sitting around listen to him playing his guitar and drinking beers.  She suddenly went rigid, and a few tears began streaming down her face.  Her husband explained, "She's a psychic.  Someone is contacting her."  After about five minutes, the obviously shaken woman explained that their was a lonely ghost who wanted to contact us... this got very weird from there, and is written in other entries, about David Michael Gilbert.  The point is that she was charging no money, expecting no contact, etc..

Her experience shook her and us so much, that though I was eighteen, we asked her to walk back to my dad's camper with us.  She stopped under a tree and said the spot was powerful.  I looked up and saw a bit of rope tied to the branch, then remembered David swinging on a tire that had been there;  he smacked his head on the tree, and I had to put my arm around him and help him back to camp.  He stayed in high spirits despite what was a solid, painful, brain scrambling, complete side of his head, from chin to his head of hair, smack into an oak tree.  This was about the only time I ever held him.  I later found out his sexuality was in question... and I remembered him coming on to me on one of my frequent sleep-overs.   Anyways...  I was not going to go to far into this because it is elsewhere in the dense tombs blasting out of my fingertips.

I know I am preaching to the choir on this one.  My reader Bob feels the same way I do.  I tell people I have a very specific target audience for my work... though I try to avoid telling them that my target audience is the one guy who reads my stuff, a radical commie, living outside of St. Louis.  Thanks again, Bob.    Oh, well.

My point is that this is fraud.   The audience was asking questions of Sylvia the Psychic and she was instantly in contact with the ghosts, and gave her glib advice out as quickly as she could, to reach as many shills as possible.  Nothing like the psychic that I witnessed.  No, the mouth under the blonde wig cut somewhat like a slightly longer Beatles hair-cut from their early phase, just instantly told the questioner's that their father indeed wanted them to take that loan out on the car... or, she sends her love.  The guy who got this response thought he was being haunted by some ghost, and another wanted  to give him advice -- his passed on wife.  He wanted Sylvia the Psyhcic to be more specific, but she refused..  "No, she has no message.. other than that she loves you."   Another woman wants to ask her father something, and Syl. the Psy. laughed and told her, "Your father is rigth behind you."  The woman and her comapaignions are freaked out, kind of start and look around...

We want to believe so bad that we listen to this person, who is so obviously a scam.  One night in the cab I picked up a gypsy woman and she gave me the address of an all night psychic shop, on a popular corner, Belmont and Clark.  They are in a basement apartment in a gray, stone three flat, with a neon sign flashing int he window that they give PSYCHIC READINGS.   She is young and single and lets me know it kind of quick.  We have a nice chat, and she even offers me a free reading.  I asked her if she believed in what she did?"

She look thoughtful for a moment, said, "I didn't believe in it for awhile. When I was a teenager.  It's like a religions, you know?  The religion I was raised in."
"So you believe it now?"
"Yes."  She says this and looks down... making me wonder if she lis lying?

She was cute and I was basically single (open relationship), but I could not bring myself to take her up on the free reading.  It just would have been too weird.  Back then, I was convinced that God was a big scame by the ruling elite to control the masses  --  before I realized that though a lot of preachers are repulsive, behind thier mumbo jumbo, there is a spirit, which is more than likely would disassociate himself/herself from their deluded strictures, the flim-flam of the priests who took his words and used them for their own purposes.  Like my Jesus believed, in Waking Up Jesus.  I should write somewhere that this passage harkens back to God Emperor Of Dune, a series of books I have read over and over in my life, because time and again I went to my library and found them to be my best choice of reading -- our relationship started when I was in seventh grade.  Love those books all to hell, and still I have not bought the ones his son is writing about his father's universe. ...  so I do not know how good they are, though I know I will love them... just immersing myself in that world again is enough for me.   Royalty as kind leaders is cool compared to the reality -- look at places where they allow the royal family to lead, like Saudi Arabia, where since power is so concentrated with a patriarchal families belief system, the women are not allowed to have the power they would need to get the right to drive a car, buy her own airline tickets, etc...  all the traps that woman who have escaped from that mental trap talk about... some woman are abducted and taken there, and these laws make it almost impossible for them to escape -- same with servants, who often turn their passports over to their owners... at first they are told it is for safe keeping,though soon enough they learn that their Masters will decide when they can leave.  Now, I had a great friend from Saudi Arabia once, and he was totally cool, smoked weed and drove a sports car and chased women.  He was vastly rich, a prince.  One day he was bitching about his dad buying his little brother a Maserati.  His dad would not buy him a really nice car until he was back in his home country.  One night I was there and a bunch of Muslims came over.  They were trying to convert my friend back into being a fundamentalist.  I do not know what they had in mind, and they treated me just fine, but they took him off into a corner and preached at him for a half hour about something secretive enough that they basically whispered.  He told me that he acted one way in Ame4rica, and another in Saudi Arabia.
He also told me that he would rather see the mere ankle of a Saudi Woman, than an american one in a bikini... not that he did not like American Women.  He was very charming with everyone.   The people of Saudi Arabia may be very different than me, and our philosophies all together different, but our Common Ground is a wide field.  When in Rome, and all that,right?

He told me that they did not have to go to through customs because they were royalty.  He also told me that they would fly to countries that allowed drinking and gambling, and pick up a bunch of prostitutes, who they would do on the plane.  Then when Monday rolled around again, they would take off their jeans and t-shirts and don that gownish thing they wear.  Of course, no women were allowed on these trips.

From Psychics to religions that have become the whinsy of Royalty.  The only good thing about Al Queda is that they are fighting there to stop Royalty Rule.  They have too many jets and arms for the States to let that happen.

Actually I wish them no bad will personally, and wish they would just wake up somehow to the rights of women...  and I wish those psychics who look at the spirit as an object they are pushing on some customer would shut the hell up.  Of course, why should I get my way now, after all these years...

Go in peace, whether your religion recommends as much or not...or go in war,if the cause is just enough.. and not just the frantic dream of a few neocons, which started pushing for an invasion years before Bush got into power and decided that since Iraq threatened his dad, he wanted some revenge.. . so the tens of thousands who have died are going to get their revenge where?   Against the Republican Party in general I suppose, as society is doing with their vote.





So... let me end this wide ranging discussion of various lies we tell ourselves and others, and how they shape how we make money, present ourselves... and shape entire societies.  Too bad we give so much substance to mere shadows.













out all of my blogs by googling my name, John Scott Ridgway