the wisdom of wearing balloons

Prior to reading the Smoking Gun, the only Norman Wisdom I knew of was the British comedian and actor who played a character called “The Gump”.  He seemed a nice enough fellow, he was immensely popular in Albania and Queen Elizabeth knighted him in 2000. No scandalous behaviour on record unless you count an attempt to convince the Inland Revenue that they didn’t deserve a share of his money.

Norman Wisdom found here

But Norman Wisdom of Missouri, USA, is a different kettle of fish according to this police report…

“At approximately 16:07 hours I was on patrol, stopped at a westbound red light on Highway 24. I observed a female eastbound, also stopped at the light. She was waving frantically at me so I pulled my patrol car in front of her vehicle to make contact. 

image found here

She pointed at the vehicle next to her, which was occupied by a white male. The female advised that the male subject had been following her and rubbing himself. I requested both parties to pull over into a nearby parking lot.

As I was pulling in behind the male subject’s pickup, I observed that he removed two balloons from underneath his shirt. He then removed a white bra which I later recovered behind a dumpster. I also recovered the balloons as well.  I told the subject several times to put his hands on the truck and when he refused I placed him in handcuffs. I identified the male subject as Norman Wisdom.

image found here

The female subject advised that prior to me stopping her, Mr Wisdom had been following her on Highway 24 for several miles. She said that he continued to drive next to her and would pull up beside her at stop lights. Every time she looked at him he would lift his shirt and expose a bra filled with balloons that he was wearing. She said that he would massage the bra and would then raise his crotch and rub it through his jeans.

I wonder if this sort of behaviour would go down well in Albania…..

more great Albanian images here

the excitement of white shoes

Komodo Dragons are the largest living species of lizard growing up to ten feet (3 metres) in length.

image found here

“The Komodo’s sense of smell is its primary food detector. Its long yellow forked tongue samples the air, after which the two tongue tips retreat to the roof of the mouth, where they make contact with the Jacobson’s organs. These chemical analyzers “smell” prey such as deer by recognising airborne molecules. If the concentration on the left tip is higher than that sampled from the right, then the Komodo knows that the deer is approaching from the left. 

image found here

The muscles of the Komodo’s jaws and throat allow it to swallow huge chunks of meat with astonishing rapidity. A female who weighed no more than 50 kilograms was seen to consume a 31 kilogram boar in less than 17 minutes.  Komodos eat almost their entire kill including bones, hooves and swathes of hide. They also eat intestines but only after swinging them vigorously to scatter their contents and remove faeces. 

image from Big Tits Zombie 3D found here

Although males tend to grow larger than females, no obvious morphological differences mark the sexes. One subtle clue does exist: a slight difference in the arrangement of scales just in front of the cloaca, the cavity housing the genitalia in both sexes. Sexing Komodos remains a challenge to researchers; the dragons themselves appear to have little trouble figuring out who is who. 

Cross With Care image found here

A male initiates courtship by flicking his tongue on a female’s snout and then over her body. Before copulation can occur, the male must evert a pair of hemipenes located within his cloaca. He then crawls on the back of his partner and inserts one of the hemipenes, depending on his position relative to the female’s tail, into her cloaca. 

hemipenes found here

A variety of behaviors have been observed from captive specimens. Most become relatively tame within a short period of time, and are capable of recognizing individual humans and discriminating between more familiar keepers. Komodo dragons have also been observed to engage in play with a variety of objects, including shovels, cans, plastic rings, and shoes. 

animal shoes by Iris Schierferstein found here

Even seemingly docile dragons may become aggressive unpredictably, especially when the animal’s territory is invaded by someone unfamiliar. In June 2001, a Komodo dragon seriously injured a man when he entered its enclosure at the Los Angeles Zoo after being invited in by its keeper. He was bitten on his bare foot, as the keeper had told him to take off his white shoes, in case they caused excitement in the dragon…..

white boot players found here

the mental anguish of seeing stars

Back in 1998, Paul Shimkonis was just enjoying his bachelor party in a Florida nightclub when things got a little out of control

Paul Shimkonis rests his neck

Shimkonis says he was attacked by Tawny Peaks, a 38-year-old exotic dancer and actress hired to perform at the party. According to the Florida man, Tawny approached him and slammed her oversized breasts into his face, knocking him out and giving him whiplash.

Tawny Peaks found here

“I was literally seeing stars,” said Shimkonis.”The best way to describe it is like a concrete block hitting me in the forehead.” Shimkonis filed suit in Pinellas County Court on June 30, seeking more than 15,000 U.S.dollars in damages from the Diamond Dolls club.

image of stars found here

According to the suit, Shimkonis suffered head, neck and other injuries that caused bodily harm, pain, suffering, disfigurement, mental anguish and loss of capacity for the enjoyment of life.

neck air cushion found here

The parties accepted binding arbitration on “The People’s Court” television show and the judge, former New York City Mayor Ed Koch, ordered a female bailiff to examine Peaks in private.

wearable breast examination model found here

The bailiff found the breasts to be “soft” and to weigh about 2 pounds (0.9 kg) each. Koch ruled they were not dangerous and refused to award damages.

By  2005, Tawny had shed her oversized implants and put one of them up for auction on ebay.

“Why not … I don’t need it any more. Somebody might bid on it. It’s like the first boob to be sued in a lawsuit,” she said. Peaks said she would autograph the auctioned implant for the winner but would keep its mate “for good measure.”

She explained that she had her size 69-HH implants removed and underwent breast reduction surgery in 1999 after retiring from the business to start a new life. “They were like really big, crazy big,” said Peaks, who described herself now as a mother of three and happily married homemaker.

image found here

sexual relationships shall remain spontaneous

Myles Spires Jr. sounds like a hard man to please. In 1991, his lawyer drew up this contract for Mrs Spires to sign…..

NOT this Myles (Miles Davis found here)

1. Wife shall in no case obtain money from bank accounts of house emergency funds without express permission of the husband

German emergency money found here

2. Wife shall in no case divulge information which concerns marital difficulties, job status or financial information to anyone outside the marriage.

3. Wife shall in no wise attempt to influence status/intensity of relationships that husband has with other individuals outside the marriage.

image found here

4. In public, wife shall in no wise dispute husband on any matters. Matters of dispute should be handled in privacy and with due respect i.e. no profanity or badgering.

5. Wife shall conduct herself in accordance with all scriptures in the holy bible applicable to marital relationships germane to wives and in accordance with husband’s specific requests. Wife shall consult husband as to the applicability of the scriptures.

image found here

6. Wife’s sexual relationships shall remain spontaneous and solely with husband.

It comes as no surprise that Mr Spires, the bishop of an Internet church, and his wife subsequently divorced. He also has a conviction for misconduct while holding the office of mayor. I wonder if the private investigator he paid with misappropriated funds was checking for inapplicable badgering of scriptures…..

baby badgers found here

goatish gonads

One of our favourite characters here at the Gimcrack is Dr Serge Voronoff who has been mentioned in not one, not two, but three posts before. Serge was responsible for transplanting bits of monkey testes into aging men. John Brinkley went one step further – he became a millionaire during the twenties by transplanting goat glands instead.

Brinkley and wife found here

While working as house doctor at the Swift meatpacking company, he was dazzled by the vigorous mating activities of the goats destined for the slaughterhouse. Later, after Brinkley had gone into private practice, a farmer named Stittsworth came to see him. Stittsworth complained of a sagging libido. Recalling the goats’ frantic antics, the doctor semi-jokingly told his patient that what he needed was some goat glands. Stittsworth quickly responded, “So, Doc, put ’em in. Transplant ’em.”

image found here

Most doctors would have ignored the bizarre request, but Brinkley was not like most doctors. In fact, he wasn’t a doctor at all. Although he had spent three years at Bennet Medical College in Chicago, he’d never graduated. He called himself a doctor on the basis of a $500 diploma he had purchased from the Eclectic Medical University of Kansas City.

“Eclectic” found here

Buying a degree from a diploma mill was not out of character for Brinkley. He had worked as a snake-oil salesman in a road show, and then, with fellow con man James Crawford, established Greenville Electro Medical Doctors. Under this name the pair injected people with colored distilled water for $25 a shot. Brinkley, therefore, had all he needed to capitalize on the farmer’s idea of goat-gland transplants: he was unethical, he had a wobbly knowledge of medicine, and he had witnessed the rambunctious behavior of goats.

image found here

Brinkley went to work, implanting a small piece of goat gonad in Stittsworth’s testicle. Soon the farmer was thanking the doctor for giving him back his libido. And when his wife gave birth to a boy, whom they appropriately named Billy, Stittsworth spread the word further. Brinkley’s business was booming and even at $750 per transplant, he couldn’t keep up with demand. All men needed the Brinkley operation, he declared, but the procedure was most suited to the intelligent and least suited to the “stupid type.” This, of course, ensured that few of his patients would admit that they had not benefited from the operation.

Baby Billy Bob found here

Revenue from the surgeries made Brinkley an immensely wealthy man. For $5,000, he would even implant genuine human glands, which he obtained from prisoners on death row. He had mansions, a fleet of Cadillacs, airplanes, and yachts.There were occasional problems like when Brinkley decided to use angora goat testicles instead of those from the more common Toggenberg goat. Recipients of the angora testicles were unhappy—Brinkley himself noted that they reeked like a steamy barn in midsummer. 

image found here

But ultimately Brinkley couldn’t cure himself. The Milford Messiah—as he was sometimes called—the man who had performed over 16,000 goat testicle transplants, the man who appropriately wore a goatee all his life, developed a blood clot, forcing doctors to amputate his leg. Till the very end, Brinkley’s scheming mind remained active. Confined to bed, he decided to study for the ministry and had visions of becoming a big-time preacher but he died before he could complete his degree.

the mesmerising dentist

Rachael Weaver uncovers an old Sydney murder case…..

News of the tragedy began with reports of an inquest into the violent death of Henry Kinder on 7 October 1865. Kinder was an official at the City Bank and lived with his young family in a comfortable home on Sydney’s north shore. Originally an Englishman, Kinder had arrived in the colonies from New Zealand with his wife, Maria, two years earlier.

image found here

The evidence presented at the inquest was of a man who was restless and excitable, smoked heavily, was careless about his personal appearance and anxious about unpaid debts. Bertrand, a successful Sydney dentist who saw the Kinders socially every day, deposed that Kinder had been drinking freely, that he had challenged Bertrand to a duel, and that he was jealous of his wife with everyone.

image found here

According to Bertrand and Maria Kinder they had been in the Kinders’ drawing room with Henry Kinder and Bertrand’s wife Jane on Monday evening when Kinder suddenly shot himself in the head. Dr Eichler described having been called in around five hours later to treat a large laceration, which had caused Kinder’s ear to hang away from its proper place. The wound had torn his face open from the jaw to the temple. Eichler described his treatments before offering his opinion that the deceased was an imbecile. Kinder was awake and remained conscious throughout the week, lingering until the Friday when he died.

image found here

The inquest into the death of Henry Kinder caused ‘some sensation’ at the time. But this was nothing compared with the outpouring of public excitement two months later, when Henry Bertrand, his wife Jane Bertrand and Maria Kinder were charged with Kinder’s murder. The sensation surrounding the case arose from the idea of ‘profligacy, and something akin to madness, occurring in a respectable circle’.

the respectability question found here

Those involved were young, good-looking, affluent and fashionable. Their relationships were wildly unorthodox and everyone who had come within their orbit had strange tales to tell. Maria Kinder was invested with a seductive malice and Henry Bertrand with deep eccentricities and charisma. Bertrand’s distinctive traits and peculiar behaviour added greatly to the case’s sense of intrigue, but perhaps most fascinating of all was his professed ability to control others using hypnosis.

image found here

If analysts of the case loved to dwell on Bertrand’s dangerous powers of hypnosis, they were perhaps even more seduced by the idea of Maria Kinder as a femme fatale, whose passions had driven the men around her to insanity and murder. Perceptions of her magnetic sexuality, infidelity, gold-digging and cunning criminality coalesced with stereotypes of the evil woman that were circulating in the sensational popular fiction of the time.

Femme Fatale by Patrick Demarchelier found here

Maria Kinder first met Henry Bertrand as a patient at his Wynyard Square practice, and their relationship quickly evolved into an illicit affair. They did little to conceal it from family and friends, who seem to have looked on with a peculiar level of acceptance. They used Bertrand’s young assistant, Alfred Burne, as messenger and he carried letters between them. 

Wynyard Square c 1938 found here

Shortly after the lovers met, Francis Jackson, another key figure in the case, arrived on the scene. He had been Maria Kinder’s lover in New Zealand and upon meeting again in Sydney, Jackson and Maria Kinder quickly rekindled their affair. During his testimony at the trial he described having orchestrated drinking sessions with Henry Kinder so that he could have his way with Maria when the banker fell unconscious. Meanwhile Bertrand sought to play his rivals, Jackson and Kinder, against each other. He tried to incite Kinder to violence and then threatened to implicate Jackson in Kinder’s death if he remained in Sydney. To get him out of the way, Bertrand offered to pay Jackson’s passage back to New Zealand and Jackson took the money and departed, but travelled only as far as Maitland in regional New South Wales.

Maitland floods 2007 found here

Meanwhile, Bertrand was also plotting against Kinder. He asked his assistant, Alfred Burne, if he knew where a pistol could be bought, and they arranged to purchase one from a city pawnshop. Bertrand turned up disguised as a woman.  The next morning Bertrand asked Alfred Burne to buy a sheep’s head from the butcher. Back at his Wynyard Square surgery he cast his own bullets before testing them out by firing at the sheep’s head.

sheep’s head found here

Just two weeks later Kinder was dead. According to Jane Bertrand’s testimony, she and Maria Kinder had been standing by the window arranging flowers when they heard a shot. They turned to see Kinder drooping in his seat by the piano, a pistol falling from his hand, Bertrand standing over him. Dr Eichler was sent for and arrived a few hours later. Kinder was conscious but sank into a wordless stupor when the doctor told him to put his affairs in order.

flower arrangement found here

The next day, Eichler examined Kinder again and found him much improved. That evening at the dental surgery Bertrand showed to Alfred Burne a phial of white liquid, telling him it was the poison he would use to murder Kinder. On 6 October Kinder died. 

Following the coroner’s inquest into Henry Kinder’s death, Bertrand and Maria Kinder continued their affair. She came to live with Bertrand and his wife, who was sometimes forced to share a bed with the lovers—a salacious detail that generated nearly as much moral outrage as the murder itself. 

Meanwhile, Bertrand received a letter from Francis Jackson attempting to blackmail him by threatening to expose his relationship with Maria Kinder and his involvement in Henry Kinder’s death. Bertrand’s surgery was searched and his diary, a bottle marked poison, a pistol, gunpowder, caps and a tomahawk were seized. Bertrand was charged with murder.

image found here

Despite testimony that she had mixed the poison that had killed Kinder, a charge of murder against Jane Bertrand was dropped. Maria Kinder, likewise, escaped further prosecution due to lack of evidence. Bertrand was tried alone. After deliberating for twenty hours without reaching agreement, the jury was dismissed. A second trial began and was concluded the following day. This time the jury returned a guilty verdict and Bertrand was sentenced to death.

The Kinder Tragedy was described as the greatest criminal case on record in the Australian colonies. Keeping interest in the case alive was the fact that Bertrand had evaded the death penalty. From time to time he was moved to a new prison, and a fresh spate of newspaper articles recalling the case would appear. New Zealand’s Wanganui Chronicle reported in September 1879 that he had been relocated to Darlinghurst, and was ‘considered a valuable acquisition to that institution’. Maria Kinder made the news just once after the trial had ended, in July 1867, when she announced her marriage to a Mr Stanley Williams of Greymouth, New Zealand.

Darlinghurst jail, now the National Art School

By far the greatest rekindling of interest in the case, however, came in 1894 with Bertrand’s release after twenty-eight years in prison. Maria Kinder was dead by then. After a night or two spent at the Hotel Metropole in Sydney, Bertrand left Australia for good. It is believed he went to live under an assumed name in Paris.

faith and fasting and the mysterious man from Mayfair

Maurice Wilson MC (1898–1934) was a British soldier, mystic, mountaineer and aviator who is known for his ill-fated attempt to climb Mount Everest alone

Wilson found here

Often characterised as “eccentric”, he wished to climb Everest to promote his belief that the world’s ills could all be solved by a combination of fasting and faith in God. 

Mt Everest found here

He joined the army on his eighteenth birthday and quickly rose through the ranks, eventually becoming a Captain. He won the Military Cross for his part in an engagement where, as the only uninjured survivor of his unit, he single-handedly held a machine gun post against the advancing Germans.

image found here

Wilson left the army in 1919, and like many of the “lost generation” found the transition to post-war life difficult. For several years he wandered, living in London, the United States and then New Zealand where he ran a ladies clothes shop.

NZ Fashion Week 2008 found here

In 1932 he underwent a secretive treatment involving 35 days of intensive prayer and fasting with the aim of restoring his fading health. He claimed that the technique had come from a mysterious man he met in Mayfair who had cured himself and over 100 other people of diseases which doctors had declared incurable.

The idea of climbing Everest came to Wilson while he was recuperating in the Black Forest. He formed a plan to fly a small aeroplane to Tibet, crash-land it on the upper slopes of Everest, and walk to the summit. A practical problem was posed by the fact that Wilson knew nothing at all about either flying or mountaineering.

Black Forest found here

Wilson purchased a three-year-old Gipsy Moth, which he christened Ever Wrest, and set about learning the rudiments of flying. His preparation for the mountaineering challenge that lay ahead was even worse than his preparation for the flight. He bought no specialist equipment and made no attempt to learn technical mountaineering skills, such as the use of an ice axe and crampons. Instead, he spent just five weeks walking around the modest hills of Snowdonia and the Lake District before he declared himself ready.

Snowdonia found here

Ignoring the Air Ministry’s ban, Wilson set off, and remarkably, and in spite of the best efforts of the British government, he succeeded in reaching India two weeks later. After trying and failing to get permission to enter Tibet on foot, Wilson spent the winter in Darjeeling fasting and planning an illicit journey to the base of Everest.

Darjeeling found here

Most of what is known about Wilson’s activities on the mountain itself come from his diary, which was recovered the following year. He seems to have found the trek up the Rongbuk Glacier extremely difficult, constantly getting lost and having to retrace his steps. He wrote in his diary “It’s the weather that’s beaten me – what damned bad luck” and began a gruelling four day retreat down the glacier.

Rongbuk Glacier found here

On May 22, he made an abortive attempt to climb to the North Col. After four days of slow progress and camping on exposed ledges, he was defeated by a forty foot ice wall at around 22,700 ft. His last diary entry was dated 31 May, and read simply “Off again, gorgeous day“

In 1935, a small reconnaissance expedition to Mount Everest found Wilson’s body, lying on its side in the snow and surrounded by the remains of a tent which had been torn apart by the elements.

But there’s one more twist to this adventure. Rumours have continued to arise that Wilson had a secret. Barry Collins, who’s written a play about Wilson says, “It appears that when Wilson was found there was women’s clothing in his rucksack and I’ve heard someone say that he was decked out in women’s underwear”.

The story was fuelled by the discovery of a ladies shoe at 21,000 feet by the 1960 Chinese expedition. Historian Audrey Salkeld says “We can’t conclusively pin the woman’s shoe find on Wilson but, knowing that he worked in a ladies dress shop in New Zealand, all these things have come together to build a picture of him as a transvestite or shoe fetishist.”

NOT this shoe found here

he had his father’s eye for women

Harry Crosby (1898–1929) was an American heir, a bon vivant, poet and publisher. He was the son of one of the richest banking families in New England.

Harry and friend found here

Tired of the rigidity of everyday life, he said he wanted to escape “the horrors of Boston virgins.” Profoundly affected by his experience as an ambulance driver in World War I, Crosby vowed to live life on his own terms.

image found here

He had his father’s eye for women and in 1920 met Mrs. Polly Peabody, six years his senior. Harry reportedly fell in love with the buxom Mrs. Peabody in about two hours, confessing all in the Tunnel of Love at the amusement park. Their open affair was the source of scandal and gossip among blue-blood Bostonians. Polly divorced her alcoholic husband and married Crosby. Two days later they left for Europe, where they enjoyed a decadent lifestyle, drinking, smoking opium, traveling frequently, and having an open marriage.

image found here

Harry worked at Morgan, Harjes et Cie, the Morgan family’s bank in Paris. They found an apartment overlooking the Seine, and Polly would don her red bathing suit and row Harry down the Quai d’Orléans in his dark business suit, formal hat, umbrella and briefcase. As she rowed back home, the well endowed Polly would enjoy whistles and waves from workmen. She said the exercise was good for her breasts.

“The Young Rower” found here

Even by the wild standards of Paris in the 1920s, Harry was in a league of his own. The couple lived a hedonistic life. Harry was a gambler and a womanizer; he drank “oceans of champagne” and used opium, cocaine, and hashish. They wrote a mutual suicide pact, and carried cremation instructions with them.

more of Harry’s photography to be found here

In 1924, Harry persuaded Polly to formally change her first name, as he felt Polly was too prim and proper. They briefly considered Clytoris before deciding on Caresse. Harry and Caresse became known for hosting small dinner parties from the giant bed in their palatial townhouse, and afterwards everyone was invited to enjoy their huge bathtub together, taking advantage of iced bottles of champagne near at hand.

image by Burt Glinn found here

Crosby claimed to be a “sun worshiper in love with death.” He added a doodle of a “black sun” to his signature which also included an arrow, jutting upward from the “y” in his last name and aiming toward the center of the sun’s circle: “a phallic thrust received by a welcoming erogenous zone“.

In Morocco Harry and Caresse took a 13-year-old dancing girl named Zora to bed with them. His seductive abilities were legendary and he engaged in a series of ongoing affairs, maintaining relationships with a variety of beautiful and doting young women.

NOT this Zora (Hurston) found here

His wildness was in full flower during the drunken orgies of the annual Four Arts Balls. One year, Caresse showed up topless riding a baby elephant and wearing a turquoise wig. The motif for the ball that year was Inca, and Harry dressed for the occasion, covering himself in red ocher and wearing nothing but a loincloth and a necklace of dead pigeons.

pigeon ring necklaces found here

Embracing the open sexuality offered by Crosby and his wife, Henri Cartier-Bresson fell into an intense sexual relationship with Caresse that lasted until 1931. Meanwhile, in 1928 Harry found 20-year-old Josephine Rotch. Ten years his junior, they met while she was shopping in Venice for her wedding trousseau. She was dark and intense and had been known around Boston as fast: a ‘bad egg’ with sex appeal. 

image by Cartier-Bresson found here

Josephine and Harry had an affair until the following June, when she married Albert Smith Bigelow. Briefly, their affair was over, but only until August, when Josephine contacted Crosby and they rekindled their love. But unlike Caresse, Josephine was quarrelsome and prone to fits of jealousy. 

In December, the Crosbys returned to the United States. Harry and Josephine met and traveled to Detroit where they checked into the Book-Cadillac Hotel as Mr. and Mrs Harry Crane. For four days they took meals in their room, smoked opium, and had sex. On December 7, the lovers returned to New York. Crosby’s friend Hart Crane threw a party to bid Harry and Caresse bon voyage, as they were about to sail back to France. Josephine said she would return to her husband but instead stayed in New York, writing a poem to Harry, the last line of which read: Death is our marriage. 

refurbished Book-Cadillac Hotel found here

On the evening of December 10, Harry was nowhere to be found. It was unlike him to worry Caresse needlessly so she called Stanley Mortimer, whose studio Harry had used for trysts. Mortimer forced open a locked door, behind which he found Harry and Josephine’s bodies. Harry was in bed with a .25 caliber bullet hole in his right temple next to Josephine, who had a matching hole in her left temple, in what appeared to be a suicide pact. 

A picture of Zora, the 13-year-old girl he had sex with in Egypt, was reportedly found in his wallet. The coroner reported that Harry’s toenails were painted red, and that he had a Christian cross tattooed on the sole of one foot and a pagan icon representing the sun on the other. The coroner concluded that Josephine had died at least two hours before Harry. There was no suicide note, and newspapers ran sensational articles for days.

Harry’s poetry possibly gave the best clue to his motives. Death is “the hand that opens the door to our cage, the home we instinctively fly to.” Harry’s biographer Wolff wrote:

He meant to do it; it was no mistake; it was not a joke. If anything of Harry Crosby commands respect, perhaps even awe, it was the unswerving character of his intention. He killed himself not from weariness or despair, but from conviction, and however irrational or ignoble this conviction may have been, he held fast to it as to a principle. He killed himself on behalf of the idea of killing himself.

found here

his name is Unilson and he comes from the planet Vanfim

Silvio Berlusconi has his own private fortune teller and her name is Teodora

image found here

She foretold that he would become prime minister, to which he replied that if her predictions came true, he’d guarantee her TV appearances—and riches—for life. Recently, Teodora was kind enough to consent to an interview with Vice Magazine, which must have been boring since she presumably knew what would be asked beforehand.

Vice magazine cover found here

VICE: Tell us how your psychic career started.

“In 1984 I was in a car accident, which put me in a coma for 14 days. When I came around, I had these strange feelings. I thought I was going insane. Hearing the voice in my head for the first time, I refused to accept it was real. In communist times it was very difficult to share such bizarre experiences.

more communist construction images found here

VICE: So who, exactly, is the entity behind the omnipotent voice that is broadcast inside your head?

His name is Unilson, and he comes from the planet Vanfim. What he told me is that everything around us is energy, which contains information about all that exists, much like a giant computer. All you need is the key: a name and birth date. The key allows you to look into the past and the present, and therefore the future.

image found here

VICE: Did Unilson tell you about the origin of this world, of human beings?

Both us and them are God’s creatures, and the extraterrestrials made the robot.

VICE: Is it likely that your alien friends may wish to pay us a visit anytime soon?

They’re already here, they’re the energy making contact with us. But we are not ready yet. They don’t want tot scare us; they just want to help us lead a more earthly and natural life. The indigo and crystal children who have been coming into the world recently are prepared to make contact with them.

VICE: Will the world be ending soon?

2012 will not be the end of the world. However, the system will change and  provide answers to a number of important questions that have been piquing the human mind. For instance, the euro will continue to decline, and by 2016 there will be a new European currency. Germany will embark on a new path and establish its own currency. Italy will be revived and prosper once more. Turkey will become the leader of the Islamic world. China has been trying to see how the land lies before it starts to expand.

polluted land in China found here

VICE: How about the USA?

America is still the top power, but China is claiming the position. There will be  turmoil over some countries’ debts, but the future belongs to the Asian race. America will clash with Iran in an Israel-inspired conflict. Chemical and nuclear war will start from there.

VICE: Oh, man, this doesn’t sound good. Iranians can be a tad extreme.

This is inevitable, and so is the war. Parts of the ocean will be poisoned, the air too, and some of the crops, and not only in Iran but in many parts of the planet. Sea animals will start dying for no visible reason. Countries will become self-encapsulated. Those that have freshwater will not share it; those that have oil will keep it to themselves. Another thing: There will be some problems caused by an asteroid.

Geonosis asteroid battle found here

VICE: What is the future of the Middle East following the Arab Spring?

They will turn to modern Islam, and great changes are in store for their governments. They will be united around their sheikhs and have their own currency. But this and other things I should not tell you, for they are in my new book, which is due out soon.

Bedouin sheikhs found here

VICE: With previous prognostications you’ve made, many failed to come true. For instance, you predicted that Berlusconi would complete his full term, and look what happened.

I am only a tiny conductor of all this energy. I am not perfect, and good for me: Imagine the CIA abducting me, and then I’d have to work for them. Generally, I have about 80 percent reliability, plus the future can be altered by other factors.

image from the CIA museum found here

VICE: What other factors?

Humans, for example. We have been excessively investing in the material, and therefore nothing good awaits us. In 2012, people’s thinking will undergo a process of reevaluation. The flexible ones, who are fit to live with plenty and with little, shall survive, while the rest fall away.

VICE: Do you honestly believe such a change is possible?

The year started with a tragedy in Italy, and remember what happened in Japan last year. Calamities bring people together, and there are more to come. People will be continuously scanned; the computer will become an integral part of any man, like a wristwatch. We shall all be scanned, financially and otherwise, but we’ll also be watched by other civilizations. Time will be running out, and it will seem to us that life is getting shorter and shorter.

wristwatch computer found here

VICE: Won’t it be getting longer?

It surely will. Some people will look like mummies but will live as long as 150 years, thanks to advanced medicine.

image found here

VICE:  How do people of faith respond to your powers?

The Catholic Church will acknowledge the extraterrestrials, who implicitly obey God anyway, so the Vatican and the rest of the churches will have to reconsider their attitude to this particular issue. The first disconcerting thing to happen will be the discovery of God’s particle. And this is due to happen very very shortly……

Captain Marvel

John Whiteside Parsons (born Marvel Whiteside Parsons 1914 – 1952), better known as Jack Parsons, was an American rocket propulsion researcher at the California Institute of Technology.He married Helen Northrup in April 1935.

image found here

“He was an acolyte of Aleister Crowley, an employee of Howard Hughes and a victim of L. Ron Hubbard. Though obscured by wild rumor and sinister presumptions, Parsons’ reputation has survived among devotees of rockets and of magic. His relationship with his mother was intense and possibly incestuous. He has been described as good looking and promiscuous, working his way through the secretarial pool at Aerojet.

still from Secretary found here

Along with his more scientific pursuits, he also tried to create a “Moon Child,” a magic being conjured via mystic ritual who would usher in a new age of unfettered liberty and signal the end of the Christian era and its outmoded morality.

Parsons had no formal education beyond high school. Yet his deep knowledge of explosives, formed through early issues of Amazing Stories and stints with explosive powder companies, earned him a leading role in a small gang performing rocketry experiments at and around Caltech in the ’30s. In those days, rocket science was the province mostly of twisted dreamers, not serious scientists. His gang was not-so-affectionately dubbed the Suicide Squad for the series of alarming explosions they caused on campus. Eventually they were exiled to the Arroyo Seco canyon to conduct experiments in discovering stable, usable rocket fuels. (They discovered plenty of unstable, unusable ones along the way.)

image found here

Then World War II changed things. The U.S. military called upon these smoke-streaked stepchildren of Caltech, hoping to use their crazy rocket gadgets to propel planes into the air in places without adequate runways. Gradually the gang of misfits evolved into the Jet Propulsion Laboratories. Parsons designed new rocket fuel after rocket fuel, and eventually they succeeded in inventing jet-assisted take-off.

image found here

While inventing the castable rocket fuel that made the space age possible, Parsons simultaneously explored the frontiers of inner space, building the other half of his weird reputation. He became enraptured with the writings of the British occultist Aleister Crowley and joined the L.A.-based Agape Lodge of Crowley’s Ordo Templi Orientis. Crowley’s American lieutenants seized on the charismatic and successful scientist as a potential savior for their movement; he began donating almost all his salary to the upkeep of his lodge brethren. 

image found here

Eighteen year old Sarah Northrup began living with Parsons and Parsons’ wife, Sara’s half-sister Helen Northrup; later, Parsons and Sara became involved in an affair, which caused strife with Helen and eventually led to Helen leaving with another Lodge member, Wilfred Smith, who also had a reputation as a legendary womaniser.

Wilfred Smith found here

After the war Parson’s occult activism attracted the young L. Ron Hubbard into his life and home. The pulp writer, pre-Dianetics, took off for Florida with Jack’s mistress, Sarah Northrup, and most of his money, supposedly to buy boats to bring to California and launch a business operation they’d jointly own. Hubbard never came back. The official Scientology line –unsupported by any evidence–is that Hubbard was sent by Naval Intelligence to break up Parsons’ evil occult sex ring.

Hubbard found here

During his last days Parsons was reduced to working for Hollywood movies, making tiny explosive squibs that mimicked a man being shot. This from someone who once dreamed of blasting man into outer space. Some people regard the 1952 explosion that killed him in his Pasadena backyard lab as mysterious. One close pal, though, didn’t see much of a puzzle. He noted that “Jack used to sweat a lot and [a coffee can in which he was mixing explosives] just slipped out of his hand and blew him up.”

A crater on the dark side of the Moon has been named after Parsons. His last girlfriend, Marjorie “Candida” Cameron went on to become a successful painter and actress in avant-garde films. She is sometimes cited as the inspiration behind the Eagles song “Hotel California”

image found here