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2.1.8

Incantations of the Yellow Morning: Reading the Conspiracy Theorists.
For years on and off, from the time I was a senior in high school until the time I moved to Salt Lake City, I used to work in a great vintage clothing and “junque” store, which is still around, now quite the Topeka underground landmark, called Pastense. It’s no longer downtown, in the city’s oldest still-standing house, above Mother Earth, an ancient decayed headshop and record store, but it still exists. The owner, S_____, would oftentimes give me an unimaginably knotted gigantic ball of her recently-acquired, long-neglected jewelry to untangle.

I would find a comfy spot in the loft above the shop, and be lost in that precise universe of those chains and beads for hours, bringing down handfuls of bizarre findings: baby teeth, folded, brittle love notes, strange tiny plastic animals. Among the delicate gold chains, the old Deco brooches, those forgotten mementos were the real gems.

I love the idea of hidden things and meanings, uncovering secrets; finding information that may pass as Truth. I love the whole idea that there are whole other uncommon histories to explore; I love clues and mysteries, and making sense out of jumbles.

So, my interest in the esoteric and paranormal is no surprise, and it seems that I would also naturally be interested in conspiracy theories that seem to accompany these subjects. I must; however, I recently discovered, be on a very superficial level. I’m pretty sure there are more than the official Warren Commission findings and the 9-11 report. I love reading about Bilderberger, and some of those moon landing photographs and footage, well…

But that’s pretty mainstream within the conspiracy theories (oxymoronic as that may be.) I recently watched a couple conspiracy oriented videos on You Tube, and it piqued my interest; I decided to go to the source. I rented a David Icke DVD from Netflix, and checked out his Tales from the Time Loop. I also rented Alex Jones’ film Terrorstorm, and put Richard Hoagland’s new book, Dark Mission: The Secret History of NASA on hold at the library.

Hoagland irritates me quite a bit— and the way he seems to jump all over anyone’s slightest vulnerability really turns me off. It’s just been little particular things and conversational nuances I’ve heard within his reports and conversations on Coast to Coast. I decided to get over my probably petty personal opposition to his personality, and give the ideas a chance.

I didn’t get too far with his Dark Mission book; I can say it might be the most boring book I have ever attempted to read. I’m definitely a book purist; I believe in not skipping around, and reading introductions, footnotes, endnotes, front page to back page. I am also a committed reader; if I make it to about page 40 of any given book, I usually consider myself locked in ‘til the finish.

I could probably count the books I put down after the page 40 point on one hand, and some were so bad I even remember them; Annie E. Proloux’s The Shipping News, Francine Prose’s Hunters and Gatherers, Delillo’s The Body Artist. With Hoagland’s, I now must bring my other hand up. I even tried that skipping around thing to find something interesting, or to care about. Alas, I found it fairly unreadable—it was not in any way ‘difficult’, necessarily outrageous or inflammatory, or poorly written. It was simply boring, and I could not force myself to sustain an interest. I promptly returned it to the library, so the next person on its huge waiting list can take a spin.

David Icke’s DVD was likewise boring and unwatchable, as there was no menu and its one scene started in the middle of a narration/interview with a mumbling shaman that looped over and over. I’m hoping it was simply a defective DVD, but I’ve no desire to find out after trying to understand the point of what it was all about.

I actually find David Icke himself a pretty fascinating character; aside from his anger and outrageous ideas, I get a sense that his quest itself is authentic, and there’s something endearing about his eccentricitites—his wearing of turquoise, his bid to uncover Truth and destroy evil, etc. However misguided or even out of line I feel he is, I respect his passion.

Although I in no way ‘believe’ the reptilian-alien scenario, I’m intrigued by the entire mythology of its detailed storylines and possible meanings. After reading Cosmic Serpent, (a book I highly recommend) I began looking to these contemporary reptilian myths as a possible collective-psychic stories that may describe some aspects of DNA. Icke’s book is fairly well-written and readable, I simply could not get past the illogical nature of his assertions and seemingly completely uninvestigated ‘truths.’

He seems to take any ranting from any incredible source that backs up his already-formed opinions and throw it out as fact. For example, he relates the stories of a woman who claims to have knowledge of Mormons’ strong affiliations with Satanism and ritual abuse—which is a claim/legend that did come about around the same time as the whole larger ritual abuse false memory wave in the 1980s. There were investigations, internal and external, within the Mormon Church, and it was found to be fallacious, as it was in the larger context.

The stories related by the woman to Icke are simply absurd, and go far beyond the standard anti-Mormon occult-symbols-on-the temple or the tired old ‘magic underwear’ hype. Her claims even seem to hint at a possible psychosis of some kind: she claims to have seen the Mormon prophet himself tied to a chair in a secret black magic ritual, produced babies for sacrificial killings, been taken to underground places and caves, mind control notions, etc.

In short, Icke takes testimonies like this as fact, and although I think there’s a lot to learn from such stories, it’s difficult for me to abide with the relation of the stories with a narration such as Icke’s—from a point of reactionary, gullible belief rather than inquiry. There’s a need and weakness that comes through, and it’s so unpalatable I’m inclined to throw the whole conspiracy out with the theorist.

As for Alex Jones, Terrorstorm was a fairly well-produced DVD. By the time I watched it however, the entire conspiracy thing was wearing a little thin on my sensibilities. There’s something very androcentric and testosterone-driven about the entire business. Indeed, clicking on a few links at Jones’s Prison Planet site, I began smelling something familiar; unfortunately, it was rotten and not the incense and old tang of metal, those gems of Pastense. No this was really stinky; anti-gay rhetoric and anti-feminist propaganda will surely be found to line the floors of any real prison, on any planet.

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