Christine Gallagher. False Prophet Suffers, but not stigmata.

Weeeeeeeee. I feel a burst of gleeeeeeeee.
Golly fools and their money are so easily parted. I think I might start up a religion of my own. Hubbard did it and he got spanking rich and what a laugh he must have had. Clearly the more ludicrous the claims the more gullible people prise open their wallets.
Might not work in Ireland though, we're becoming just a tad suspicious of snake oil peddlers. I may have missed the boat.
Observe.
From today's Indo
"RTE last night denied claims that a legal gag order had been placed on the popular 'Liveline' show over comments made about controversial visionary Christina Gallagher.

Callers were warned to tone it down on the popular phone-in programme on RTE radio yesterday after they spoke out against the woman, who claims to suffer stigmata, and her self-styled House of Prayer.

Liveline host Joe Duffy said callers would have to be careful what they said or risk being the subject of a lawsuit after several people rang the programme yesterday and spoke of their personal experiences with the self-styled prophet."

Several callers, including those who support Ms Gallagher, were responding to claims made in a Sunday newspaper at the weekend concerning the apparent wealth of the self-proclaimed "visionary" who claims to receive messages from the Virgin Mary.

The two-page newspaper feature, complete with photographs of a BMW, a sprawling mansion and pictures showing Ms Gallagher leaving a local DIY shop with a trolley full of household goods, claims she is living a life of luxury with a multi-million euro property portfolio and top-of-the-range luxury cars, despite not having any visible means of support or income.

Crumlin-based solicitor Donal Corrigan, who reportedly called the newspaper's claims "gutter journalism" was unavailable for comment yesterday and did not return phone calls when contacted by the Irish Independent at his office yesterday.

The newspaper published photographs of a palatial mansion in the seaside town of Malahide, north Co Dublin, where Christina Gallagher is reported to have moved into two years ago.

The €4m home, No 2 Abington, is set on 1.2 acres in the luxurious private estate set on manicured lawns with plush water fountains and sculptures. Well-heeled neighbours include former Boyzone star Ronan Keating and pop star Nicky Byrne of Westlife.

But House of Prayer supporter Fr Gerard McGinty claimed that Ms Gallagher is merely staying at the mansion as a guest "to get away from it all".

He denied she owns the mansion, an expensive BMW or a string of properties in her native Co Mayo as the newspaper and Liveline callers had claimed.

Ms Gallagher came to the public's attention 20 years ago when she claimed she saw visions of the Virgin Mary and receives regular messages from her.

Since then she has built up an empire of House of Prayer "churches" in America and Mexico as well as the original House of Prayer on Achill Island.

The Co Mayo centre now pulls in busloads of pilgrims, many from America, despite not having official Church status or charitable status."

To get away from it all, eh? What exactly is she 'getting away' from? Legitimate questions?

Donal Corrigan happens to be the old fraud's solicitor. But back to Christine, if anyone is interested in this scrote I'll pop her website up for you to take a gander. Think The Tom Cruise video said nothing? He ain't go nuthin' on Christine.
Here, knock yourself out. http://www.christinagallagher.org/en/

But I understand if you don't want to bother, it's the usual unsubstantiated mumbo jumbo bollocky poppycockery ALL frauds waffle on about (Right Sylvia Browne?). Nothing but broad guesses, nothing specific, lots of religious hocus pocus. (fuck me, you'd think the 'mother of Christ' would be able to give date, like 'Now Christine, God was saying last night that he'll DEFINITELY be sending a tsunami on Thursday, 3rd of Feb, so if you could just go on national television and warn all those people, cheers you're a peach.'
But oh no, that never happens, nothing that the great 'seer' can pinpoint as a fact. Why would she need to do THAT?
Fucking frauds, they're all the bloody same, they have nothing, they can produce nothing, all the can do is suggest and hope that something might happen SOMEWHERE in the world that they can go 'oh look I previsioned that.' (NCFOM)
They are the eunuchs of humanity.
Poisoned, delusional, empty, money and power hungry, thieves and liars, this succubus is no better than any other psychic/Reiki/animal telepath/fortune teller/snake oil peddler. They are show men and women, step right up folks, fill the coffers and I will feed you any lie you wish.

This old 'simple' fraud is one rich minnie, and no amount of bullshit can cover it. Have a look at this site and pay careful attention to he bold. http://www.unitypublishing.com/aug30_98.html

Everyone see that? Far from 'getting away from it all' Old Christine is simply getting it all. Another fucking leech, another vulture circling the weak and the faithful, waiting to pick them off, one 'vision' at a time.
I"m glad this mountebank is being called out on her swindle, I'm glad people are FINALLY opening their eyes to this sort of ridiculous trickery. It's easy enough for a crafty fox to claim she's receiving messages from the invisible head rooster in sky, the chickens will flock to her, then she can have her fill. But people need to stop being fucking chickens and start being... er, something else, but hopefully something not idiotic.

Visionary seers, I am AGAINST them.

Murdered Children are chatty.

Charles J SIbley is a scouse 'psychic' who has got his nethers in a twist over 'honest mediums' like himself getting a bum rap.
To combat this he has released the above garbled tripe. If you have ten minutes to spare this morning, have a listen. See if you can listen to it without your blood pressure rising. See if you can look at the faces of the murdered children with speech bubbles coming from them without wanting to go find Charlie and strangle him with your bare hands.

So called psychics who use murdered children to further their agenda. I am AGAINST them.

Animal Telepathy is a load of bull wank.

Regular readers to this blog will know I get ever so slightly hot under the collar every time that fucking mumbo jumbo bollocky bull wank Reiki is mentioned anywhere near me. It really does have the capacity to blow a fuse deep in my brain. It enrages me that fucking hucksters and snake oil peddlers prey on the feeble minded and the sick to shill them out of their money. ENRAGES me I tell you. it makes me want to kick things clear across the room. If I was Queen they would be first to the wall, believe me.
But-while scoffing down bacon and eggs not one hour ago-I have since learned that it is not JUST reiki-spit spit- that can send me to the abyss of howling fury. In fact I was horrified to find that ' Practitioners of Animal Telepathy' have the very same bloody effect.
This is not good. I don't need that level of hostility rising within me when I am trying to eat. I should probably start switching off the radio during breakfast. Or stop listening to Brenda Power at any rate. I may have mentioned this before. Why do I torture myself so?

WHAT LEVEL OF FUCKING HALF WIT BELIEVES IN ANIMAL TELEPATHY?

Well it turns out that our country is RAMPANT with fucking half wits. Not five minutes after the fraud and huckster was on some other idiot rang the bloody show and wanted to send a PICTURE of her DOG to the 'healer' so that the 'healer and telepath' could READ the dog's mind via the fucking photo. When Brenda Power said, 'Make sure it's a clear picture where you can see the dogs eyes, that's very important' I gave up trying to eat, flung my breakfast into the bigger of the cats, kicked the press under the sink and tore in here to look online.

Could this be true? Are we really over run with simpletons?
It would appear so.
I found a web page, oh what a web page. I have been reading it, steam rising gently from my ears.
Here, allow me to share with you some of the wonder claims made by these oh so gifted individuals.

"I offer hypnotherapy (analytical and suggestion), Past Life Regression therapy, Tapas Acupressure, Reiki or Integrated Energy Therapy (Healing with the Energy of Angels), and I have to say I really enjoy my work! When a person comes to see me, they are offered a safe, confidential service. They can choose one of the therapies on it's own, or sometimes a combination of various therapies can prove useful. It is like calling a plumber to your house - he comes with a bag of tools, and won't know which tool will be necessary until he assesses the situation. Both Reiki and the Integrated Energy Therapy are also available to animals to help them kick-start their immune systems. Any therapies offered to either humans or animals are not a substitute for medical or veterinarian treatment, but can serve a purpose as a "complementary therapy." Absent healing can also be organised."


"Baby Whispering: Jane has recently been asked to use her telepathic abilities to communicate with small babies, which she calls ‘Baby Whispering’ as she can relate how they are feeling, what they are seeing and areas of pain, as well as asking specific questions, something that has helped greatly in treatment and diagnosis. However she will only do this for babies under medical care and with the permission of their doctor."

"I am a Reiki Master/teacher. An animal trainer and behaviourist for many years, I have found that the holistic approach to problems can bring about rapid results. Reiki Works for you and your animal companion. Stressed out humans and animals benefit greatly from Reiki therapy. Balance the energy of mind, body and soul. Non invasive hands on healing."

"I have been a member of the Bi-Aura Foundation since 2002. I treat a variety of ailments from people being simply run down and tired all the time, migraine, arthritis and the list goes on. I also treat animals big and small. If you require further information please do not hesitate to contact me for a chat."


Sweet Chulutha on a unicycle. The Bi-Aura foundation? That's this crowd, http://www.bi-aura.com/ Saying you've been a member is like saying you've been with a traveling circus for a few years, so bloody what? Just because it has a dicky official sounding title doesn't make it any less of a breeding ground for purveyors of poppycockery, they're just better organised.

Ask yourself this chumlies! Why will the fucking baby whisperer only 'do' her shit for a baby under medical care? If she's just 'reading' the babies minds why the need for a doctor's permission? Wouldn't the parent's permission do just as well. Surely the baby can 'okay' it too, since it appear to be so chatty.

How bloody convenient that the huckster shower have moved on to animals to read.
Picture the scene. Having forked over her hard earned money for a session, a lady is astounded to be tol...

'Hi Mrs Quin, Bobby tell me he's a little sad today.'
'Really? Why?" Lifts overweight pug onto lap.
'He's telling me he feels fear of abandonment. Have you left his for an unusually long time recently?'
'Oh my God, I DID leave him, remember I told you a few weeks back about my daughter's wedding. OH gosh, I had to leave him at home all day.'
'Ah, that's it, that's what he trying to show me. He says he was alone for hours, and very frightened.'
'Oh Bobby, I never knew! I'm so sorry.'
'He's telling me he forgives you.'
'Oh Bobby!'

Cold reading, guess work and good memory for details previously learned. Shit, who doesn't leave their dog alone. And it's not like Bobby can suddenly pipe up, 'Steady on old chap, I'm feeling rather fine today. I was just wondering when we can get the hell out of this stuffy front room and go have some lunch.'


The plumber analogy is my favourite. Yeah a plumber doesn't know what tool is right for the job until he sees what the problem is, but then he fixes the problem with them. What he doesn't do it take them OUT of his tool bag, call someone ELSE to fix the actual problem and then charge you for 'complimentary plumbing'.

Oh these people make me sick to my stomach. I hate them with the power of a thousand suns. They should be illegal, they should be hounded in groups and pelted with tomatoes. They should be horsewhipped. They should -every single one of them- be made have a disclaimer with 'we're are charlatans, charlatans are we' under all their amazing claims.

I've just heard a long and plaintive wail from my kitchen. Using my own mental telepathy I can 'sense' the bigger of the cats wants to be let out.
Zounds! I was right.
Where can I hang my plaque announcing my 'unique and fucking awesome power'?

I remember the lilac biological incubator attempting to get me to bring Puddy to a 'faith Healer' when she had her run in with cancer that time. I chose the vet, assuming, as most good pet owners will, that she needed medical attention far more than she needed some gruesome quack 'laying' his gnarly hands on her. Puddy is at this moment killing the circulation to my lower legs and purring up a storm. Imagine that. Without the 'inner ancient knowledge of the spirit world' my vet was able to tackle what could have ended her life quick smart.

If you need a bloody quack to mentally read what's troubling your dog you need to stop having a dog, seriously. Get a gold fish.

Quacks, I am so firmly against them it makes little squeaks of incandescent rage escape me unbidden.

Creationism just got techno on our asses.

Long post, read it if you want. Personally I'm so stunned at the reasoning and sheer all round lunacy displayed below I had to read it twice before it sunk in just how crazy these folk are.
As an avowed agnostic, i.e a great big fence sitter, leaning heavily towards athesim, I often say things like, 'oh now look Za`zoo, let the people believe whatever they want, sure they're not doing any harm. If it comforts them to believe in a big dude with a beard and robes will be there when they die, what of it?'
But then just as I am at peace with the world and all its many foibles The Salon writes up the following and my peace of mind is completely shattered, utterly blunderbussed into oblivion.
Observe.

.May 31, 2007 | PETERSBURG, Ky -- The Creation Museum swung open its stegosaurus-guarded gates to the public Monday, and I have to say it's out of this world. For those of us raised in natural history Meccas like the American Museum in New York, the Smithsonian in Washington, or the Field in Chicago, the beautifully designed museum induces an eerie vertigo. All the familiar characters are here: T. rex, giant skeletons of triceratops and apatosaurus, a pterosaur spreading its wings above the crowd, live exhibits of birds, amphibians and reptiles, and the dripping, hooting and chirping soundtrack of the primeval forest. There are also a couple of unfamiliar faces, for a natural history museum, in the tan and finely muscled bodies of Adam and Eve.

At the ribbon cutting, Ken Ham, the rugged-faced CEO and president of Answers in Genesis, the nonprofit ministry that built the museum, tells an enthusiastic crowd that the Creation Museum will undo the damage done 82 years ago when Clarence Darrow put William Jennings Bryan on the stand in the famous Scopes trial in Dayton, Tenn. "It was the first time the Bible was ridiculed by the media in America, and that was a downward turning point for Christendom," Ham says. "We are going to undo all of that here at the Creation Museum. We are going to answer the questions Bryan wasn't prepared to, and show that belief in every word of the Bible can be defended by modern science."

The Book of Genesis, that famous first chapter of the Bible, which Ham's group has interpreted to claim that the universe was created in six 24-hour days a mere 6,000 years ago, serves as the blueprint for the museum. Astronomy, geology and evolution, as they are commonly understood in mainstream science, have no place here. As Ham later tells me, the conclusions of modern science are not to be trusted, as they are biased by the fickle reasoning of man and a modern antagonism toward faith. On the other hand, he says, the Book of Genesis is true "from the first word to the last."


With a staff of nearly 300 employees, Answers in Genesis, devoted to "Biblical apologetics," produces a daily radio program fed to 860 stations, operates a Web site instructing visitors how to out-argue Darwinists, and organizes about 300 traveling lectures each year. It's also a well-oiled money-raising machine and opened the $27 million museum without a penny of debt to banks or lenders.The museum is situated in Petersburg, Ky., just 20 miles southwest of Cincinnati, an area chosen in large part because it's within a one-day drive for two-thirds of the country or 200 million Americans. Recent polls show that 40 percent of all Americans would feel at home with the views put forth in the Creation Museum. Only about an equal percentage accept the underlying message of the country's mainstream science museums. Only 39 percent answer yes to the question, "Do you believe that human beings as we know them developed from earlier species of animals?"

The museum's 49 acres of carefully landscaped grounds are encircled by a tall metal fence. Visitors tempted to enter without paying will be discouraged by armed guards in black state-trooper-like uniforms and attack dogs. On Monday, just outside the fence, a group of 50 die-hard atheists and skeptics are gathered in the light rain under a "Rally for Reason" banner. Overhead, a small airplane pulls a sign that says, "Thou Shalt Not Lie." Edwin Kagin, national legal director for American Atheists, explains that as far as he's concerned, AIG "can teach that things fall up if they want. But we want to make it clear that this nonsense is not accepted by those who do not share its fundamentalist religious views. They are trying to drag us back to the Dark Ages."

Among the damp roadside protesters is Lawrence Krauss, author and physics professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, and a member of the advisory board of Defcon: Campaign to Defend the Constitution, the group that paid for the airplane tugging around the Seventh Commandment. Krauss calls the museum "anti-science" and says it reflects an erosion of American science education, posing "a threat to American kids already struggling just to get the basic concept of what science is and how it works."

Inside, the museum is organized according to the "Six C's of History": creation, corruption, catastrophe, confusion, Christ, and the final C, consummation, which isn't given much time or space in the exhibits because there still isn't consensus on just how the apocalypse will come down or who goes to heaven and when. At the Creation exhibit, two young T. rexes peacefully watch fish swim in a placid pond. Two curly-haired robotic kids play nearby. In any other place, this would be the setup for a massacre. But this pre-Noah's-flood Jurassic Park is benign. The animals are vegetarians and plants don't have thorns. The fossil record, says the museum, confirms all of this.

Mark Looy, co-founder of Answers in Genesis, is walking me through the museum. He explains that the great flood is responsible for the fossil record. Plants and animals are distributed in different strata based not on the time of their formation, but on where the flood waters moved them before receding. Those areas where no thorns or other defensive or hostile plants are found, he explains, are pre-flood forms.

Later Ham tells me that his skeptics, who cling to the "millions of years" theory, are wrong about when dinosaurs stalked the Earth. He cites a recent discovery of intact blood vessels in some T. rex tissue, suggesting that the finds are only thousands of years old, not 65 million, as paleontologists say. "They will try to come up with an explanation to keep the fossils old," says Ham, "but we don't need to. The explanation of their age is already right there in the Bible."

For generations, paleontologists have shown that dinosaurs and humans never trod the Earth at the same time, that in fact with the exception of birds (modern-day dinosaurs), they never got within 60 million years of each other on the timeline of natural history. Not so, says Looy. "They all had to exist at the same time because they were all made on the same day. There may not be any fossil evidence showing dinosaurs and people in the same place at the same time. But it is clearly written that they were alive at the same time."
In the Garden of Eden in Genesis, says Ham, when everything was still perfect, animals weren't predators or prey, so the museum's designer, Patrick Marsh, is able to crowd grizzly bears, wildcats, zebras, kangaroos, an iguanodon and several other dinosaurs into the same little chunk of primeval Eden. After the fall, such a scene would result in a bloody mess.

Buddy Davis, a technician and artist who has also made dinosaurs for use in secular exhibits, tells me he's much happier seeing his dinosaurs at the Creation Museum, promoting faith in the Bible. "I want to see God get credit for his creation," he says. "I look around and see so much beauty -- even if it is marred by sin -- and to think that it all just came from an explosion billions of years ago is just wrong. To me it's obvious the hand of God is behind it. As scripture says, 'They are without excuse' who do not believe."

The Garden of Eden presents a series of scenes down a "trail of life." In the first, a bearded, dark-haired Adam beckons to a mountain lion with one outstretched arm, while the other is wrapped around a little lamb. Smaller animals appear drawn to Adam, who is perhaps naming them, God's first assignment for him. A bit farther along we're introduced to Eve, looking like a great big brown Barbie and staring intently into Adam's eyes. Adam and Eve are naked, and Maggie and Tom Thorne, a pair of Christians visiting from Michigan, are smiling at the scene. They agree it seems a little unfair for God to expect two such well-designed specimens not to get around to sinning pretty quickly. A few yards further we see Adam and Eve again, this time standing in a pool of water, their genitals coyly obscured by lily pads. Now they definitely appear to be grappling with the chemistry that will get them in big trouble.
An oversize cobra-like snake makes an appearance, and before you know it, Eve is holding grape-size, blood-colored fruits in her outstretched hand, offering knowledge of good and evil to a flummoxed-looking Adam. "We're not sure what kind of fruit it was, but we do know it wasn't an apple," says Looy, perhaps to demonstrate the kind of questions the several Ph.D. researchers at the museum are now toiling over in the labs behind the walls of the exhibition space.

In the next scene, after the fall from grace, Adam and Eve, looking far less happy than before, are standing next to two lambs they have slaughtered on a sacrificial stone table. The sacrifice has a practical value -- the original couple are now wearing lambskin suits and the lambs are skinless -- and a spiritual one; the lambs are sacrificed, a visitor explains to me, in partial payment for the debt incurred by Adam and Eve for eating the fruit of knowledge. I tell the visitor it seems unfair for the lamb to pay for their mistake. "Well, it wasn't enough," he says. "God had to send his only Son to pay the ultimate price for their sin." When I tell him that sounds kind of extreme, he looks at me and shakes his head slowly a couple of times before moving on.

Inside the Garden of Eden, Nancy Senai, who is visiting from Lansing, Mich., tells me, "It feels pretty nice to have something that is for God and about God, instead of all the evolution in other places." I ask her if she thinks the history presented here is true. "God said it clearly, and I believe it the way he said it," she says. "Everything else is uncertain."

The great flood, which washed away all life on earth, is the key to understand the Catastrophe exhibit and the museum's version of natural history. After Adam and Eve's original sin, God told Noah to build an ark. He sent him two of every kind of land animal to repopulate the earth. Visitors to the museum walk among robotic representations of Noah and his building crew as they construct a supposedly full-scale section of the boat. After Noah has invited his sinning neighbors onto the ark and warned them of the coming flood, they mock him or are dissuaded from heeding his advice by the small pressures of daily life. The door slides shut and they are left behind to drown in the 40-day deluge that formed everything we see on Earth today, from Mt. Everest to Death Valley.In Ham's view, the great flood explains not only where scientists find fossils today but also the topography of the modern world. The Grand Canyon, he informs me, was made in a matter of days or weeks as the waters of the flood rushed away and the land was reclaimed. In the exhibit, you walk through a winding canyonlike corridor with spinning, dizzying lights into a wide-open room with videos, exhibits and diagrams explaining the hydrology of instant canyon-making. Ham says that instant canyon-making is based on the fact that volcanoes, such as Mount St. Helens, created reservoirs of water for a time in their altered topography. When those reservoirs breached, deep grooves were cut by the flowing water, leading to the fast formation of canyons.

After the flood, Noah's descendants multiply again on Earth, but not quickly or broadly enough to satisfy God, who then introduces a slew of new languages to drive people apart, resulting in their dispersal around the globe. The ensuing C-for-Confusion theme is represented through a gritty and menacing back alley postered with newspaper headlines about the rise in abortion, drug use, homosexuality and teen suicide.

The entire exhibit, in fact, is awfully grim. A montage slide show of fetuses, starving kids, swastikas, tourniquet-bound arms ready for the needle bombard the wall in a room with a soundtrack of blaring sirens, boots marching in unison, and crying kids. In the middle of this urban mess is a big wrecking ball with the words "Millions of Years" carved into it. Ham blames the notion that the Earth is quite a bit older than the Bible suggests for just about all the world's problems. Evolution, which requires large amounts of time for small changes to accumulate into larger ones, makes it far too easy for people not to believe the Bible, he says. And that loss of belief "is at the root of modern evil."

Inside the Confusion exhibit, I strike up a conversation with Tim Shaw, a high school student visiting from Florida. "I don't care how long it took to make the Grand Canyon," he tells me. "It's not how old it is that matters to me. What matters is being right with God. Darwin's theory has no God. It can't be right. I don't know if this story is truer than Darwin's theory, but I do know it's better."

That last line alone is enough to send shivers down my weary spine. Might not be truer folks, but it's better. Don't let the facts bother you young man, it just all about how you 'feel.' Huzzah!

The secret.

'Oh give me all your money honey, give it all to meeeeeeeeeee
You do'n need it no more, not now you got meeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
We''ll blow this joint and live wild 'n freeeeeeeee'
Trust me baybee, I'm all that you neeeeeeeeeeeed!"

Well slap my ass and call my lady patch Babs, just when I thought the world of stupidity could not get any more richly packed I find that not only can it, it has.
If mumbo jumbo was a pond, then The Secret is the crud currently floating like an ooze on the top. The Secret is just that, the secret to universal happiness, how to get everything your heart ever desired.
How my chumlywarners? How can we achieve this Nirvana like state, why by asking the universe for it. Squeeze yer many eyes shut and ask away. Visualise it. Wanna new car ? Bigger mickey? Lose weight? Less ear wax? Don't do anything, don't work for it, working is for losers. No No, you just gotta wish really really hard and ask the 'right' questions of the Uber God Answerer (UGA) and the 'Law of attraction' will provide you very heartfelt wishes.
Awesome! Right? Right? And even more funninger and trickyser is that if you ask for things wronglier, the you get the opposite of the shit you asked for, so you better buy the book/video/assorted paraphernalia and learn how to catch the UGAs not very benevolent ear, last thing you want is to be fatter with a gammy leg living in cave with a shrivelled mickey. NU-UH! No SIREEEEEEEBOB!
OH the crapology. Won't someone please think of the mickeys!
I've snickered at The Secret briefly before and ignored it with gusto. Fuck it, I've said aloud, if fools want to part with their hard earned cash in the vain hope that some not fool shyster might know more about their future happiness and contentment than they do, well let them on. Who am I to mock ridicule and damn well POINT AND LAUGH! At least it's not Reiki.
About as good as, but there you go, some people are just dumb.
And I was CONTENT to let this latest chicanery slide right by me, safe in the knowledge that there will always be people who are taken in by fraudsters who conflate mumbo jumbo with scientific sounding stuff in order to validate their ludicrous claims, ain't that how snake oil is sold in the first place? Oh sure, the 'Law of attraction' why I says dat be just loike de law o' gravity, therefore it must be a scientific fact? Right Hoss?
Oh never mind, as I say it was sliding right by me, Oprah never struck me a much of an authority on 'must read books' any way and after the James Frey debacle I thinks she should stick to taking over the world one bored house wife/Jennifer Anniston fan at a time.
But I digress.
I WAS prepared to over look this latest pile of STEAMING BULLSHIT, right up until I took a call this morning. Observe fellow mother sufferers.

'Doodle deep doodle deep doodle deep.' (most hated sound, our phone)
'Harro?" 'Me- still with toothbrush in side of mouth.
'Hello.' Mother, just a hint of antagonism. A distant peel of hostility.
'Horr on.' Drop phone, wander back to bathroom, rinse and spit, wash face carefully, pat face dry, examine toes, consider world politics, take deep breath, straighten shoulder, wander back to the bedroom, take up phone.
'Hello.'
We engage in some mindless drivel about houses, Etheline, the weather, whether or not Angeline Ball still sings and what not. All perfectly innocent, but I am not fooled, she's sitting on something the way a kestrel sits on wire over looking a warren, she's waiting for a slip up, a casual moment where she can dive in screeching and flapping, talons to the ready.
I know, I am the rabbit.
'Bobby Ewing is looking so much better these days.' She says after a lull. Bobby, my mother's overweight bug eyed spaniel. He has cancer, she's been treating this by taking him to a faith hearler- and lately, a vet.
'That's very good news. '
My rabbit nose twitches. My wabbity senses are all a flutter. Hide hide.
It just goes to show, if you have faith' -the word slips out, the kestrel is dropping carrots outside my burrow- 'you can achieve anything'
We wait. I stay deep in the safe warminess of the burrow, not today wabbit botherer.
But what's this? A scraping sound? And a skritch skritch for above? Can kestrels fucking dig? I don't remember that from animal planet?
'I've been hearing all about this new book-
The skritch skritch is growing louder, hide hide, dammit, why can't I turn around! I knew I shouldn't have picked a rabbit, what the fuck made me do that? Why didn't I turn myself into a ferret? Or a wolverine? Sheet, even a badger would do it.
'- it's called The Secret. Have you heard of it?'
Trapped.
'I have.'
'It's supposed to tremendous.'
'I haven't heard that much about it.' I lie.
'Oh,' MY mother says disbelievingly. 'I'm surprised to hear that. Normally you're very up to it on books.'
Up to it?
'No, I mean I've heard it mentioned somewhere, but like I say I don't know much about it at all.'
My mother digests this one. I go back to breathing and possibly chewing on on of the carrots.
'Well-'
We waffle on for another few minutes and say our goodbyes, all cordial and polite, stiff and a little formal.
The moment she hangs up I gallop down stairs and spend/waste precious moments of my life checking out what I know to be the next few months of my life. I need to know mine enemy. And oh how velly vexed I am. This shit is legion, it's so ridiculous I can see Matter Fatcat wallowing in it and regurgitating the waffle almost whole. I am in for it, there is mumbo jumbo here that even the sanest person will have trouble hacking through.
I am fatmammycat's noxious spleen.

I hate Reiki.

I'm against it!
Phooey, bosh, chicanery, poppycockery! Panacea for the idiotic, mumbo jumbo bollockology, healing for the unhealable. Spit spit, hack cough, spit! We hates it, oh yes.
Reiki.
There are very few words in use today that can instill a greater sense of rage and loathing in me than reiki. Typing it makes my back teeth clench, my brow lower and my nostrils wrinkle in feral rage. Even the words 'child abuser' don't make me as incensed.
For some reason reiki, the snake oil crappola wankfest that it, is very popular in this island. I don't understand how this can be except to ponder that many fools and their money are very easily parted.
Frankly I think the practicioners of this shite should be taken to a public square and horse whipped to within an inch of the miserable charlatan lives. After which, when they complain of the pain, they should be told 'channel some fucking energy and heal yourself you snake oil peddler!' and perhaps have salt flung on them.
The fact that anyone can set themselves up as a 'healer' should alert people to the fact that reiki- spit spit- is a load of old hooey. As I said to someone yesterday, I can set myself up here, buy a massage couch, incense, a chart of the human body locating the 'chakras' (glossy naturally) and perhaps a CD of fucking whale sounds or water running (to save money I propose leaving a tap on somewhere) and hey presto changeo I too am a reiki practicioner. Now I can 'heal' folk without ever touching them by locating their 'chi' and unblocking their 'chakras' and 'channeling healing energy' towards any ailment that my dupe, no, wait scratch that, client might have.
If I pay some money to someone else I can become a 'master reiki' in less than a month, then I can teach other charlatans to become 'Masters' and whop di friggen do, we're all rubbing our hands together- but only to awaken our inner healing heat you understand.
Now you can also do 'distant healing' this negates the need for an office at all! You simply send me a list of your problems and I send healing energy, for a small fee of course. How cool it that? I can be painting my nails on a Saturday while sorting out your back pain and colon cancer or gum disease. Feel the power rubes, feel it!
It enrages me that this shite is considered 'complimentary medicine'. Complimentary suggests it goes hand in hand with traditional medicine, boosting its powers and providing much needed assistance.
It isn't.
It's a leech. It latches on to the sick and the infirm, sticking its filthy suckers into them, filling their head with hogwash and twee terminology, content to trick and pilfer the funds of people who are either A) foolish enough to fall for it, or B), so ill that they will desperately try anything.
I don't care at all about A, but I care a very great deal about B.
Reiki is the pilot fish of medicine, content to trail in the wake of real healing, nibbling like a parasite on what it finds, content to bottom feed because it know it can do no more than that.
Reiki, I'm against it!

Psychics.

I'm against them!
Might as well get that out there first, just so we know where we stand. I think they are a load of hooey.
I'm sitting here snuffling quietly to myself and half watching TV3 (whispered). Weekly psychic Una Power has just come on to take viewers calls. The women-of course- are varied this week.
Woman 1 is clearly young-you can hear it in her voice- and is wondering whether she should split up with her partner with whom she has had a baby six weeks ago.
Una consults her cards, asks a couple of leading questions, including have they been fighting? has he children with other women...he has? Bam! yes, here it is, Ace of Clubs, good card for parenting, but not for a patrner. Girl seems happily resigned to fate. Look it's in the cards. Una says sympathically, well perhaps you can remain friends. Yeah you're right, young woman agrees- who surely might have thought about incompatablitiy before she had a sprog with this man- thanks. She sound delighted that the man will be a good provider-financially speaking. Problem solved. Yah Ace of Clubs, you go! whoo whoo!!!!
Woman 2- Bubbly cheery sort, doing a spot of cleaning and housekeeping, sounds jolly, happy-go-lucky. Asks our great psychic, should I try for a different job? Una asks... Do you have a dream job in mind?
Girl says yes, I'd love to work with people I"m outgoing and I'd love it!
Una shuffles the cards frowns and then beams at screen. Ten of Spades! You can get a new job, might take a bit ot training.
Really? our housekeeper shrieks! That's brilliant!!!
Maybe a ...with an estate agent or something.
That would be my dream job!!!!!
Well there ya go now, go down tomorrow and talk to a few agents, maybe after a bit of training you might get a job with them, the presenter of the show says laughing at the excitement in the girl's voice.
Thanks a million, yer brillinat Una!!! Than's so much!!!! girl squeals. ( Jesus, I think wincing, she really is fucking upbeat) Big round of applause for Ten of Spades!
Woman three come on- sound older, middle class, pushy and forthright. Should we move house? she demands. Me and my husband should we?
Una ask her husbands starsign.
Lady gives it, he is fishy, she is a bull. Quelle surprise, not! Una shuffles cards, declares women is boss and husband is dragging feet.
Woman agrees in awed voice. Una holds card up, Nine of Hearts, the 'wish card' you will move house! Huzzah. I blow nose, search frantically for remote.
Nine of Hearts, take a bow!
Last woman. She is older, voice hesitant and heart breakingly sad. I stop searching for remote. She is asking about her son. About their relationship. What can she do. Una -as alert to genuine emotion as a dog is to the scent of a bitch on heat- hears the quiver.
Are you fighting? She asks. Yes, woman says. What age is your son?
27. He has fallen in with a bad crowd, got in trouble... we used to have such a good realtionship now ...we don't talk.
Una shuffles frantically, I don't remember what card she picked because I was concentrating on her answer.
Don't give up on him he needs you right now. It's easter, send him a card ask him for lunch. Don't give up on him.
'I won't.' Broken hearted woman promises.
Good. Una says, somewhat smugly.
What about the first woman with the baby, I yell at the screen. She should give up on the father of her baby even though it has only been six weeks since the birth and her hormones are probably all over the camp!!!!But this woman who surely knows and loves her son after 27 years gets the trite, don't give up ? What the fuck is she supposed to do? he is her son, she will never 'give up.'
And then her segment is over. Yah for Una.
Why do women do it? Why do they ring in and ask questions of a stranger, questions they all readly know the answer to?
Boyfriend not what you thought? Leave him. ( although personally I'd try not having children with him first)
Don't like your current job- leave it.
Want to move house and can afford it, husband doesn't object-move.
Son in with bad crowd-don't give up.
It is hardly rocket science is it? Is it? Is it? Oh shit I don't know.

HOLLYWOOD TAT_ Britney's baby, Presten, probably has a fractured skull from where he fell out of his highchair a few days ago and his numbskull parents didn't notice until yesterday that all was not well. My psychic feeling on this one is that people should watch small babies closer and make sure they don't fall out of highchairs-but hey, that's just me.