The Truth is Out There (Maybe)

I am a close personal friend of Taylor Swift and last week I played the piano for her. She is so impressed by my progress over the past couple of years that she has asked me to perform on her next album and accompany her on her next world tour.

How incredible is that? 

It is totally incredible and it is, of course, totally false. 

Nevertheless it is more believable than some of the bullshit that has been spread across the planet in the past decade or so. This explosion of lies has increased exponentially with the rise of social media. 

Coincidence? I think not. 

Two things surprise me about the spread of lies as “truth”. The first thing is that the lies are becoming more and more outrageous. The second thing is that people actually believe them despite the evidence to the contrary. 

It isn’t surprising that there are now far more conspiracy theories out there and that more and more people believe them. Nor is it surprising that a lot of politicians are blatantly lying to the world. 

Take Donald Trump for example. This man is the worst person ever to have held the position of president of the United States. He had four years of power and it was a total disaster. And yet he won the last election and today he will be back in office for yet another four years. Some of the lies he told in his campaign are breathtaking. 

Such blatant lying isn’t limited to just the United States. In Britain we have Boris Johnson who has given Trump a run for his money in the past.

BBC news has a “fact checker” where they analyse statements by prominent politicians and indicate the veracity of some of these outlandish statements basically indicating whether they are true, exaggerated or simply blatant lies. Yet I have read comments from people online who refuse to believe that their politician of choice is lying and say mad things like “The BBC is totally biased against the Conservative Party and is lying!”

One of the things I’ve noticed about such people is that they simply refuse to admit that people like Trump and Johnson are capable of telling lies. The same is true for conspiracy theorists. 

I’ve mentioned “Flat Earthers” before and this applies doubly to them. They refuse to believe that the Earth is a sphere despite the overwhelming evidence to support it. They believe that the Earth is a giant frisbee and although scientists can prove that it is not, such people seem to thrive on this and tell scientists that they are liars and part of a global conspiracy to fool the people. 

I mean WHY?

What would be the advantages of denying that the Earth is a pancake? And I’ve found that the more you try to convince such a person that the Earth is a globe, the more entrenched they become in their views, the more angry they become and they more they think that you are an idiot for believing that the planet if a sphere. It’s like they are digging themselves in and will never ever admit the folly of their views. 

Such people claim that there is tons of “evidence” out there – and they are right. The “evidence” is on social media sites and comes from nutcases who believe that Terry Pratchett’s Discworld is based on the shape of our own planet. 

Here is an amusing rant from comedian David Mitchell about this:

What he says is exactly true. The rise of the internet and social media makes it easy for kooks to get a voice and spread disinformation as if it is gospel. In the past certain conspiracy theorists have struggled to get their weird views to the world, having to resort to being interrogated on mainstream TV or having to write books about their views. 

One of the best examples of this is David Icke, who I have mentioned on this blog before. Back in the 1980s he was a footballer and became a sports presenter on TV. But something happened and in 1991 he appeared on a chat show and claimed that he was the “Son of the Godhead” and wore turquoise to “channel positive” energy. 

He was ridiculed for it. 

Yet now, over 30 years after that ill-fated interview, he is a full blown conspiracy theorist and talks to thousands of people who are willing to believe him about things like interdimensional reptilian beings who can shape-shift and have been manipulating humanity through fear so that they can feed off our negative energy. He thinks that The Matrix is based on fact.

He has written loads of books on this and many other weird fantasies that he claims to be true. And his army of followers is growing. If you are so inclined you can check some of his nonsense on You Tube. I’ve watched a couple of interviews with him and they are hilarious. 

The reason for actually writing this post was because of recent events in the UK that involve Elon Musk using his Twitter account (I refuse to call it X) to launch attacks on the UK government based on lies. And of course liar number one is becoming President today. 

I wonder where this is all going to lead us in the future? 

Imagine if I suddenly became an “influencer” on social media and started my own conspiracy theories. Do you think that people would believe me? Do you think I could get away with telling blatant lies and peddling them as if they were the absolute truth? 

I couldn’t do it – I am genuine about this. There is a filter in my head that would prevent me from inventing a story, say, about the royal family being descended directly from dinosaurs, no matter how much I would love it to be true. 

In fact, I couldn’t do it because somebody has already beaten me to it. Apparently, according to Mr Icke, the royal family, including King Charley boy, are all shape-shifting lizards. In fact it’s not just them – it’s most famous people. In fact, according to this video – you and I might be reptilian-human hybrids:

Who would have thought it? 

Progressive Thoughts - Day 22

Today’s song is another by British prog rockers  Arena. The song is called The Butterfly Man and is the song that introduced me to the band.

When I first heard this song, a cold shiver ran down my spine and I was struck by its spooky nature. 

My mind ran amok because the subject matter fits perfectly within the darker recesses of my imagination, the menacing section where I conjure up weird monsters that would scare me shitless should I ever be unfortunate enough to encounter them.

Such a creature is The Butterfly Man, presumably so-called because he (or it) is a collector.

Unfortunately, rather than gathering insects, the target of his collection are human souls, imprisoning them in a place from where there is no escape. 

Nobody is safe.

The implication is that the creature is not human and waits in the dark catching people when they least expect it.

I love this kind of stuff and it pushes all the buttons that put me on edge. Ironically that kind of excites me because although I am scared, I love the concept of a monster kidnapping people and effectively locking them away forever.

It’s a terrifying prospect and it would make a great book and/or movie.

I have a bit of a love hate relationship with creepy films to be honest. I love to watch them and be terrified by them but later, when I go to bed, they have ingrained themselves in my subconscious mind and consequently I sometimes struggle to sleep as my weird imagination elaborates on an already terrifying premise. 

Even if I do eventually sleep, my dreams are invaded by the monsters I have witnessed, only this time they are magnified to the point where I wake up in a cold sweat.

Basically they induce nightmares and I hate that.

“You’re looking tired,” people will say.

“Yes – I watched  scary film last night and didn’t sleep very well.”

“You utter wimp!”

One of my favourite wacky conspiracy theorists, David Icke, believes in a variation to The Butterfly Man. If you listen to the lyrics of the song, the Butterfly Man lies in wait in the dark on the edge of your consciousness, waiting to strike like a snake.

According to Icke, there are interdimensional beings that can exist just outside of our perception. If you have ever been alone and suddenly had an intense feeling that someone or something is there with you then the chances are that you have encountered one of these beings. Icke says that sometimes these creatures accidentally reveal themselves to us.

So if you are alone and have a crawling sensation something being present and, maybe, catch a glimpse of something as you turn around, just before it vanishes, then you have met one of David Icke’s interdimensional, alien, illuminati lizards.

Or it could be a ghost.

Or it could be The Butterfly Man.

Or, most likely, it could just be your vivid imagination having just read this post. If I cause this to happen, dear reader, then I apologise.

The truth is that David Icke is just a crackpot or, quite possibly an amazingly clever con man who has somehow identified something within his fans that he can exploit to pander to their own wacky conspiracy theory ideas.

As I’ve said, I am a weird fan of David Icke but not because I believe his crackpot theories. As far as I am concerned, he is a walking novel, a talking creepy horror story, a man who is entertaining most of us with an elaborate and totally incredible plot, set in the real world, embracing existing conspiracy theories in a way that entertains me.

He is not telling the truth; he is spinning a yarn – and a very entertaining one. In many ways, I believe he is just a prolific story teller and long may he continue to do so.

I love crazy, weird stuff like this.

Actually, I am alone as I type this and I have a feeling I am being watched.

Ah – I am being watched.

My big fat cat wants his dinner!

The Earth Is Flat

I love weird stuff and I also love people who believe in it.

Whilst stumbling around cyberspace the other week, I stumbled across a particular favourite of mine, a bunch of conspiracy theorists who share an absurd belief.

I am talking about the Flat Earth Society, a group of seemingly eloquent people who truly believe that we all live on a planet that is similar to Terry Pratchett’s Discworld.

To them, our beloved planet is not a sphere; it is a disk.

To them the Earth is flat.

Given all of the evidence to the contrary, they still maintain in this modern day and age, with all of the advances in space travel, physics and astronomy that the governments of the world are uniting against the population of the world to hide the truth that we live on a giant frisbee.

Here’s what they believe:

The Earth is a disk with the North Pole at its centre.

Antarctica is in fact a wall of ice that surrounds the edge of the disk, keeping the oceans in.

Space travel is fake. The USSR and USA were so obsessed with winning the space race during the cold that they faked their accomplishments to deceive the other into believing that they were ahead.

Photographic evidence of a globular Earth is also fake. NASA is an institute whose sole purpose is to prolong the myth of a Round Earth.

Circumnavigation of the Earth is performed by going around the North Pole in big circles.

The sun moves in circles around the North Pole. When the sun is over your head, it is daytime. When it is not over your head, it is night time.

You cannot see the curvature of the Earth from an aircraft. Your perception of a curved Earth is due to your perception through heavily curved aircraft windows.

Gravity as we know it does not exist.

The sun and the moon are simply rotating spheres, each 32 miles across that can be found 3000 miles above the surface of the flat Earth.

The concept of a Full Moon is impossible in the Round Earth theory.

Earth is not a planet and the other planets are small.

The stars also rotate above the Earth.

The moon landing was a hoax.  Astronauts shown moving on the moon in slow motion were on wire supports.

Here is a picture of what they believe the Earth looks like:

This is amazing and if you take a look at any of the Flat Earth Society websites, they have supposedly scientific evidence to back all of their claims. However, what I find even more amazing is that people actually believe this utter nonsense.

I simply cannot comprehend how, or even why, people choose to ignore reality and shift their belief system to an incredible wild idea that took hold of humanity before the great scientists in our history proved it wrong.

I can understand people in the past believing that the Earth was flat, because they didn’t know any better. However, nowadays, there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever to support their outrageous claims. On the contrary, there is plenty of evidence to support the Round Earth theory.

Why are these people so delusional?

Why choose to champion a ridiculous lie?

Their theories are totally ridiculous, even laughable. It seems to be that when anybody tries to debunk their weird theory, they simply invent something that explains why you are wrong. An example of this is that if the Earth were indeed flat then at the edges of the disk, gravity would be totally different and approaching the edge would make gravity more pronounced. In fact, the Earth is so big that gravity would pull the Earth into a ball shape. Their answer to this is amazing, as we have seen; gravity simply does not exist or more accurately, it doesn't exist in the way that we have been led to believe.

Really?

So all of those science experiments I performed in A-Level Physics to determine the acceleration due to gravity are totally false and pointless?

It's worse, when you consider that Flat Earth conspiracy theorists claim that we are all being kept in the dark about this. What they are saying is that every government in the world is lying to us all in an attempt to cover up this preposterous notion. I know that politicians are all liars but this concept is absurd. As well as that, anybody who is involved in the airline industry must be in on it.

Imagine for a second training to become a pilot. You are taken into a room and forced to sign the equivalent of the official secrets act before a man stands in front of you and says:

“Before you start training, we must inform you that the Earth is not a globe. It is a giant spinning pancake. You mustn’t tell anybody as we are trying to keep it secret. If you do, we will fly you past the Antarctic wall and kick you out into oblivion.”

Imagine your first day in the Oval Office after being sworn in as President of the USA:

PRESIDENT:  Right – now I’m President, I want to know all about Roswell. Do aliens actually exist?

PRESIDENT'S AIDE: Sir, aliens do not exist. In fact, the Earth is not even a planet; it is a giant frisbee surrounded by a huge wall of ice. The sun and moon are disks rotating 3000 miles above us.

PRESIDENT: No – really. Do aliens exist?

PRESIDENT'S AIDE: : No sir! And the Earth really IS flat. We’ve been conning the public for years. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin won honorary and secret Oscars for their parts in the greatest work of fiction known to man; The Moon Landing.

-- PHONE RINGS --

PRESIDENT'S AIDE: Hello? Sir, it’s President Putin wishing to congratulate you.

PRESIDENT: Hello Vladimir.

PRESIDENT PUTIN: Zdravstvujtye, Mr President and congratulations. By the way, have you been told that the Earth is really flat yet? We need to keep this quiet.

PRESIDENT: WHAT????????

It makes no sense to me whatsoever, that supposedly intelligent people continue to defy all the scientific evidence and embarrass themselves by relating this bunkum to anybody who is willing to listen.

Why would you anybody do that?

Even if it’s a question of pride and being scared to admit that they are wrong, surely that’s better than being a laughing stock.

Anyway, here is a fun video about it:

I’m sure when Terry Pratchett came up with the concept of Discworld, he did so after reading, and presumably laughing at, a book about the Flat Earth Society.

Of course, writing a post mocking the concept of a Flat Earth might prove to be a stupid thing to do if Flat Earth conspiracy theorists are right. I may end up with a lot of egg on my face and might have to write another post of apology.

These are the risks that a blogger has to wrestle with.

I don’t care; I’ll take my chances.

That said, as I wrote at the start of this post, I love this kind of weirdness, so if on the off chance you believe that the Earth is flat, please let me know.

The Literalist

The President of the United States of America wants to insert a computer chip into the brains of every American citizen so that the state can monitor their movements; of course, he has told America that this will have enormous health benefits and that people will live longer.

It is a conspiracy, dear reader, and proves, once and for all, that The Leader of the Free World is in fact a shape-shifting alien who wants to enslave the world, starting with the US and then moving onto Europe.

He is also the Antichrist.

Now then! There are people who will read the first three paragraphs of this post and believe every single word. For those of you who are reading this sentence, I can assure you that the previous gibberish is totally untrue. Strangely, though, the idea has not been plucked from my own disturbed imagination; it is based on genuine concerns that have been aired in cyberspace.

And most disturbing of all – there are people who take such nonsense literally and actually believe every single word of it.

I am not joking.

It makes me fear for the future of the human race.

Most human beings are of sound mind and can make rational judgements based on the information that they encounter, whether it is spoken by politicians or written in books and newspapers. I have never believed every shred of information that I have consumed; I am too cynical. When I see a politician preaching to the masses, drowning us in rhetoric, I take his words with a pinch of salt. Equally, when I read newspaper articles that make outrageous claims, I am most definitely not inclined to believe a word of it.

I am a cynic by nature and prefer to do my own research and make judgements based on facts rather than speculation or ridiculous scaremongery.

I recently read an article in a newspaper that highlighted the curse of being a literalist, i.e. a person who takes everything literally. The article was written by a British humour satirist who in the past has made totally untrue claims in the name of humour, claims like:

The Conservative party want to reduce the number of characters in a Tweet from 140 to 135 for those people who have fewer than 200,000 followers so that we didn’t drive these popular Twitter aficionados abroad.

While most people chuckled , apparently there were a few people who took this totally seriously, expressing their distaste at the injustice of it all.

Are these people gullible or just plain stupid?

Everybody is gullible to a certain extent, myself included, but there are limits. Some claims may be believable if they are not outrageous but there are some people out there who do take things literally without questioning the absurdity of what they are reading or watching.

If you don’t believe me, just look up Barack Obama and Antichrist on You Tube.

Here are some famous and not so famous examples:

In 1938, many people in America thought that the Earth was being invaded by Martians, having listened to a radio broadcast based on the War of the Worlds.

The world was due to end on 21st December 2012 because that was the date that the Mayan calendar ended. I have a calendar in my house that ends on 31st December, 2014. Does that mean the world will end on that date?

The Millennium Bug was due to cause total chaos on January 1st, 2000 at the stroke of midnight, with aircraft falling out of the sky and nuclear explosions the world over. I worked in IT and I knew this to be a scaremongering hoax at least ten years beforehand.

All dogs in Denmark are to be painted white so that they are easier to see by motorists. 

The North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un has been voted the sexiest man alive.

You can charge your iPhone battery by putting it into a microwave.

See what I mean? Who would believe those things?

If you ask Mr Google about a literalist, he will focus on Biblical literalism, that is, the belief that every word of the Bible is gospel (if you will pardon the pun). Biblical literalists are those people who interpret every single word of the Bible and trust everything contained therein without question. These are the kind of people who say that I am cursed to an eternity in Hell for listening to heavy metal.

While I used to be religious, and made to feel guilty about everything, as a Roman Catholic, it didn’t take me long to start questioning the scriptures – and even questioning my local parish priest. Thankfully, the priest was sensible enough to tell me that perhaps the Bible shouldn’t be taken literally. As I grew up, I realised that the Bible in its current form has been written and rewritten many times, and with each rewrite, the basic messages and facts have been distorted and reinterpreted, so really the Bible is not really the same document as it was originally.

I’m sure that if you are a Biblical literalist you will be horrified by that last paragraph. I have actually had discussions with a Jehovah’s Witness on my own doorstep about this very subject. The very pleasant old lady told me that the Bible was a manual for life and I contradicted this by suggesting to her that the Bible is full of contradiction – so how can we take it literally?

Her answer was to read passages from the Bible she had with her, to prove to me that I was wrong.

So I brought up the subject of  dinosaurs and asked why they are not mentioned in the Bible when there is irrefutable proof of their existence.

Her answer made me laugh out loud.

“Fossils were created by Satan to test our faith.”

“And is that mentioned in the Bible?” I asked.

I don’t want to pick on Biblical literalists at all; it is just easier to highlight what I am saying using them as an example. There are numerous other examples of conspiracy theories that are so absurd you have to shake your head in disbelief when you read them.

But people do actually believe them, theories like:

The world is ruled by lizard people.

The Earth is hollow.

There is a Nazi base on the moon and Hitler himself flew there in 1945.

The truth is that I am not really a normal everyday buffoon living in Manchester; I am an alien and I have written this post from my invisible spaceship that has been orbiting the Earth since 2008. I am in league with Barack Obama and together we are going to take over the entire world.

If you believe that, you’ll believe anything.

Over to you dear reader:

Are you a literalist?

What is the most ridiculous "truth" you have read?

What is you favourite conspiracy theory?

Reptiles And Aliens

I have a revelation for you, dear reader. You may be shocked.

We are being ruled by reptiles and aliens.

Actually, that statement is utter nonsense and one of the most bizarre conspiracy theories currently circulating the internet.

According to David Icke, a former footballer and sports presenter here in the UK, a race of humanoid reptiles runs the world. I think he must have taken the science fiction series V a little too seriously.

For those of you who have not heard of V, basically the story involves a large number of aliens, visiting Earth in the name of friendship but in reality, instead of being the beautiful humanoid creatures offering to assist our evolution, they are evil carnivorous reptiles bent on wiping us all out.

In the early 1990’s David Icke appeared on a BBC chat show called Wogan where, dressed in a turquoise track suit, he claimed to be the son of God and invited universal ridicule as a result.

Now, David Icke has recovered from that moment of madness but in the last 20 years has embarked upon a crusade to inform us all about a global conspiracy theory that embraces and supports most other conspiracy theories.

Basically, David Icke believes that humanity is being ruled by a hidden society that has been around since the dawn of mankind and has manipulated humanity throughout the centuries. Our governments are all puppets and the real rulers are an elite group of families who pull the strings and herd us like sheep.

My imagination is pretty weird so I love the idea that we are governed by an unseen elite. I don’t actually believe it, but it would make an absolutely cracking series of novels or movies. In fact, there are quite a few authors who have used this very idea; that a clandestine political movement are trying to influence global politics by infiltrating governments with their operatives and strategically assassinating politicians and influential people, replacing them with their own agents.

I love stuff like that, which is one of the reasons I find David Icke’s conspiracy theory so intriguing. Even better, is his assertion that we are already in this situation and have been for centuries.

In his view, the bad guys have already won.

He has now written quite a few books on the subject and there is an audience for his ideas.

What’s more David Icke has added an amazing twist to his theory as I alluded to earlier. The global and secret elite are alien reptiles and can shapeshift to human form.

Such a hypothesis would make an even better novel or series of novels. An alien race of reptiles that came to Earth when humanity was just evolving, took control of our species and has been in control ever since. The aliens can take on human form and evolve themselves by only breeding with other alien reptiles. Over the centuries they have dictated the course of our lives, ultimately allowing to spread globally and now they are responsible for the society we live in today with all of its faults. And they have a plan to take us further.

We do not actually know about the alien reptiles because they exist in a light frequency that we cannot perceive - so we can't see them. Furthermore, due to mistakes and lapses in judgement, these reptiles have occasionally lost their ability to shapeshift, albeit temporarily, and allowed the world to see their true form – just for a few seconds.

It is a great idea for a science fiction epic – but nothing more.

In real terms it is utter poppycock.

Yet people actually believe it.

David Icke travels the world and lectures to a willing and believing audience about this conspiracy and his lectures on the subject are extremely popular – as are his books and DVDs.

If you look on YouTube you will see quite a few interviews with him including excerpts from the original interview with Wogan in the early 1990s when his outrageous claims made him a laughing stock.

What is incredible to me now is that although his new theories about the alien reptilian agenda are equally, if not more, outrageous, he seems to have acquired a large number of followers. You will find a large number of these people also posting video evidence on YouTube that these reptilians really do exist.

I’ve watched a few of them and chuckled. We see celebrities, presenters and politicians on TV who have apparently been slightly flustered, lost a touch of self-control or whatever, and allowed their true nature to be visible to the camera; their eyes have become reptilian, their skin has become slightly green and scaly and their teeth have morphed.

Basically, it is just a trick of the studio lighting. If you believe what you see on YouTube you will be convinced that the British Royal family are really reptiles.

David Icke is a very eloquent guy; after all, he was a TV presenter before his turquoise phase. For this reason, his arguments seem to have substance until you take a step back and think:

“Hang on! Alien reptiles? What the bloody hell are you talking about?”

I can’t decide whether David Icke is a massive wind-up merchant or whether he genuinely believes what he is saying. The problem is, he has the ability to manipulate facts to support his arguments. And the very idea that there is a massive global conspiracy is something that I find fascinating. By adding alien reptiles, for me anyway, he has made his arguments ridiculous – though a part of me would love it to be true (a weird part of me that is).

One of the problems with this and other conspiracy theories is that there is very little evidence to support them – and what evidence there is, is largely circumstantial. David Icke and other like-minded individuals blame the governments they warn us against by accusing them of “covering up”.

How convenient.

Yes – I am a sceptic – but I also have an open mind. If we really are being ruled by alien reptiles and the horror of V has been with us for centuries, then I want to know all about it.

Until then, I will laugh at the ideas, while secretly wishing that I had thought of it and written a serious novel.

Of course, if David Icke is right then next time you sense a presence in your home and turn around to find nothing there, it could be an alien reptile that exists outside the realm of your perception.

Or it could be your imagination.

Or it could be a ghost.

Don’t get me started on psychics!