Apocalyptic performance art

I try not to devote too much time to claims that are simply crazy.  After all, wacko claims are a dime a dozen, and some of the delusional folks who make them are more to be pitied than censured.

But every once in a while, along will come a claim that is so bizarre, so inspired, that it rises above the background noise to the point that it almost seems like a work of performance art.  And thus, I think, is the mélange of mishegoss that calls itself Unveiling Them, which was brought to my attention by a loyal reader of Skeptophilia two days ago because one of the predictions of the site is that Jesus's Second Coming is currently scheduled for December 22, 2020, which is exactly one year from yesterday.  (So evidently the quote in Matthew 24 will have to be amended to, "No one knoweth the hour, except this one guy, who hath figured it out somehow.")

At first glance, it seems to be nothing more than an End Times/Book of Revelation site, but it's much more than that.  They only start there, and afterwards, go off into reaches of weirdness the likes of which I haven't seen in a long time.

Viktor Vasnetsov, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1887) [Image is in the Public Domain]

Besides the usual Number Of The Beast stuff, we find out that:

• A mass population die-off is "set to commence now."  Consider yourselves forewarned.
• Iron is a nutritional toxin; we need copper instead.
• AB negative is the original human blood type; all of the others arose from mutations within the past five hundred years.
• The Ebola virus only affects people who are suffering from iron poisoning.  Since all human blood contains hemoglobin, which contains iron, that's kind of... everyone.
• Contrary to what the census bureau would have you believe, the population of the United States peaked in 1980 and is currently decreasing.
• There are 14,270,410 Evil Satanic Operatives in the United States right now.  Why is this number relevant?  It's 6.66% of the whole population.  Get it?  666?  (Okay, I know it's only 6.66% if you think the population is way smaller than it actually is.  Just play along, all right?)
• Baby Boomers are being exterminated in Secret Death Camps.
• What Jesus actually meant to say was "Do unto others before they have a chance to do unto you."
• Radiation, including wi-fi, "vibrates your blood proteins" and accelerates aging.
• Barack Obama lied about his birth certificate, but not in the way the "Truthers" claim.  He wasn't born in Hawaii, but neither was he born in Kenya.  He was born in Alabama in 1916.  So he's 98 years old.
• Because he's smart enough to consume copper instead of iron, and stays away from wi-fi.

See? I told you this'd be fun.

Of course, there's the warning posted on the website, threatening supernatural vengeance against scoffers like myself, which I reproduce here in toto:

Any attack on the words of these pages (and links) herein, whether it be directly or indirectly, by those whom these words speak of or by their agents or any instrument of theirs, will receive a thousand times what they gave to others, and the plagues and miseries they unleashed upon others, will abound in them.

So I consider myself forewarned as well.  Of course, given that the author of this website has a serious grudge against... well, pretty much everyone, it remains to be seen who would be left un-plagued after all was said and done.  He says that the bad guys who are doomed to destruction include anyone involved in "universities, colleges, foundations, research, corporations, legal system, intelligence organizations/contractors, the churches, media, medicine, police departments, military, all government agencies, school districts, water departments, energy & communications, financial institutions, music/movie industries, sports/entertainment, television/radio, funeral homes/cemeteries, insurance and real estate."  If you exclude all of the aforementioned, who do you have left to Inherit The Kingdom Of God?

The author of the website.  And maybe a handful of scattered peasant-sheepherder types in random locations.  The Lord Of Hosts will more be The Lord Of A Few Guys Who Are Wandering Around Wondering Where Everyone Went.

And there's lots more, which I invite you to peruse.  We apparently will know who the Elect are by their DNA, which is the same as Christ's DNA, which was secretly isolated from the Shroud of Turin.  We are told that the main goal is to "Put an end to violence and bloodshed," but that we are to accomplish this by "Rounding up every man, woman, and child for the abyss prepared for them," which seems a little counterproductive to me if ending violence is your goal.  (I suppose, of course, that if by the end of all of this, there's only seventeen people left on Earth, then it's gonna be de facto a more peaceful planet than it has been for a very long time.)

Anyhow, I'm about done with this, so I'll just leave you to cogitate on all of it.  Me, I 'm going off to prepare myself to be Smitten A Thousandfold By Plagues And Miseries.  You'd think one plague would do it, wouldn't you?  A thousand seems like overkill.

Literally.

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Apocalypse later

Well, we survived the apocalypse, or at least the Nibiru-induced one that was supposed to happen two days ago.  Me, I had everything prepared.  Some necessities (coffee, chocolate, scotch), a few precautions (Tylenol, sunscreen, tinfoil hat), and a couple of jugs of water, which I figured would last me until I could figure out how to purify the skeeve out of the water from my pond.

But nothing happened.  I was disappointed.  Given the current situation with Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un, I thought a massive planet swooping by and causing geological and meteorological cataclysms would actually be an improvement.

So naturally, once September 24 rolled around and we were all still here, everyone kind of turned and stared at David Meade, who was the guy who started the whole "September 23 is Doomsday" thing.  Any normal person in that situation would chuckle uncomfortably and say, "Well, fuck it all, I was wrong.  What a goober I am."

But David Meade is not, in any sense of the word, normal.  He said that the problem was, when he said that Nibiru was going to destroy the Earth on September 23, we'd misunderstood him.

What he actually meant was "October 21."

I kid you not.  Instead of retreating in disarray and hiding his face in embarrassment for the next three years, Meade is saying the problem was... us.  He was clear as cut crystal.  A few weeks ago he said, and this is a direct quote, "It is very strange indeed that both the Great Sign of Revelation 12 and the Great Pyramid of Giza both point us to one precise moment in time – September 20 to 23, 2017."

So it was our fault that we didn't realize that by "September 20 to 23," what he meant was "October 21."

I mean, how stupid of us, right?  It's like one of my students from a few years ago, who when asked why he hadn't turned in a major project, said, "When you said yesterday that it was due tomorrow, I didn't think you meant, like, tomorrow."

That kid has a definite future in the field of apocalypse prediction.

[image courtesy of NASA and the Wikimedia Commons]

Meade was equally precise.  He said, "I don’t know when the Rapture will happen. I expect nothing to happen in September," which I think we can all agree is pretty much the same as saying, "I expect the world to be destroyed in September."

In October, on the other hand, we are definitely screwed.  "The most recent astronomical cryptography of the imminent judgments approaching begins in the week of October 21, 2017," Meade said.  "The End of Days, in my opinion (and remember we see ‘through a glass darkly’), will begin in the latter part of October of 2017...  It is possible at the end of October we may be about to enter into the seven-year Tribulation period, to be followed by a Millennium of peace."

In this context, "seeing through a glass darkly" is apparently synonymous with "talking out of your ass."

On the other hand, I have to say that the Millennium of Peace sounds kinda nice, especially given the ongoing dick-measuring contest between Rocket Man and Cheeto Boy.  So once again, I'm in the position of hoping that Meade is right, although given his previous track record, I'm not really holding my breath.

Plus, October 21 is five days before my 57th birthday, and it seems unfair that the world will end before I have a chance to get any presents.  I mean, I know everyone isn't gonna die when the apocalypse comes, but I figure that with all the chaos that will ensue, people will have other priorities besides baking me a cake.

So that kind of sucks.  Oh, well, I guess it has to happen at some point, and being that No One Knoweth The Hour With The Possible Exception Of David Meade, it may as well be October 21.  At least I'll have my supply of coffee, chocolate, and scotch ready, in case he's right.

Siri, conspiracy theories, and the Gates of Hell

It doesn't take much, unfortunately, to get the conspiracy theorists all shook up.

Take the discovery a couple of weeks ago that for certain Siri users, the question "What is July 27, 2014?" elicits a response of, "It's Sunday, July 27, 2014.  Opening the Gates of Hades."

William Blake, Dante's Gates of Hell (1826) [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Now, I can see how this could be a little startling.  The last thing you want is to be checking your calendar and find out you'd scheduled a date on the day that the Beast With Seven Heads is supposed to eat one-third of humanity.

You can see how that could make dinner conversation a little awkward.

The reason for the weird response hasn't, as far as I've found, been explained yet.  Some have said it's a joke planted there by a waggish programmer; others that it's some kind of weird glitch, similar to the one last year that directed users to Ron Paul's website if they asked questions about politics.  The most popular explanation, however, seems to be that it has something to do with the first day of "Ghost Month" in certain traditional Chinese beliefs, on which (similar to Halloween) the gates of heaven and hell are said to open.

But of course, you can't have something like this occurring without the conspiracy theorists getting their knickers in a twist.  Take a look at this YouTube video, courtesy of Alex Jones' nutty site InfoWars, where we are shown the Siri response and then told, "Let us know what you think in the comments section."

Here are a few selected samples of the result of that request:

Could they be thinking about opening portals in the the spiritual world to bring the devil into this world in another form through manifestation using technology?

the abyss or the bottomless pit is opened by an angel, thats after alot [sic] of other things have happened. If so, the next 6 months gonna be a rough ride.

Apple obviously know something that the masses do not and this can be said about all individuals in power.the government are nothing put [sic] puppets and all these big organisations are the exact same.they all serve satan and are trying to exexute [sic] that one goal

what is troubling is the tunnel they are carving through under the ground in seattle-something has stopped it in its tracks-they want to open the seattle underground tunnel in 2014 and something big is stopping there progress from going any further with it-they are sending men inside this thing to take a look and they are saying that something demonic is down there.

well, no [sic] much surprise here, since many things are already programmed to be done.  To my point of view, and according to some prophecies summer 2014 seems to be doomed.  Actually i believe that things will turn bad much earlier. 2014 will be the year of WW3, i am pretty sure about it (again, according to my sources)

Okay, can all of you people just calm down for a minute?

What comes to mind about all of this nonsense is that the conspiracy theorists aren't seeing the fundamental underlying contradiction in their stance.  They believe that the Illuminati are ultra-powerful, ultra-intelligent guys, with super technology, maybe even in cahoots with evil aliens, and yet are simultaneously so stupid that they would leave clues on Siri so easy to find that anyone checking their online calendars would ultimately stumble upon them.

I mean, you can't have it both ways.  Either the Illuminati are intelligent, or they're not.  If they're intelligent, they're not going to be found out by some clown who thinks that Alex Jones is the reincarnation of Einstein.

So, bottom line: could there be some kind of ultimate evil super-top-secret conspiracy?

Yes, I guess there could be.  But then we wouldn't know about it.  Because that's what "super top-secret" means.

Of course, this isn't about logic, is it?  Rationality is the last thing these people are interested in; most conspiracy theorists take the religious paradigm ("believe this even though there's no evidence") and walk it one step further ("believe this because there's no evidence").  And once you're there, there's no arguing with you, is there?

My general take on this is that you shouldn't worry.  If you are planning on a vacation to Costa Rica next summer, and will be leaving on July 27, don't apply for a refund quite yet.  Whatever this Siri glitch is, I'll bet you cold hard cash that it has nothing to do with the End of the World.

And second, if I'm wrong, and the Gates of Hell open, might as well be in Costa Rica, right?  I hear Costa Rica is really nice.

Microchips, Obamacare, and the Mark of the Beast

Well, another election season is over, and Barack Obama has been given another four years to enact his vision of where the United States should head.  He won't have much time to rest on his laurels -- he's got a lot of work to do if he's going to achieve his chief goals, including creating one million new manufacturing jobs, recruiting 100,000 new science and math teachers, reducing oil imports by half, reducing the deficit, ending US involvement in Afghanistan, and implanting the Mark of the Beast on every American citizen so that he can initiate the End Times as predicted in biblical prophecy.

Well, okay, the last one isn't one of his stated goals, per se.  But you'd think it was, to listen to Paul Begley, the evangelical preacher who in a video clip entitled "Americans!  Prepare to Be Microchipped!" claims that there is a provision in Obamacare to implant RFID chips in everyone, and that corresponds to the Mark of the Beast described in Revelation 13:16-18: "And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.  Here is wisdom.  Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six."

The fact is, Obamacare contains no such provision; there is a provision to microchip pacemakers and other implantable medical devices, so that a patient's medical information could be quickly accessible via a scan if the device fails.  But Begley says that no, this isn't all, that this is just a smokescreen for the actual intent of the bill, which is to tag everyone in the US, and ultimately, everyone in the world.

The whole "Mark of the Beast" thing is mighty popular with evangelicals.  It's been discussed by biblical literalists for decades, resulting in speculation that it corresponds to credit card numbers, Social Security numbers, driver's license numbers, GPS tags in cellphones, UPC codes on items in stores, scannable chips in passports, and a variety of other things.  And once they get the wind up about this stuff, they tend to get awfully suspicious.  One guy I know seriously believes that the DMV is using a microchip implanted in your driver's license to follow your every move, as if (1) they had the staff and technology actually to accomplish this for every person in the US who has a driver's license, (2) the workers in the DMV actually cared where you are on a minute-to-minute basis,  and (3) they didn't have better things to do, such as attending surliness training seminars and taking important coffee breaks when the line for license renewal gets too long.

In any case, the key point, to evangelicals, is that some person will end up getting the number "666" as his/her Mark, and that person will be the Antichrist, or the Beast with Seven Horns, or the Scarlet Whore of Babylon, or possibly all three at the same time.  It's hard to be sure, frankly.  I've read the Book of Revelation more than once, and my general impression is that it sounds like the result of a bad acid trip, so I'm not entirely certain I understand the finer details.  Be that as it may, the evangelicals take the whole 666 thing pretty seriously, to the point where a worker in Georgia last year refused to wear a badge for a day that said "666 days without an accident" for fear that he would be nabbed instantaneously by Satan and dragged off to hell.  (He was fired, sued the company, and was then rehired with back pay.)

Paul Begley, though, thinks he has the whole thing figured out, and that the End Times will start in March 2013 with Obamacare mandating chip implantation in everyone.  (If you looked at the link, note the highly alarming picture of someone using a barcode reader on a blank-eyed guy's forehead.  If that doesn't convince you... well, don't make me use the word "sheeple" in your general direction.)

So, anyhow.  I hope all of you people who voted for Obama knew what you were getting into.  If you don't, you'll figure out all too soon -- March 2013 is right around the corner.  That is, of course, provided we survive the Mayan Apocalypse on December 21, 2012, an event I am positively looking forward to.  (I'm thinking of getting a shirt to wear on December 21 that says, "The Mayans Had An Apocalypse, And All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt.")  So I guess this gives us something to look forward to after the Apocalypse is over -- at least those of us who aren't eaten by zombies, or whatever other special offers the Mayans have in mind.  Me, I'm already considering my strategy, and I think I have a good one, which I have outlined below.