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Dublin Tarot Readers and Raelians in Ireland

Posted by daev

A cornucopia - Rael on TV in Ireland, and and guest writer Annmarie O'Connor gets up close and personal with Dublin Tarot readers.

Tarot Junkies
Life getting you down? Feeling a bit out of control? How do you cope with the curve balls life throws you? More...

SH*TE
No, we're not censoring ourselves - not exactly. Last week's Blather uttered an evil, heinous word - sh*t, with the 'i' intact. It seems that some email servers didn't kindly to that kind of Blather, and sent the issue back. 'We have scanned your email and find that some of the content is inappropriate' we were told. Another message, from BT Cellnet found that the issue included 'inappropriate language (i.e. one or more obscene words'. How daft is that?

EVEN BETTER THAN THE RAEL TING, LIKE
Blather hasn't mentioned Rael since RTE's The Late Late Show interviewed him in February 1998. A former French motor-racing journalist, Claude Vorlihon founded The Rael Foundation in 1973, after an extraterrestrial informed him of his pedigree - he was apparently fathered by the Biblical Elohim, who fly around in spaceships, creating worlds. There's loads more - follow the links below.

In Dublin, the Raelians have, of a Saturday, taken to hanging out by the Bank of Ireland on College Green. As we drifted by last Saturday, two very ordinary looking 20-something lads were operating the stall, both wearing Rael medallions and handing out flyers which read:

'My Religion? Science!

I am Raelian and proud of being one!

The Raelian Movement: For those who are not afraid of the future!!'

The flyer goes on to express The Raelian backing of human cloning, genetic modification, nanotechnology, the Internet, and the quaintly put 'contraception that permits pleasure without reproduction'. The flyer claims a membership of 55,000 (three years ago, we reported a claim of 35,000). If this is your bag, the Irish branch are at irishraelian@oceanfree.net

What is about former sports media people that makes them become gods, or the sons of? There's Rael... then former professional footballer and sports journalist David Icke... who's next? Formula 1's Murray Walker is retiring this year - perhaps he will resurface as a Buddhist monk atop a chilly mountain, his disciples patiently waiting for him to utter another Zen-like non-sequitur. F1 driver Mika Hakkinen is also threatening to call it a day - we can picture him roaming the Artic Circle, dressed in furs and wearing antlers.

The Raelian Foundation

The Raelly Late Late Show

Clones, Ashes, Exorcism and Drunk Cows

Off the Tracks With British Rael
Mark Pilkington, in Magonia magazine

David Icke: Here Be Dragons
Mark Pilkington, in Blather

WOULD LIKE TO MEAT
We can't help noticing how certain words or phrases repeatedly appear in the Blather web logs. These words come from search engines, typed in by people who, whether they intended to or not, have ended up on our site. A consistent number 1 has been 'hairy men', and while not figuring largely in the overall scheme of things ('Alan Moore', mothman', 'lord lucan', and 'hellfire' are top regulars), this phrase is followed in weirdness by 'lactating men'.

A quick search for "lactating men" on http://www.google.com returns Blather as the third choice. Eh? In our second issue ever, we discussed the work of Jared Diamond, a professor of physiology who claimed he was going to make it possible for men to breastfeed.

But 'hairy men'? The phrase appears in the title Bizarre Cults and Hairy Men, and refers to the Orang Pendek - a mysterious primate reported from the jungles of Sumatra.

We searched for 'hairy men' on Google, but the first ten pages show nothing but porn sites, so some dedicated fans of the hirsute must really be working hard to find us.

Blather would like to apologise for misleading any hairy dairy fans in the course of our duties.

Dave Walsh
October 1st, 2001

Posted by daev at October 1, 2001 6:20 PM