The History Channel.

…is a rotten lie of a media outlet.  A decent documentary about brain function descends at minute 40 into a promo piece for John Edward (the psychic medium, not Edwards, the politic small) with quick snips of The Controversy to inject a desperate moment of authenticity into a fraudulent scientific drag show.  Not since Frankenfurter has peer review gone so terribly off the rails, and we don’t even get a good wet makeout scene or a single singable anthem.

I’ve noticed this lately on The History Channel and NatGeo (<—this must end.)  There’s a sinister anti-science undercurrent running around and no one seems to care.

To Wit – When you analyze the Shroud of Turin, you’re not trying to explain the blood stains left “by Jesus’ Passion”, you are collecting samples of a cloth with marks on it, and you examine them, and gather evidence, and you see where the evidence takes you.  It might be blood, and it might be lizard bile, and it might be a common pigment.  Oh, and when you tell me you have no interest in the outcome because you’re a Jew – but golly it sure looks like a magic man reanimated in it – then you have successfully made me think that you’re a crook and are getting a cut of the syndication take.  Okay, well I’m an atheist and I think John Edward really can talk to very dead Uncle Moishe.  Where the fuck is my camera crew?

As if to punctuate this river of shit that is ‘science’ TV, I flip to the ‘Geo only to see “Ghosts: Phenomena Discussed” already underway.  The good skeptic James Randi was given his 16 seconds of just enough balance-establishing curmudgeonatude to give the program an air of validity that the ensuing parasitic freaks are now doing their best to render boring.  Creepy music tickles my ears and a Thick Presence slithers in quiet corners of sickening green blackness that these joyless wraiths seem to fancy.  No word yet on how a ghost creates magnetism or mocks thermodynamics.  Be we’ve no time for such concerns, this is some real science we’re doing here, man.  We even have the incomprehensible gadgets to prove it.

At times the show even tries to redeem itself with with a smug little sneer and a nod to the doubters, but just when you think the argument will finally get going there comes the However moment and sensationalism comes roaring back like an angry poltergeist that hasn’t had a good toss in weeks.  And I’m sitting here in the warm glow of this waste of time, lapping it up like cake at the DeLuise family reunion.

The inevatable Cold Read Walkthrough is about to begin.  Choppy footage and shaky cameras are ready to roll.  Will our psychic investigator sense the terrible history of this house?  Another tall latte, please, and I’ll get right on it.  Nice touch, honey.  Get the bastards to buy to coffee, too.  I bet you could sell condoms to a Mormon.

Is It Real?

Yeah.  Real Dumb.

UPDATE: Somewhat unsurprisingly, the psychic investigator got the grizzly tale completely wrong, but thankfully the show apologized in time to throw in a few final camera tricks to puzzle the believers.  I feel like I’d be better off punishing my liver with beer.  Yeah.

Troll Spotting.

Every discussion group on the interweb seems to be contorting into some sick dadaesque parody of a detoxing hippy’s nightmare.  Hideous shrieking beasts roam unchecked through public spaces, colliding violently with dumbstruck hair dressers and kindergardeners.  Complete pandemonium.  New users stupidly wandering into the path of innocent sounding chat rooms are sucked in like ATM cards, pulled over their own taste horizon, nearly spaghettified by the terrible forces.  No chance at all for the poor bastards.  But no matter.  Theirs will at least be a quick death.

Where do these vile reptiles come from?  I mean who’s got the *time* for it?  Have we really sunk so low as a people that some rotten punk furiously pecks raging screeds night after night for *kicks*?  Didn’t we used to get drunk and hump each other for fun?  Didn’t we race enormous American cars through the night, knocking off some elderly farmer’s mailbox with a bat made in Kentucky?  Didn’t we torment livestock?  These were the fighting habits of the Rockwellian nerdowell in a bygone age, and even if it was all bullshit, ho ho, at least it had a little pizazz.  I could watch a movie about it and at least feel like kicking my math teacher’s ass the next morning. The idea had teeth.

But the modern troublemaker can raise hell without disturbing the pizza boxes and unanswered mail piled by his mother’s front door.  These Mild Ones can rebel against what ever you got from behind the bullet-proof veil of an LCD panel, ordering up hungry new herds of biters with nothing but a 4 letter stock symbol.  No personal danger and all of the satisfying fun of smoking weed at school or shoplifting from Circuit City.  A teenage slime wave.

So what do you do?  You do what any meat-eating American does: You build a gated community.  Safe and sound and tight as a drum, but usually lacking the raunchy biker bars or pool halls that make a neighborhood interesting.  They tend to get awfully quiet at night, when decent people are watching reality TV as the good lord intended. Not that some damn peace and quiet isn’t a good thing from time to time, if only to let one hangover clear before getting a strong, clean start on the next.

Which reminds me…