Uncle John's Bathroom Reader The World's Gone Crazy (61 page)

Religion:
Universal Industrial Church of the New World Comforter
History:
The UICNWC was officially founded in 1973 by Allen Noonan, who was born in 1916 in Britt, Iowa. Noonan says, however, that his story really begins in 1947: While working as a sign painter in Long Beach, California, he claims, he was taken out of his body and beamed up into a “Galactic lightship,” where he was given his assignment as the clairvoyant channel of the Archangel Michael. (Which is why he changed his name to Allen Michael.) He had another alien encounter in 1954, moved to San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district during the 1960s, started a commune, and in 1973 had yet another alien encounter, after which he founded the UICNWC. Nobody knows for sure how many followers he has today; the sect is centered around a Santa Rosa, California, commune with less than a dozen members, though there are more believers living elsewhere.

In a waiver of military law, U.S. troops in Iraq got to drink beer during the 2009 Super Bowl
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Beliefs:
Michael is recognized by his followers as “an incarnate spiritual master from Galactica, a God conscious soul dedicated to serving humanity.” His religion he founded is a mishmash of hippie counterculture, New Age spirituality, the Bible, Eastern philosophy, Marxism, and, of course, UFOs. Michael and his ordained ministers are still hard at work channeling ancient galactic beings and spreading their wisdom via books, recordings, and an extensive Internet presence. (They even have their own YouTube channel.)

Religion:
The Order of the Solar Temple, or
Ordre du Temple Solaire

History:
The OTS was founded in the 1980s by a Belgian man named Luc Jouret. He’d been interested in occultism for decades, and convinced a number of people that he and fellow occultist Joseph Di Mambro were reincarnations of members of the medieval Order of the Knights Templar. At its height in the 1990s, OTS had several thousand members and active lodges in Switzerland, Canada, and Australia.

Beliefs:
OTS beliefs center around far-right-wing ideology—members of an earlier, non-UFO version of the sect were believed to be former Nazis. It also combines mystical Christianity, homeopathic medicine, Freemasonry, and the belief that a messiah—Di Mambro’s daughter, Emmanuelle—would save the human race by taking true believers to a planet that orbits the star Sirius. They’re also a doomsday cult; they believe that the rest of humanity will be destroyed after the faithful are removed to that other planet. Their story took a dark turn in 1994 when nearly 100 members in Canada and Switzerland died. Many of them, including Jouret, Di Mambro, and “messiah” Emmanuelle,
committed suicide, while others were murdered. The cult lives on, though, and has between 150 and 500 members worldwide today. However, due to their violent past, they are regarded as a criminal organization in several countries.

64% of Americans believe aliens have contacted humans. 37% believe they’ve contacted the U.S. govt
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Religion:
ZetaTalk

History:
ZetaTalk got its start on the Internet chat site of the Institute for the Study of Contact with Non-Human Intelligence (ISCNI) in January 1993. That’s when one chatroom member, Nancy Lieder of Wisconsin, revealed that she was in contact with alien beings called Zetans from the Zeta Reticuli star system, approximately 39 billion light years from Earth. She’d been a “contactee,” she said, since childhood. Over the next couple of years, Lieder drew a following that grew into the thousands.
Beliefs:
Lieder’s writings quickly became popular—and more and more alarming. In 1995 Lieder wrote that the comet Hale-Bopp, which was discovered that year (and would go on to become one of the brightest comets of the 20th century) didn’t exist. The Zetans, she said, had informed her that the comet was a myth cooked up by the “Majestic 12,” or “MJ12,” a secret group of scientists and world leaders, to hide the real truth: In May 2003, a massive object called “Planet X” would pass very close to the Earth, reversing our magnetic poles and wiping out all life on the planet. Lieder became an Internet and late-night radio-show sensation, and her followers grew in number (as did her detractors, mostly astronomers). When May 2003 came and went with no life-ending catastrophe, Lieder and her supporters claimed that she knew it all along—it was a lie the Zetans told her to fool Earth’s world leaders (the mysterious MJ12 again) and prevent them from enslaving the human race. Lieder now says Planet X will destroy life on Earth sometime before 2012.

Extra:
If that’s not nutty enough, Lieder says she’s given birth to more than a dozen children
—hybrid
children—fathered by aliens.

“Babies have big heads, big eyes, and tiny little bodies with tiny little arms and legs. So did the aliens at Roswell. I rest my case.”

—William Shatner

Of the top 10 largest celebrity diamond engagement rings ever given, three were given to Liz Taylor
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CRAZY COOKBOOKS

Some cookbooks, like Julia Child’s, are perennial bestsellers. And then there are these
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The I-Can’t-Chew Cookbook

The 99-Cent-Only Stores Cookbook

Mini Ketchup Cookbook

Cooking in the Nude

The Eat-A-Bug Cookbook

The What Would Jesus Eat Cookbook

Cooking to Kill: The Poison Cookbook

The Cannabis Cookbook: Over 35 Recipes for Meals, Munchies, and More

Regional Cooking From Middle-earth: Recipes of the Third Age

Mini-Mart à la Carte

Cooking With a Serial Killer: Recipes from Dorothea Puente

Dining by the Stars: An Astrology Cookbook

Manifold Destiny: The One! The Only! Guide to Cooking on Your Car Engine!

101 Things to Do with Ramen Noodles

The Testicle Cookbook: Cooking with Balls

Every April 1st, San Francisco’s First Church of the Last Laugh holds a “St. Stupid’s Day” parade
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HOW TO “DRESS”
A CHICKEN

Every night we have food on our plates—but we have no idea how it got there. Our grandparents have a word for that: crazy
.

B
ACKGROUND
Just a few short generations ago, it was common for people in rural areas to raise—and slaughter—their own chickens. And cities still had open-air markets where vendors sold live chickens, which they butchered in front of the customer. Today supermarket chickens come tidily pre-“dressed,” wrapped in plastic. So while this might make you a little squeamish, for better or worse, this is how you prepare a chicken.

WHAT YOU NEED:

A large pot of water, a bucket, pliers, a sharp knife, a traffic cone, and a live chicken.

HOW IT’S DONE:

1
. Is your chicken ready to be eaten? If it’s a chicken bred for this purpose, it should be between six and eight weeks old.

2
. Don’t feed your chicken for its final 24 hours—it makes the slaughter less messy. (There will be far less semi-digested food in its stomach and far less digested food in its intestines.)

3
. Take an orange rubber cone—the kind used by road crews—and cut off a chunk of the wide end so it’s about 9″ tall. Nail this, small side down (like a funnel), to a wall or post, about 18″ off the ground. Place a bucket underneath.

4
. Heat up a large pot of water to about 160°F. This will be used to loosen the chicken’s feathers and make plucking them much easier.

5
. Catch your chicken. They’re fast and don’t want to be caught (obviously), so you have to catch it off-guard. Sneak up behind it and grab it by the legs. Lift it off the ground, holding it at arm’s length.

NASCAR superstitions: peanuts, the color green, and women in the garage are all bad luck
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6
. Stuff the chicken in an empty burlap sack (like a feed sack). This calms down the chicken.

7
. While the chicken is in the bag, hold it against your body with one arm. With your free hand, find the chicken’s neck through the burlap. Pull down on it, then bend upward very quickly. You’ll hear a snap, and the chicken’s body will reflexively flap its wings, even though it’s now quite dead.

8
. By its feet, pull the chicken out of the bag and stick it headfirst into the inverted cone so that its head pokes out of the bottom hole, directly over the bucket.

9
. Hold the chicken’s head in place in the palm of your hand. Hold the sharp knife in your other hand. With one fast stroke, cut the chicken’s jugular vein (where the head meets the neck).

10
. Allow the blood from the chicken to drain into the bucket. When the chicken stops moving completely (even though it’s dead, its muscles may continue to pulse), pull it out of the cone.

11
. Holding the dead chicken by its feet, dunk it in the hot water, immersing the whole thing. Swirl it around for 10 to 15 seconds.

12
. Place the chicken on a clean table. Starting near its feet, wipe your hands up the chicken’s body toward the head. This should release most of the feathers.

13
. Continue wiping to remove the feathers. If there are any stragglers—especially the small pin feathers—you can take them out with a small pair of pliers.

14
. With your knife, cut off the head and feet.

15
. Spread the chicken’s legs and in between, slice into its undercarriage. Remove the chicken’s innards (go on, reach in there) and cut into pieces: two legs, two thighs, and a split breast.

16
. Dredge in flour, dip in an egg wash, dredge in flour again, and fry in a skillet full of oil.

17
. Serve with biscuits.

In 1987 Mike Hayes financed his entire $28,000 college education by soliciting 1¢ donations
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CUTTING-EDGE MEDICINE