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THE QUOTE

“We don’t see things as they are. We see them as we are.” — Anais Nin

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ONE QUESTION

The Spice Girls?

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AMERICAN IDIOTS

Do you realize there’s such a thing as a School of Exorcism?

Yup.

Karen Stollznow writes in James Randi’s Swift blog that the school is run by a fellow named Pastor Bob Larson. He travels the country selling books and giving demonstrations. He trots out his teenaged daughter and her two young friends to pray and gesticulate and dance around saps they pluck from the audience for their brand of spiritual scrubbing.

Larson At Work

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Larson runs something called the Spiritual Freedom Church. He’s been a guest on Dr. Phil (duh), Oprah (duh, duh!) and Anderson Cooper (wtf?) Stollznow tells of attending one public exorcism/panhandling event and watching as Larson played his parlor game with an alcoholic audience member who’d been dragged in by his mother.

Larson, his daughter, and her nubile pals whacked the guy with their Bibles while he was restrained by stage goons and showered him with abusive rhetoric. Or should I say they showered the “demon” that they claim has been victimizing the poor guy’s family for seven generations.

My fave part of Stollznow’s recount is when Larson daughter interrupts the festivities to ask her daddy-o, “What was the demon’s name again?”

People give this guy their hard-earned cash, natch.

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MAD MOB

The School of Exorcism reminds me, Indianapolis was the site of the 2012 Paranormal Meet & Greet this past weekend.

Believers in ESP, EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomena, wherein spirits of the dead speak through audio recorders), ghosts, and other woo-woo fabulosities got together and told each other they weren’t loons at Hannah House. Run exclusively by volunteers, the historic Hannah mansion is marketed as a haunted house.

One of the featured guests at the Hannah was Kat Klockow, who calls herself the Urban Legends Detective and a cultural anthropologist studying urban legends. She’s written a book called “Haunted Hoosier Halls: Indiana University.”

I bet you didn’t know that this neck of the woods is rife with wraiths.

The Indiana Memorial Union Is Home To A Ghost Dog

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I’d like to take this opportunity to remind my reading public that this is the year two thousand freaking twelve! Sheesh!

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SINGLES PARTY

Jared Thompson, the big cheese at The Comedy Attic, deejays tonight at The Bishop, downstairs from his laff joint.

He’ll be spinning discs from 8pm to midnight. And they’ll all be 45s from his mother-in-law’s collection. We used to call them “singles.”

Here’s the spindle of jams JT’s M-in-L sent over to the happy couple:

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Here’s how I waste my time. How about you? Share your fave sites with us via the comments section. Just type in the name of the site, not the url; we’ll find them. If we like them, we’ll include them — if not, we’ll ignore them.

❏ I Love Charts — Life as seen through charts.

❏ XKCD — “A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.”

❏ Skepchick — Women scientists look at the world and the universe.

❏ Indexed — All the answers in graph form, on index cards.

❏ I Fucking Love Science — A Facebook community of science geeks.

I Fucking Love Science: Experiment By Mohamed Babu Of India

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❏ Present & Correct — Fun, compelling, gorgeous and/or scary graphic designs and visual creations throughout the years and from all over the world.

❏ Flip Flop Fly Ball — Baseball as seen through infographics, haikus, song lyrics, and other odd communications devices.

❏ Mental Floss — Facts.

❏ The Universe — A Facebook community of astrophysics and astronomy geeks.

❏ Sodaplay — Create your own models or play with other people’s models.

❏ Eat Sleep Draw — An endless stream of artwork submitted by an endless stream of people.

From Eat Sleep Draw: Drawing By Dylan Silva

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❏ Big Think — Tapping the brains of notable intellectuals for their opinions, predictions, and diagnoses.

❏ The Daily Puppy — So shoot me.

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Electron Pencil event listings: Music, art, movies, lectures, parties, receptions, games, benefits, plays, meetings, fairs, conspiracies, rituals, etc.

Monday, August 13, 2012

◗ Muddy Boots Cafe — Joe Sanford; 6-8:30pm

◗ Landlocked Music — Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band, in-store performance; 7pm

◗ Monroe County Public Library — It’s Your Money series: Kayte Young of Mother Hubbard’s Cupboard demonstrates ways to save food money; 7pm

◗ The Bishop — Donora, Teammate; 9pm

◗ The Bluebird — Dave Walters karaoke; 9pm

Ongoing:

◗ Ivy Tech Waldron Center — Exhibits:

• “40 Years of Artists from Pygmalion’s”; through September 1st

◗ IU Art Museum — Exhibits:

• Qiao Xiaoguang, “Urban Landscape: A Selection of Papercuts” ; through August 12th
• “A Tribute to William Zimmerman,” wildlife artist; through September 9th
• Willi Baumeister, “Baumeister in Print”; through September 9th
• Annibale and Agostino Carracci, “The Bolognese School”; through September 16th
• “Contemporary Explorations: Paintings by Contemporary Native American Artists”; through October 14th
• David Hockney, “New Acquisitions”; through October 21st
• Utagawa Kuniyoshi, “Paragons of Filial Piety”; through fall semester 2012
• Julia Margaret Cameron, Edward Weston, & Harry Callahan, “Intimate Models: Photographs of Husbands, Wives, and Lovers”; through December 31st
• “French Printmaking in the Seventeenth Century”; through December 31st

◗ IU SoFA Grunwald Gallery — Exhibits:

• Coming — Media Life; August 24th through September 15th
• Coming — Axe of Vengeance: Ghanaian Film Posters and Film Viewing Culture; August 24th through September 15th

◗ IU Kinsey Institute Gallery — “Ephemeral Ink: Selections of Tattoo Art from the Kinsey Institute Collection”; through September 21st

◗ IU Lilly Library — Exhibit, “Translating the Canon: Building Special Collections in the 21st Century”; through September 1st

◗ IU Mathers Museum of World Cultures — Closed for semester break, reopens Tuesday, August 21st

◗ Monroe County History Center —Photo exhibit, “Bloomington: Then and Now” by Bloomington Fading; through October 27th

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