My best source of entertainment is fundamentalists on the internet going insane in the comment sections of websites about alleged “satanic rituals” masked as performance.
Like, you see this middle aged-something people screaming bible passages at the top of their lungs (or better, at the top of their keyboards) just because a singer is dressed as a pharao or there’s red background or something like that, it’s so hysterical that it’s funny.
What are they even scared or outraged of? Isn’t their god more powerful than Satan in their canon fiction lore? Even if the performance is actually, explicitly satanic, so? There’s religious freedom.
Heh, keeping track of the various entities being asserted to be “satanic” by the fundagelical loons is a full time job. One I’d want to be paid a LOT of money to perform.
But some of the hilarity is just too good to ignore. Such as the time the Care Bears came in for the “satanic” schtick by the fundagelical loons. I kid you not. More on this past piece of lunacy here.
Apparently, a nutcase by the name of Johanna Michaelsen, wrote an entire book devoted to supposed “satanic” toys. Yes, this is the sort of dreck that earns, in some cases, a lot of money for people with the sort of mid-life crises that are properly the remit of psychiatry. Apparently this woman also thought that the My Little Pony toys were secretly leading unsuspecting children into the occult. I wasn’t aware that equine hairdressing and glitter were undercover gateways to Hades, but I don’t spend my time engaging in puritanical fulminating against anything that brings even an atom of fun into people’s lives.
And this, of course, leads to the real psychosis at the heart of all of this. The idea that some people might want to have a little fun in their lives, is utterly anathema to the assorted rectally self-inserted specimens if this ilk.
We’re dealing here with people who were effectively satirised in a TV series over here, broadcast by the BBC, called Mr Wroe’s Virgins. For those unfamiliar with this, it was a series of episodes covering the emergence of a wacky religious cult here in the UK back around the 1820s or thereabouts. This series is notable for the manner in which one of the starring actresses, namely Minnie Driver, stripped completely naked (and gave us a look at her lush pubic forest into the bargain) while playing the part of one of the virgins in question.
The series also gives us an insight into the wackiness that ensues, when prurience and puritanism start to run riot. The section of Episode One (the same episode featuring Minnie Driver’s dark triangle) provided a truly hilarious vignette into the mindset, when covering the matter of punishments for infractions. Let’s put it this way - quite a few people ended up being given an insight into some funky BDSM practices courtesy of this. Required viewing for any teenage boys, whose idea of fun is being spanked by a MILF, while she’s using another part of him as a leash to keep him still.
If you can find that series online, episode 1 is a hoot. From the entertainment standpoint, the series goes a bit downhill from there, until you reach the part where the entire cult gets hit by cholera or some other lethal pathogen. The death throes of the assorted cult members, complete with suitably lurid religious hallucinations before those bacteria start partying hard inside their bloodstreams, is again hilarious. The author of this series drops a lot of heavy hints that she intended to treat this subject seriously, and almost certainly will not appreciate this review thereof, in which her attempt at a 19th century incarnation of The Handmaid’s Tale with added doom, is given my own special treatment.
But, given what I’ve just described above, did anyone expect me to cover this in any other way?
However, getting back to the serious analysis, that TV series (based upon a novel that contains its own additional moments of unintended mirth) gave us possibly one of the best insights into the mindset. Fans of various strands of puritanism almost universally possess a hardcore authoritarian streak into the bargain, along with a love of rigid hierarchies and the attendant cultural bureaucracy. The problem being, of course, that when said love of cultural bureaucracy, results in elaborate punishment rituals clashing with sexual repression and burgeoning hormones, the scene is set for some pretty febrile paraphilias to emerge.
Quite simply, humans are organisms that love entertainment. Our basic storytelling instinct alone points to this, as if our development of all manner of music, literature, dance, etc., didn’t dump an entire supertanker load of evidence onto the dockside supporting this postulate. We are, in important respects, party animals, and we’re not the only primate species exhibiting this feature.
As a consequence, trying to take all of the fun out of life is going to backfire in spectacularly unpleasant ways. The USA is about to find out the hard way just how spectacularly unpleasant this will be for millions.
Of course, the people at the top of the pyramid of shit, always ensure that they get to enjoy their fun, while pretending that they’re moral exemplars to follow, and frequently that fun involves criminal levels of harm to those unfortunate to be beneath them. It has always been the case, that being rich and powerful not only provides more temptation in this regard, but a lot more opportunities, which have a habit of being eagerly seized in pathological environments.
Environments don’t really come more pathological, than fascist dictatorships accompanied by theocratic puritanism thrust upon the masses, while the self-appointed élite launch into louche, sybaritic decadence behind closed doors. Again the USA is about to learn some hard lessons abut this, and the backlash, when it materialises, will not be pretty to observe.
Though at this juncture, I really do have to ask, what sort of poisoned mindset thinks it’s appropriate to subject children to joyless lives, where they’re told that harmless, pretty but superficial toys are some sort of evil, and that the only acceptable activity consists of kissing the arse of an imaginary cartoon magic man. It’s no wonder that the children in question end up damaged.
1 Like
UPDATE: for those who want to risk using this URL:
https : //m dot ok dot ru/video/7396734339662
that episode of Mr Wroe’s Virgins featuring the punishment hilarity and Minnie Driver’s muff, can be viewed there. I’d advise doing so in a virtual sandbox to be safe.
I find the idea of satanic tpys to be hilariously funny.
In the early 1990s, someone screwed up at the Mattel toy company, and tried to make a Ken doll that was modern and stylish . . . the “Earring Magic Ken doll” . . . and instead of modern and stylish, he was gayer than Christmas .
There was a big moral panic, Mattel had to pull the toy, and now Earring Magic Ken is a very expensive collector’s item among gay men who collect gay memorabilia.
See below, and note the frienship ring around his neck which was interpreted as a cock ring:
He also had on a mesh tanktop to go with his lavender vinyl jacket.
Was Earring Magic Ken in this book of satanic toys?
Don’t recall if this particular piece of hilarity made it to UK shores. Though my first thought upon seeing this was “This is Village People Ken in full YMCA mode” 
Would NOT surprise me in the least, if this made it into Johanna’s Book Of Jollity.
Though if you wind the clock back to the late 1990s, there was a website called Disturbing Auctions, that exhibited a range of antique toys with, er, less than delightful auras. Sadly the site appears no longer to exist, but its delights are mentioned here (along with a long history of girls engaging in Barbie doll mutilation). You haven’t lived if you missed out on seeing the Pooduck.
The demise of Disturbing Auctions I lament. It was, in a sense, a reminder of a slightly more innocent Internet, one in which we also shared the delights of the Viking Kittens, and one in which we had yet to be introduced to the, er, more adult aspects of such items as Japanese vending machines. From assorted creepy looking dolls, to the cymbal playing monkey that looked like a prop from a Stephen King horror movie, Disturbing Auctions had it all, including the child killing cuddly toy.
Fortunately, the Wayback Machine comes to the rescue!
Inflatable Ladies’ Legs (I kid you not)
And Finally … All Hail the Pooduck!!!
Several of my associates back them literally pissed themselves laughing at this lot.
1 Like
That’s correct. Yet in practice they quite often act like Satan is all-powerful and God is a fragile snowflake. Or at least not very protective of his followers.
I think it is a way that some such theists maintain control over, and get more dependence on the cult, from their followers.
The rather lurid concept on which much of it is based, known as “spiritual warfare”, also brings some excitement and sense of importance to a rather dour belief-system. If you think you are part of some titanic struggle between good and evil, I guess it’s a way to negate boredom.
In her generally excellent book, Wild Faith, Talia Levin discusses (among MANY other things in the sad history of Christian fundamentalism) the “Satanic Panic” from the early 1980s. Some here may recall that it involved people claiming that child day care centers were secretly performing satanic rituals on children. It involved children getting leading interviews that surfaced allegedly “repressed” memories of ritual abuse. At the time, this was a new concept; it hasn’t yet been thoroughly discredited, and testimony from alleged “experts” in repressed memories figured heavily in legal actions against alleged ritual abusers.
What I didn’t realize was the number of lives it ruined. There were people who owned day care centers who were not “just” financially ruined but in some cases imprisoned for years. Their names were eventually cleared, but by then, the damage was done.
2 Likes
You nailed these two concepts perfectly:
- Religious people are very repressed, they oppress themselves in the pursuit of a reward that doesn’t exist and when they see people that don’t live an oppressed life as them they get mad. “How dares that guy to be happy while not living in the same cage as i do? I was told that living in the cage was the happiest thing on planet Earth, he is wrong for living a free and happy life!” that’s what goes on in the mind of a religious person.
- Religions and cults (but especially cults) are all funded on the essential constitution of “rules for thee, but not for me”, the religious leader and his inner circle are completely exempted from following rules; rules are for the plebs who must tirelessly work for him and give 10% of their income. Of course all of this while the great leader enjoys caviar and champagne, because the god/s said so or something.
Don’t forget about the purple Tele-Tubbie, it’s Satan incarnate.
These morons wouldn’t know what a so called “Satanic performance” was if it jumped up and bit them on the ass. I’ve been to so many Black Metal shows in the past 20 or so odd years that would/could be considered “Satanic” by most mainstream christians that I’ve lost count. My soul hasn’t been corrupted by the Devil. Wait, I don’t have a fucking soul to corrupt.
Just because someone sees the world through a different set of eyes doesn’t mean that they’re deserving to be treated like the enemy. These people are nothing but a bunch of clowns that need to be shoved back into their clown car and sent somewhere else, like mars.
Sounds like we just can’t have nice things because these people adopted beliefs from the Salem Witch Trials.
My favorite is watching the brainwashed, delusional street preachers standing out in front of comic cons throwing a hissy fit because someone is dressed as Spiderman lol. How pathetic can they be lol.
1 Like
Oh, the fundagelicals really went into “my piss is boiled” mode when the Teletubbies reached the USA.
For those who have never encountered the wonderful world of children’s TV programme production here in the UK, particularly that segment devoted to TV shows for the under fives, it has always had an element of the surreal attached thereto. Even ostensibly normal looking puppet type shows from the early days, such as Camberwick Green and Trumpton, have their own comedy aspect when viewed through adult eyes.
Then we had Play School, which would have boiled the piss of many Americans, had it been transplanted to the USA, because it featured the first black children’s TV presenter in the UK, one Floella Benjamin, who was very much a fan of retina searing bright coloured clothing and funky hairstyles. She’s now in the House of Lords.
I cannot move on from here before mentioning Rainbow, which was its own species of comedy, and would again have resulted in much fundagelical artery popping if it had been shown in the USA. The cast decided to compile a lampoon episode of their own show, which is superbly funny to watch - say hello to the infamous Twangers episode …
But, at some point, children’s TV production in the UK went from merely brightly coloured and happy sing song ish, to outright trippy. The Teletubbies were the first such venture into the world of acid house children’s TV, but then along came Boohbah. Oh, you are in for such a treat when you watch this …
Now I’ll let those familiar with slave state fundagelicals, imagine their reaction to that video clip above.
Oh, and then there was In The Night Garden. Which was produced as a means of persuading the under fives to go to bed early, and broadcast in the evenings. For some reason, it was rampantly successful at the time, and parents here loved it. But once again, it was at times seriously trippy. Here’s some samples:
You can all amuse yourselves imagining the Jeebus brigade going into full bore aneurysm mode over that little lot.
Broadcasting for the under fives here in the UK is … interesting.
2 Likes
If you are interested in strange, psychedelic childrens’ shows . . . have you considered Lidsville by Sid and Marty Krofft?
It was a live-filmed show about a boy who fell into a magician’s magic hat, and ended up in a kind of parallel universe populated by talking hats.
There was a run of comic books based on the series, and Charles Nelson Riley played the villian–named HooDoo–who was always trying to take over the place.
It was filmed around 1970, and was probably inspired by drug used (especially LSD), as I can think of no other plausible explaination behind the bizarre writing of the show . . . except maybe for schizophrenia.
See below:
1 Like
Weren’t Sid and Marty Krofft also responsible for the weirdness that was HR Pufnstuf?
Only that one crossed the Atlantic to the UK, as did The Banana Splits.
Speaking of The Banana Splits and the several cartoons accompanying them, the one feature I always wondered about as a child, was the complete absence of Banana Buggies from the toy shops. Even as a child, I thought that was a serious oversight on the part of capitalism. 
It was only much later I realised why.
The real Banana Buggies were six wheel drive vehicles that cost £12,000 in 1970s money. That put them in Lamborghini Miura territory. Creating a toy version that wasn’t hideously expensive, was apparently beyond the capabilities of Mattel and their competitors.
At the time, a toy maker offering something of this sort, would be aiming to price the resulting product below, if possible, the price of the then big “I want” product on the toy market, the Raleigh Chopper bicycle. In 1970, one of those set you back £32 or thereabouts, and any prospective Banana Buggy toy had to be less than that to be competitive in the UK toy market.
Achieving that aim was apparently impossible. The engineering required to make a workable toy version of the Banana Buggy, was expensive - as in real automotive engineering expensive. Parents weren’t going to blow £500 on a toy Banana Buggy here in the UK. Plus, since real automotive engineering was required to put together even a cut down version for the toy market, it would have needed an actual driving licence to operate. Oh dear.
The nearest I can find in the toy world to a Banana Buggy, is a 1/25th scale model kit by a company called Aurora, but these apparently weren’t big sellers, and I don’t ever recall seeing one make it to the UK.
2 Likes
Loved the Banana Splits as a child, used to sing along to the music. Saturday mornings my poor grandparents would have to be up around 5:30am, and put the telly on for my sister and me to watch. Champion the Wonder Horse, The Canon Ball Express, Banana Splits, Arabian Nights, Zorro, wow this takes me back.
1 Like
Jeez you poms got nuthin…we had Auntie jack presented by a 50 year old cross dressing bearded bloke https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIqqiK4ncfs
How about those rather questionable banana boys? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5EDrfPSWyI
Then we just had Bluey declared obscene by some twats in the USA…
We had playschool, and several cartoons that had us adults in fits while the kids watched the TV action happily…not realising the meaning of most of the phrases. I will try and dig out some choice ones for you lot.
I do remember laughing at the rumour a childhood staple of mine, Captain Pugwash, had characters named Master Bates, Seaman Staines, and Roger, the Cabin Boy.
Sadly, it was a hoax…made me laugh though. Apparently the show’s creator got a settlement in court from two UK newspapers, as well.
1 Like