psychoceramics: Glorious Crackpot Catalog

[medlar @ ua.com (Art Medlar)]

   From: a--@c--.monash.edu.au (Andrew C. Bulhak)
   Date: Sat, 30 Mar 1996 03:33:49 +1100 (EST)
   
   [Romana Machado]
   > http://www.tools4explore.com/
   > Tools For Exploration - "We Exist To Serve"
   > Pet Tags: Positive Energy Pet Tags
  
   Yow!  Looks like we have a live one here...

For a splendid display of Concentrated Psychoceramics along
the lines of Positive Energy Pet Tags, you absolutely should
not miss the extravagant Travelling Pyramid Scheme called 
the Whole Life Expo (tm) when it comes through your town.
The US$5-15 admission price is utterly negligible when you
consider what's to be found inside.

Hundreds of booths showing products from the far side of
reason. From Ear Candling (a burning tube of waxed cardboard 
is inserted in the victim's ear; toxins are drawn out) through
Personal Medicine Shields to Color Therapy Sunglasses, the range
is inspiring.  Best of all, virtually every exhibitor has
a little sign inviting you yes you to become, for a modest setup
fee, a distributor too. Thereby ensuring the continued success
of the Expo.

A couple of products stand out from a visit a year or so ago:

The Aura Vision display was a real crowd pleaser.  For $15
you placed your hands on a black box with a grey ribbon cable
coming out the back.  The cable was connected to an ordinary-looking
polaroid sx-70 camera. When the picture was taken, an odd, colored
aura was visible around your head. Your "Human Energy Field" the
signs proclaimed.  For another $5, you could have your photograph
and aura interpreted by an expert. From the literature they were 
handing out:
  "The colors represent the different vibrational levels in your
   electromagnetic field, each being a particular aspect or having
   a specific meaning for each person.... There is no such thing
   as a good or bad aura. No one color is superior or more spiritual
   than another. There is positive and negative polarity in every
   color group."
Most entertainingly, you could (this time for free) get a little
clip to attach your photograph to your chest like a little name tag,
so you could display and compare your aura with those of other
shoppers as you wandered around the rest of the displays. The
number of people wearing their Aura Vision Photographs was at
once sad and hilarious.

By far and away, though, the best exhibit was put on by Clarus
Environmental Systems (tm).  They were selling cheap asian-produced
alarm clocks and surge supressors. But were they cheap; were they
packaged as alarm clocks and surge supressors?  Oh no no no.  They
were the Clarus VDT Clear 110/R  Accumulated Capacitance Dispersion
Processor and the Clarus CL-100 Whole Home/Office Environmental
Application.

Each claimed to protect you from the harmful effects of "Incoherent
Electromagnetic Radiation". Each cost about $150. They were selling
like aromatically charged chakra hotcakes.  

The surge supressor, when plugged in between your computer monitor 
and wall current, would (and they had a little diagram to illustrate 
this) prevent "incohrent EMF" (shown as a nasty grey field in the 
diagram) from escaping out the monitor and onto your lap. Claims 
were made that this prevented both cancer and disk errors.

The alarm clock (and we were tipped off that it was an alarm clock
by the "snooze" button) operated even further from quantitative
reality. Another diagram, this time of a house with giant, evil
powerlines in the back yard. The stress-inducing, incoherent
electromagnetic fields were shown as concentric circles radiating 
from the wires and through the house. A second diagram, labled
"After Clarus Technology" showed the same field lines, but they
were erased from inside the house. Remembering a thing or two from
highschool physics class, I had a couple of questions for the salesman.

"What the clarus system does is makes all that incoherent radiation
coherent, so your stress levels are reduced," he explained. "Here,
sit down and hold it on your lap for a few minutes and see."  He handed
me the black, roughly eight inch long, prism-shaped LED alarm clock,
and I sat down.  "So this is some sort of sucking laser?" I asked.
"I don't know what you mean."  "Well, then it's like my body is
now wrapped inside a polarizing filter and only healthy photons are
coming through?"  "Yes, exactly." he said.  "What's the snooze button
for?"  "Oh that," he said hesitantly as though this was the first time
anyone had asked, "that's because we have them manufactured in
Taiwan, but we install our special Chip at our factory in the US."
"Sold many today?"  "About 50."

Assuming the fda hasn't shut them down, you can reach them at
1-800-223-1994 in the US. Their product literature would be
a fine addition to any crackpot collection.

Apologies if this doesn't exactly fit into the psychoceramic charter
of this list. I'm not sure where the nut-cases in this economic chain
really are. The snakeoil salespeople, who may very well just be 
third-rate con artists; the customers, searching for something, anything
to make their little lives a tiny bit more metaphysical; the producers
of the products?  Somewhere in there, though, someone's gotta be
-believing- in this crapola.

--art                                     http://www.ua.com/~medlar/