Psychic Hotlines

It's not that i don't believe that there are individuals out there who are gifted with psychic abilities, it's just that i realize these gifts are so easily exploitable and can be effectively faked.

Take that popular Psychic phone line for instance. If you spend a lot of time watching late night cable, as i do when i am online working on web pages, you will see the infomercial-style program over and over again. They mostly use the same three or four clips which they feel will "prove" how authentic their psychics are. I imagine they choose the clips which they feel cast them in the best light. But if you examine the selections, there are flaws in the logic.

I believe there are two types of flaws: one is the obvious staging of calls and callers, and the other is the gullibility of the callers themselves.

EXAMPLE: A woman is video-taped as she speaks with a psychic who tells her that she will be pregnant within four months. She tells him she and her husband have been trying to get pregnant for a while without success. She calls back and they put her on the air with the same psychic. She tells them that she took a pregnancy test the next day, and it was positive. Then she began to thank the psychic effusively, as if he had something to do with her fertility. This is a flaw in the logic of the caller. Whether the psychic had just made a lucky guess, or was indeed in touch with a higher consciouness, he was in no way responsible for her pregnancy, yet she continued to thank him adding, "You have given me my hopes and dreams back." With a little thought, it doesn't take a mensa-member to figure out that if she had just been patient ONE MORE DAY, she would have STILL discovered she was With-Child, and would not have had to pay the $100 or so for that conversation with the psychic.

An example of the staged calls is the time that the hostess called a previous caller, and asked how things worked out. Of course, the caller had a fantastic story that was so smooth, it was obviously scripted. She claims in the call to be surprised by the callback, and yet, does not hesitate, but launches into a rehearsed, neatly capsulated report that sounds more like a segment of Prime Time Live, than a response from some Jane Doe from Iowa, caught off-guard and unprepared.

And of course, each of these examples were followed up by the Hostess saying, "That gave me goosebumps."

Now understand, I have a friend who is a psychic, and the one person who keeps from from calling the whole thing a lie...i know from personal experience hat she has a real gift, that cannot be debunked. She has worked for several of those psychic services. She left the last job when they began to tell her, essentially, she had to lie and also that she must keep them on the line past their free time, so that they could make their money. To make matters worse, they told her what to tell her clients-regardless of whether or not is was what she saw. In all fairness, the callers give their permission to be charged for the call. And they have free will to hang up at any time. Surprisingly, they don't usually hang up. My friend told me she has found that callers are primarily looking for someone to talk to, and that's all. May i suggest finding friends that don't charge?

Buyer Beware.

Psychic Hotlines

Plaque Brain

I often have trouble remembering my dreams, even though i wish fervently that this was not so. Dreams are an incredible resource for a creative person, and this NO ACCESS thing makes me think that the Powers That Be are protecting me from some screaming ugly...

At any rate, when i do recall a dream, i like to write it down...if it's interesting...
so...

I was having exploratory brain surgery. Skull open, i had a metal halo contraption around my head. Two of the docs were in there--or orderlies, maybe...they were acting crazy, looking at my exposed gray matter. One of them even kissed me, laughing that I wouldn't remember and I was frightened of what else they might do. I couldn't defend myself in any way and could not speak--Like the surgeons had pressed a pause button on my language center.

Then the surgeons are in the room again, and are conferring; Like they've already looked and left the room and come back. They know what is wrong with my brain but will have to do another procedure. They are to take me to another O.R. for some reason. I want to know what it means, and am scared that it might be serious or dangerous. I can't understand what they are saying.

Then I am being guided down the hallway to the other procedure, except instead of being on a gurney, I am walking. They say they want to be sure I can walk so they know everything is functioning before the next procedure. But I feel so odd. . . people in the corridors are staring and I feel so exposed--I mean literally-- here's my brain perched inside the open resevoir of my skull...

I pass a little kid in the hallway who is playing with an object--a toy of some kind--and his mother grabs him and pulls him away from me; he throws the toy, and it lands in my brain. I hope the surgeons see it and remove it.

In the O.R, back on the table again, they begin scraping my brain. Seems it has got a film of something on it; this growth that has been suppressing my brain function. Like, Plaque-brain. This is the thing that is causing my cognitive dysfunction.

As the surgeons scrape the gray matter, I begin to have memories, and then I am overwhelmed with memories and knowledge. All the things I learned over the years that I never had access to. But it's too much, and they have to give me some sort of neuro-blocking agent to suppress it until I can handle it. It has to be allowed to filter in gradually so I won't have a mental breakdown. But I know that I feel so smart, and I am excited that I am remembering all those things. I finally have answers. I finally can stop saying 'I don't know.' I can go through my set list without a single mistake, and I can do it all visually in my head. I can remember my childhood, I can recall conversations verbatim, I can handle doing math, my checkbook, my finances; I can recall even the most esoteric of details gathered throughout my life; volumes of trivia; reams of textbook content; I can recite the titles of hundreds of books I've read. It's like that life-review thing that i believe happens when you die; where you see everything in your life and suddenly have a keen and all-encompassing understanding...But i also remember all the bad things and all the details. It's painful.

Yet, I realize that some things have been altered by my memory before--some things seem clear to me now that were muddled before. And although it can be overwhelming and unpleasant, it's worth the trade-off to me. I finally feel whole. I finally feel I have reached my potential and anything is possible. I discover that it isn't common to have this much brain power after that surgery, and they tell me that it must indicate that I was some sort of genius all along, but never knew because of this condition.

Then, my best friend, LS comes to the hospital and brings me a T-shirt that reads::"I know."

Plaque Brain