strange radiation: the pool of radiance archive

Adventures with an unreliable narrator.

Sep 18 03: tilt-a-whirl

Feeling angsty about the state of the world you live in? (Of course you are. Who isn’t?) Looking for a quick way to blur your blues away? There’s always the Mormon Spin High.

The MSH was the way the Mormon kids back in high school achieved altered states of consciousness. Well, except for those who opted for the more traditional methods available to high-schoolers; everybody knew that nobody Went Bad like a Mormon Gone Bad. Achieving the Mormon Spin High is simple:

Stand directly under some kind of tall, high-contrast object located in a relatively obstacle-free area. A streetlamp at night in an empty parking lot is a good choice.
Tilt your head all the way back and stare at the object.
Twirl around and around as fast as you can for a minute or two. Keep your eyes on the object.
Stop abruptly. At this point you will typically fall down.
Feel your mind flung off into hitherto unreached parts of the psychescape by the inertia of the sudden halt. Eventually, it will come back.
Repeat as desired.

Don’t have a streetlamp in an empty parking lot handy? Perhaps because there’s a hurricane destroying your city? Then try a virtual spin high instead. Yes, here are a couple of things guaranteed to make your head spin around so fast that an altered state is induced:

The Rotating Snake Illusion, hosted by Akiyoshi’s illusion pages. I’ve seen this site referenced by various folks lately and wanted to be sure you saw it. That’s how nice I am.
OBJECTIVE: Christian Ministries, on the other hand, will make your head spin in a whole ‘nother direction. I first stumbled upon this site some while back. Every now and then you find someone new who has just seen it for the first time, and the reaction is almost invariably the same: Is this for real? To which my answer is: No. I think.

It’s a pretty jaw-dropping site. I’m also fairly certain that it’s a hoax. It’s a vast, brilliant, stunningly detailed hoax—the tone is credible, and it goes on forever in a dozen directions—but a hoax nonetheless. It’s a hoax that somebody has put a lot of time into.

I think. I hope. I’m almost completely positive.

To be sure, the hoax-or-not question has spawned some considerable debate. And a testament to its genius is how very few people are ever willing to go past “I’m practically sure that this is not for real.” This guy, responding to O:CM’s howlingly funny article about how Apple Computer is basically Satan incarnate, is one of those rare absolutists. He’s pretty convincing. A number of people suspect that its sole purpose is to drum up publicity for Landover Baptist, which is most definitely a hoax. Pretty canny. I love that explanation.

Oh, and there’s also the thong. That’s kind of a kicker. And the Creation Science Fair! That bit is genius, and the one that often gets people’s attention in the first place. Oh, it’s fabulous.

Perhaps it says something about the Christian Right in America that the unwary, and even the semiwary and the mostlywary and the completelywary, find the site so hard to completely disbelieve. Or perhaps it says something about our opinions of the Christian Right in America, that we are unable to define the limits of what we believe ‘them’ capable of saying and doing and thinking. Perhaps both of those phenomena should tell us something. Regardless, Objective: is a great source of laughs, if you’re willing to negotiate the strange sick feeling that comes with it.

And isn’t the strange sick feeling what a good spin high is about?

(Thanks to Robert at Pure Land Mountain for reminding me that I had O:CM in my ‘for the blog’ folder. Don’t miss the youth ministry and the member bios on O:CM if you’re going to go poking around in there.)

Enjoy your evening, and spin safely.

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