Whirled blogaversary: six of fun, half a dozen of serious

Today, July 27, Whirled Musings turns six years old.

I am honored, humbled, and beyond thrilled that the world has chosen to host a more-than-two-weeks-long party in London in honor of this little blog's sixth birthday. I understand that some athletes are going to be performing to celebrate this occasion, and there will be torches and fireworks and stuff. (The angry villagers have tried to come after me with torches in the past, but all is forgiven.) It's too bad that I can't be in London for the festivities, but perhaps my good pal HHH can pop in on my behalf.

As a matter of fact, it was HHH who suggested to me that the dearth of comments here recently may have something to do with the fact that I have been focusing more on mundane scammers and con artists than on the more esoteric and endlessly amusing loons and wackadoodles whom I used to snark about on a regular basis.

It's true that the more "out-there" crazies were, once upon a time, my main stock in trade, and it's also true that I originally created this Whirled half a dozen years ago mainly as a humor and entertainment blog. And there's been humor aplenty; well, at least I have kept myself pretty well entertained. Then again, I am easily amused, so there's that to consider.

In the earlier years, though, I really did visit the wackos more frequently than I have lately. And oh, there were so many from which to choose. I found out about many of them from a New-Wage marketing service called StarDoves. I was on StarDoves' email list for several years -- not of my own choosing; it just happened. It was their doing, apparently. But I took full advantage of my membership until I was unceremoniously removed. Maybe they were tired of getting complaints from their clients about how I was making fun of them; I don't know.

In any case, StarDoves and their clients provided me with endless hours of easy-snarkin' delight. Who can forget, for example, a guy named Bryan who, along with his very own Indigo Children, Mother Mary, and a few other luminaries, was involved in a project to empty Hell and bring its inhabitants into the Light? A lot of those posts, along with some other random nuttiness, can be found under the "What Lies Beneath" label on my Whirled.

That's just the tip of the loony pile, and StarDoves were far from the only source of snark chum. I have, for example, gotten a lot of mileage out of the wacky, cultish, sex-and-money organization, Access Consciousness -- for instance, see this post -- though not all of my posts about Access have been humorous. Here's a link to the Google results, since the interior search engine on Blogger still seems to be kind of sucky.

I've also derived tons of amusement from what I call the Imaginary Friends segment of the New-Wage/McSpirituality/selfish-help industry. Let's see... there's Abraham-Hicks (aka Abrascam-Hicks)... there's Vladimir Megre and his nekkid blonde babe-in-the-woods, Anastasia...there's Gary Renard and the hot disembodied couple he found in his living room...there's Penny Torres/Mafu (the "Swami Blonde" on my Whirled, and a JZ Knight/Ramtha wannabe...and of course Access Consciousness Gary Douglas and the disembodied entities who originally "revealed" Access to him. Here are a few more Whirled-ish Google results for Imaginary Friends.

The world's most successful New-Wage moviemercial, The Secret, has also been a big inspiration to me, both for blog posts and graphics. In fact, many of us "haters" got a wealth of inspiration from The Secret, so much so that one of my favorite snargets' lap dogs once told his Twitter followers that we critics are just a bunch of losers who got our panties in a wad over The Secret and never got over it. (That has been a typical ploy used by snargets to dismiss the growing body of very legitimate criticism that is, in fact, not just limited to The Secret.) In any case, here are the Google search results for Whirled Musings Secret-related graphics, which in turn will lead to many Whirled posts about The Secret.

Those are just a few random examples. I've also concentrated on individual con artists, such as Kevin Trudeau and his scammy Global Information Network (GIN). Here's the link to the Google results for that. I've never been a GIN member and have known about Trudeau's cons since the 1990s, but am glad to say that GIN members are finally waking up to something that I've known was a scam since its inception in 2009. I can't take any credit for that, though; they apparently had to find out the hard way. But the important thing is that they found out, and I'm lending my moral support to them now.

In any case, in more recent years this blog has acquired a seriousness of purpose that wasn't really there in the beginning. A lot of that had to do with two factors: (1) The James Arthur "Death" Ray sweat lodge case in Sedona in October 2009 (which really woke me up to the more serious side of the stuff I'd been snarking about for years); and (2) my acquaintance with, and growing respect and admiration for, the work that Salty Droid is doing on his blog.

So while I still think humor and ridicule are great ways to fight the scammers, I also think that more serious education and editorializing are equally valid tools. (Not that Salty's blog is lacking in humor; even a superficial glance at the blog will prove that's not the case.) I'm still in this for the entertainment and easy snarks, but I think there is also a larger purpose, if you will. I've even joined in a nascent project Salty Droid has started, and you can too (if you are not a current or recent scammer).

I've truly enjoyed the six years I've been "snarking lividly," as one of my critics (in fact, the same snarget lap dog I mentioned above) described my activities on this Whirled. I appreciate everyone's support, and I hope to be lividly snarking for many more years, at least until I finally get bored with it, or until there is no more need. And by the way, if you want to lend a little monetary support to this effort, there's a "Donation" button up there on the left. (I even wrote a poem about it a couple of years ago.) There's also a donation link below.

Donation or not, I'm very glad you're here. And keep those comments coming.

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