Welcome To The Glenn Black Program**

Many readers have written in over the years to tell me I'm crazy. You see, I had to be. My apparent nuttiness sprang, willy-nilly, from my over-heated brain just because my poor, suffering, French NewAge "Reiki Master" of an ex-wife, Karine Anne Brunk, left me for a famous French doctor, named Robert Wohlfahrt, after he (with my ex's help) had treated my now-deceased Mother-In-Law, who died writhing in pain.

That's right: I'm crazy and all I'm about to describe is perfectly sane.

Don't forget that.

I was told I was too "macho" to handle my ex's adultery, you see, and my cries of "murder" and calls for an investigation into a world-wide killer "NewAge cult" were nothing more than the sourest of grapes.

I was just being ugly and, really, didn't have to go there.

Yes, I'm black. Conservative. Male. Macho. And now divorced.

Must be a conspiracy nut.

I mean, really, was there anything more that had to be said?

Of course, all of that chatter was willingly ignoring my charge that Dr. Wohlfahrt was a NewAge quack - a homeopath - and that his treatment of my Mother-In-Law was no treatment at all. That, too, couldn't be true, I was told, because even such luminaries as ABC TV's Oprah Winfrey promoted homeopathy (when she wasn't showing a bizarre fascination with, amongst other things, how what she calls "poop" came out) and Oprah is now the moral authority of America who helped elect Barack Obama - "The One" and "The Messiah" - right?

Yea. And Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life.

And just because someone is an atheist and not part of those many already-known Christian groups also charging that Oprah is a cult leader doesn't make it so, and anyway what does anything involving Oprah have to do with some black right-wing nutcase's charge of murder in France?

He's just turned into a crazy Glenn Beck-like cuckoo, with darker skin, trolling for donations to buy himself a chalk board.

Of course, as my regular readers are aware, it did turn out that Dr. Robert Wohlfahrt was a cult guru who, with the aid of my ex-wife, went on to kill two more of his patients and - with the aid of this blog - had his practice first suspended and, then, shut down. Just as it was later revealed the medical advice Oprah Winfrey dispenses on television might get you killed as well (advice given with the help of her own personal wizard, "Dr. Oz" - a physician who is married to a NewAge "Reiki Master". Just. Like. My. Ex. Wife.).

Do you see what I'm gettin' at here? Even a little?

Now comes two more stories that I think might add a bit more context:

The media in Australia, which has been covering that country's problems with NewAge cults and quackery better than our own (with many stories revolving, specifically, around homeopathy) have currently been covering the bowel cancer death of Penelope Dingle (above) the wife of Peter Dingle, a famous Murdoch University Professor who is also a environmental and nutritional toxicologist, author, self-described media personality and guest presenter on the ABC's Can We Help? program.

You know, kind of a Dr. Oz. - except actually in Oz?

Well his wife, Penelope, also "died in pain" like my mother-in-law - according to Deborah Combes, a registered nurse and family friend - and she said Penelope was also "'completely obsessed' with her homeopathic regime". Why such complete obsession - remember: Deborah Combes' word -for water?

And get this: Penelope’s got four sisters, who amazingly
All.
Use.
Homeopathy.

Those four sisters allege Dr. Dingle had convinced Penelope that her tumour couldn’t be cured with "allopathic" medicine, and he was planning on writing a book with his wife's homeopath, Francine Scrayen, telling the world about Penelope’s miraculous recovery using only "alternative" medicine.

One of Penelope's sisters, Toni Brown, said Penelope's treatment was more like "somebody being tortured".

"Mrs Brown said that under the agreement, Dr Dingle (above) would look after his wife's vitamin and antioxidant treatment and Ms Scrayen would deal with homeopathy treatments and diet.

Mrs Brown said that in 2003 her sister was on a strict diet and lost a significant amount of weight but each time she expressed concern, Dingle and her husband told her the treatment was going well.

Counsel assisting the Coroner, Lyle Housiaux, said Dingle's diaries, which have been tendered as evidence, revealed that Ms Scrayen said homeopathy would cure her and she had to avoid conventional medicine, including pain relief."

And what is Dr. Dingle's defense to the charge he murdered his own wife for the glorification of a NewAge cult practice? He says, merely, that his wife didn’t ask him for surgery, but if she had, he would have gone for it. She was hard-headed, you see, and there was nothing he - a famous television doctor - could say or do.

Ha, I know who wore the pants in that family,...

Good thing he wasn't some simple-minded "macho" recording artist, like me, or else Penelope would've been in real trouble.

Speaking of recording artists that nobody's really listening to, the other big story that caught my eye was about Sheryl "Sticky Fingers" Crow. You remember her, don't you? She was once engaged to Lance Armstrong? And she, like Oprah, was so fascinated by our "poop" (while trying to "save the planet") she seriously suggested the rest of us should be restricted to one square of toilet paper-per-poop? Which, much to their eternal shame, got Women On The Web.com to "honor" both Sheryl Crow and Oprah Winfrey as two "Women Who Changed The World"? (Really, they did. Especially Sheryl Crow.) Come on, you gotta know who Sheryl Crow is.

Well anyway, it looks like Sheryl was trying to change her fans' world in more ways than anyone knew, because a psychologist named Christopher Ryan writes on Arianna Huffington's Cult News Network - I mean, The Huffington Post - that, a few years ago, he was listening to Crow's first album and (I love this:) "noticed something very strange about that record":

"First, there's a song called 'Redemption Day' that contains these lyrics:

There is a train that's heading straight
To heaven's gate, to heaven's gate

And on the way, child and man,

And woman wait, watch and wait

For redemption day.

OK, nothing particularly strange about that. But there's another song on the same record ('Maybe Angels') that's all about waiting for aliens to come rescue the character who is singing: 'I swear they're out there ... My bag's all packed in case they ever come for me ... I'm heading down to Roswell to wait and see...'

So we've got a song about someone who thinks aliens are coming to take her away and another song that repeats the phrase 'heaven's gate' over and over in reference to 'redemption day.'

Maybe some of you reading this have already made the connection to the cult that went by the name Heaven's Gate, who thought an alien ship was hidden just behind the Hale-Bopp comet. The leader of the sect, Marshall Applewhite, had convinced his followers that the alien ship was coming to take them away. In March of 1997, thirty-eight members of the group, including Applewhite, committed suicide, believing they'd reached their own redemption day -- all of them wearing arm patches that said 'Heaven's Gate Away Team.'

But Crow's album was released in September of 1996, six months before any of this happened, which means she was writing these songs a year or more before the sect received any media attention."

So - along with yet another homeopathic murder case (What number is this now?) that has many of the same elements I've been railing about for years - we've also got another friend of Oprah's (one of those "many spiritually advanced people,...(not coweringly religious, mind you, but deeply spiritual)" who supported Barack Obama) who is fascinated by our "poop" (as is Oprah) at the very least propagates cult ideology as entertainment (as does Oprah) with talk of traveling with Angels and/or Aliens (Help me out here: Oprah?) plus a reference to one of the world's most famous, specifically, NewAge power spots, Roswell, New Mexico. And, just for further reference, let's recap:

France. Australia. Sheryl Crow covers Roswell and the U.S. itself pretty well, and Oprah's got Hana, Hawaii but, pretty much, covers the world.

But, unsophisticated silly me, armed with all the other, specifically, NewAge killings (and everything else) I've told you about in the five years I've been doing this blog, there's absolutely nothing to indicate a world-wide NewAge cult. No way. It's just not possible.

A much more logical explanation for all this is (wait for it) because I declared myself a conservative, I've gone crazy.

Yea which, to me, makes total sense.

Since a conservative is anyone trying to go straight, while cultists are cooing that "ev-e-ry day is a winding rooooad,..."

Can you hear me, America?

This is the Glenn Black program.

[Music]

[Cut to - obligatory commercial for the world's latest homeopathic product.]

**Sorry, but I re-read this post and thought I didn't take my best shot at the weird kind of Glenn Beck fuzzy-brained atmosphere-thing I was going for, and I needed to add more links. So I'm saying, after I got home from work, I probably too hastily re-wrote parts, and yea, I'm sorry to do that to you, but look at it like a NewAger:

Now it's alive and vibrant.