The Only Guru I Ever Listened To (Is Dead)

"The influential rapper Guru has died in hospital aged 43 following a battle with cancer.

The Boston-born MC, real name Keith Elam, was hospitalised last month after he suffered a heart attack and had been in a coma.

Guru rose to fame in the 80s as one half of Gang Starr, the conscious rap group he founded with Grammy award-winning producer DJ Premier.

Gang Starr was credited with the birth of the Hip-Hop/Jazz genre."

-- The Daily Mail

This is a shock: I met Guru once - saw him perform, at least, a half dozen times. He was a really nice guy and one of the most prolific artists around. To say he will be missed is, both, a huge understatement and a lie:

Like most artists of note, through his work, he will be with us forever.

And His Grateful Followers Can't Wait For An Opportunity To Be Snookered - Or Killed - Again

"A motivational speaker charged with manslaughter in the deaths of three people at an Arizona sweat lodge ceremony is out of jail.

Yavapai County Jail Sgt. Dee Huntley says James Arthur Ray gained his freedom Friday, one day after a Yavapai County Superior Court judge reduced him bond from $5 million to $525,000.

Ray had to surrender his passport. He also cannot organize, supervise or conduct any activities that might harm others."

-- The Associated Press

The Secret: Giving Him Everything He Deserves

"Self-improvement guru James Arthur Ray didn't get his $5 million bond cut Tuesday after the hearing on the issue turned into an exchange over his financial information.

Ray's attorneys objected several times Tuesday as a forensic accountant ran through the numbers on Ray's financial statement and questioned many of them.

There was so much squabbling about Ray's finances and a backlog of victims who wanted to testify that the two-hour hearing had to be continued.

Ray's attorneys say he's not a wealthy man and cannot pay the $500,000 in cash nor pledge collateral worth $5 million that it would take to meet the $5 million bond.

Ray attorney Luis Li objected to nearly every number that Echols stated until it became clear that Judge Warren Darrow was going to allow them into testimony.

'This is just a laundry list for the media,' Li said."

-- Glen Creno, watching The Secret's "Spiritual Warrior" - who promised to show others how to make "Harmonic Wealth" - grow old and broke, for Arizona Central.

The King Of All Hippies & The Modern NewAge

"Born in 1934 to a 16-year-old prostitute, Manson appeared as 'No Name Maddox' on his birth certificate. A miserable childhood was punctuated by humiliations such as when an uncle dragged him to church in a dress 'to learn to fight and be a man'.

At 13 he was the youngest ever inmate of Indiana County Jail. He became a career jailbird, with each release followed by arrest for offences ranging from car theft to rape. Bright as a button, he read voraciously in prison, hoovering up titbits of philosophy, religion and mumbo-jumbo that he would later regurgitate in the guise of a guru."

-- Damian Corless, telling us gorgeous bits about Good Time Charlie's early years (which fit perfectly into the NewAge hippie template) you know, the part no one talks about - as they continue to sell NewAge beliefs everywhere - except, occasionally, in The Independent.

Push Her Head Down (You Have Already)

"I cannot help feeling that this is a setup. I do not believe these allegations to be right and proper and I do not believe it should be before this court. It feels like a witch hunt. And it has been a lot to deal with all these years. He has never set himself up to be a guru. He is a friend of many gurus but he is not one himself."

-- Clare Davis, another idiot and friend of Michael Lyons, AKA Mohan Singh - who faces five charges of rape and three of sexual assault - telling us the all-too-familiar story of how she has suffered as her "health guru" palled around with other gurus - though he isn't one himself - and went by different names, while constantly facing false charges of raping women "all these years", forcing poor ol' Clare to get all Ham & High.

But It Made Perfect Sense At The Time

"This was suddenly absurd."

-- Jayanti Tamm, author of Cartwheels in a Sari: A Memoir of Growing Up Cult, as she describes how her mother traveled from San Francisco to a hovel in New York to enter the cult of "Guru" Sri Chinmoy - dooming Jayanti into becoming his child disciple - on NPR.

Let's See - Spiritual "Enlightenment", Faith Healing, The Dalai Lama, Dumb Women, Sex - Nope: We're Putting It In But That's Not News!!!

"A cult guru who claimed he had mystical healing powers raped and sexually assaulted young female followers he found attractive, a court heard.

Michael Lyons, 51, wore flowing robes, called himself Mohan Singh, and surrounded himself with a group of girl devotees.
He convinced them he was linked to Buddhist spiritual leader the Dalai Lama and was 'enlightened,' it was alleged. But Lyons raped and sexually assaulted seven of them over a ten-year period, jurors heard.

One woman claimed he had shown her a film before climbing on top of her naked and spouting 'spiritual mumbo-jumbo'.
Another said he wafted a scented frying pan around her and mumbled incoherent words before grabbing her neck and raping her in his flat.

Prosecutor Philip Katz QC told London’s Wood Green Crown Court: 'We say he is a sexual predator masquerading as a guru.'"

-- Mike Sullivan - making us yawn - in The Sun.

“Because When I Do This My Hair Gets Sticky”

Sheryl Crow, in a desperate move to reclaim her hands and sex life, explaining why she purchased a $1.5 million dollar “Surrogate Elimination Droid” from door to door NewAge sales rep and guru Dawifrufli.

Dawifrufli , whose name in English means “Dances With Fruit Flies”, explains the droid works by a new process known as “Hyper-Quantum Telekinetic Elastic Waste Transfer”.

Essentially, Crow’s unique elimination aura is programmed into the droid, and when she has the urge to eliminate, the droid causes a teleportation module to transfer the waste across space and time to the droid for conventional processing, eliminating the need for Crow to wipe.

Said Crow, “I am very disappointed. I have tried this for a week and I keep wetting the bed and crapping my pants. My plan now is to sell this unit to Bono. That moron will buy anything”.

I Can Read The Utne Reader, But Why Would I?

"For the better part of the past decade, alternative approaches to health care have been encroaching on the prevailing medical model. Acupuncture, homeopathy, naturopathy, and other 'complementary' therapies are no longer dismissed as quackish pursuits of New Age pioneers. "

-- Nathaniel Mead, pushing a bunch of regularly discredited NewAge quack pursuits - by those regularly discredited NewAge quack "pioneers" - in The Utne Reader.

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