Amazon.com Widgets
Weird Universe Banner by Rick Altergott
 
Category: Self-help Schemes

Joan Avoids A Cold

As the weather becomes colder, let us all pay heed to our health, so that we may all stay well to attend the "Dutch Festival" of our choice.

Posted By: Paul | Date: Mon Oct 06, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (11)
Category: Domestic, Education, Family, Children, Parents, Hygiene, Body Fluids, Parades and Festivals, Self-help Schemes, 1940's

Dion Fortune

image
Collecting novels of the fantastic as I do, I eventually and inevitably came across those of Dion Fortune, and bought a few. To this day, they remain untracked by my eyes. Nonetheless, I was sensitized to her name, and could spot her non-fiction selection Psychic Self-Defence readily on the shelf of a used-book store and snatch it up. A bargain at $5.00, I'm sure!

I haven't read it yet, but I'm much looking forward to learning how to protect myself against various types of intrusive mind assaults. Sample a few pages yourselves below.

And thanks to Google Books, you can read the whole thing online here.




image

image
Posted By: Paul | Date: Fri Sep 26, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (11)
Category: New Age, Paranormal, Self-help Schemes, Psychology, Books, 1930's

Hot Thrills and Warm Chills



What you will witness in the video to the right is the first few minutes of HOT THRILLS AND WARM CHILLS. (It's totally Safe for Work, though the film itself is not.) But the trailer can only begin to convey the true stupefying awfulness of the film.

The gal doing the dance is actress Rita Alexander, and she's the ringleader of a trio of female jewel thieves. She meets with her cronies in her apartment, where they discuss their sex lives, with flashbacks of some assorted mattress workouts. The gals are topless during these bouts, but both males and females retain their underwear during the tussles. The love noises are dubbed in, over unmoving or unsynced lips. And the mambo soundtrack makes everything seem as if it's taking place at a bullfight or a Herb Alpert concert.

Anyhow, the girls--who live in Reno--are planning a heist-- During Mardi Gras! That's right, I bet you never knew Reno had an annual Mardi Gras, and a "French Quarter" as well. But they do in this universe, even though all the exterior shots are plainly shot in New Orleans. Reno seems to have been chosen as "Sin City" because New Orleans wasn't bawdy enough!

Having outlined the heist, the girls go out on the town, to a club that features an energetic but awkward topless dancer. One gal picks up a stranger, but our protagonist decides to go home with a local cop she knows!

In due course, the fabled heist is committed--off camera and past tense! One cop chases the fleeing Rita and a pal through the Mardi Gras parade and into one of New Orleans' famous above-ground, crypt-filled cemeteries. Rita eludes him by darting into a crypt, but gets locked in. She freaks out--despite having plenty of air and light and a gun in her hand with which to shoot off the lock--and commits suicide, and the closing credits roll.

You may now pick your jaws up off the ground.

World D

image
Here's another strange book I purchased but have not yet read. The real author is Joseph K. Heydon, using the pen-name of Hal Trevarthen. Time has swallowed up all details related to Heydon and his book, leaving us only with the text itself.


image
Here's the description from the amazingly ugly dustjacket.


image
Here's the title page, followed by a sample of the actual bafflegab inside.


image Posted By: Paul | Date: Thu Sep 11, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (17)
Category: Aliens, Eccentrics, Government, Inventions, Literature, Books, Science Fiction, Writers, Nature, New Age, Paranormal, Pop Culture, Yesterday's Tomorrows, Self-help Schemes, Science, Psychology, Foreign Customs, 1930's

Invest in Literature--and a Piece of the Brooklyn Bridge

Do you have a spare $2000.00 lying around the house? Why not send it to this untested fiction writer and receive a share of his entirely hypothetical profits?

In fact, I'm a relatively penniless writer too!

Thanks to good pal Sandy Pearlman for discovering this one!
Posted By: Paul | Date: Fri Aug 08, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (7)
Category: Frauds, Cons and Scams, Literature, Books, Writers, Money, Charity, Self-help Schemes, Performance Art

Pelmanism

image
Old self-improvement schemes never die. Recently, I spotted this antique advertisement from 1954 that alerted me to the existence of Pelmanism, the brainchild of William Joseph Ennever.

The Pelman Institutes of England and America apparently once claimed over half a million followers. But now they're long gone. Yet that has not stopped at least two folks from trying to resurrect the copyright-abandoned mind-strengthening course and claim and market it as their own. You can see their pages here and here.

Oddly enough, the last vestige of Pelmanism most people know, without realizing its true origin, is the card game we call Concentration or Memory or Pairs.
Page 1 of 1 pages
All original content in posts is Copyright © 2008 by the author of the post, either Alex Boese ("Alex"), Paul Di Filippo ("Paul"), or Chuck Shepherd ("Chuck"). All rights reserved. The banner illustration at the top of this page is Copyright © 2008 by Rick Altergott.