The Snake Oil Bulletin: Don't Get Your Dorito Spermicide Here!

Greetings and Salutations, friends! Do you have aches and pains what ail you? Are you afflicted by rheumatism, King’s evil, and the French pox? Do you seek the fantastical cures to these maladies and more, and maybe a little tincture to rattle your marriage bed? Well you won’t find them here, by gumption. Nay, friends, for in this traveling medicine show you’ll find a rundown of the choicest concoctions of bull pucky, bunk, and pseudoscience to grace our marvelous steam-powered electro-web!

Hop aboard, and if you must, please vomit out the back. The fumes make the snakes ornery something awful.

First on our wagon train of whack, we have Ken Ham, founder of the Creation Science Museum. Your Wonkette covered Mr. Ham back in December when he fought a brave, goodly battle to steal tax dollars from the state of Kentucky. Some atheist ne’er-do-wells thought it was more than a little illegal for a state government to hand over 18 million dollars to build a Noah’s Ark theme park, and all because our dastardly Union has a “Constitution” or something. The nerve! Mr. Ham has proved you can’t keep a Godly man down, and appeared on American Family Radio to speak truth about the intolerant liberal atheists keeping him from achieving his dream with other people’s money.

Mr. Ham also had the good sense to call out his debate partner, Bill Nye, and other such “seclarists” because these hypocrites won’t even hawk Ken Ham’s DVDs! How’s a charlatan to make a living if you won’t even buy his merch? 

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Speaking of merch, next on our steam train of steaming piles comes a Canadian feller whose inspirational Facebook quotes probably get shared on the regular by one of your crunchier cousins, Spirit Science . This veritable bevy of bupkis originally began as a series of YouTube videos detailing just about everything from how diseases are entirely your fault, to the best way to astral project, to the exact location of Atlantis (spoiler: just off Charleston, South Carolina). Its founder, Jordan Duchnycz, realized very early on that where there's a will, there's a buck to be made, and thus did he abandon the series about a year ago to sell crystals out of Etsy stores. Got to admire that enterprising spirit.

Welp, apparently the crystal-slinging game ain't like it used to be back in ole '48, because Jordan is back with an all-new video ! This time around he's discussing chakra, which if you ask a Hindu describes a point of spiritual energy on the human body, and if you ask a nerd is the source of fabulous ninja powers. Of course Jordan couldn't be bothered with any of that new-fangled research into either camp, because according to him chakras are literal wheels inside the human body that color the way you see the world, we're guessing like sunglasses? Also, apparently babies touching their parents is "sexual in nature" (?!). We're not entirely sure, but we doubt Jordan is either. Whatever it is chakras can do, it must be something special indeed if it was enough to impress the gent who believes Jews are time-traveling spacemen. Yes, really.

Mel Brooks couldn't have written it better himself.

Trundling along next come those delightful rapscallions in the Church of Scientology. It seems our dear friends are a mite bit touchy when it comes to people having honest disagreements with them. The disagreement in question is with filmmaker Alex Gibney and his new film Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief , set to premiere at Sundance January 25. It seems that the Church does not take kindly to folks what point out they're a bunch of abusive marauding swindlers:

This [anonymous] former member specifically highlighted the practice of "disconnection," according to The Times, "under which members of the church break contact with friends, family members or associates who are deemed to have become hostile toward Scientology."

That does sound like an awful accusation to level against a group, and some people say that would even qualify an organization as a cult. Now how in their infinite OT-level-bazillion wisdom have the Church elders decided to respond to these claims? Oh, by comparing the documentary to the Rolling Stone UVA gang rape story. They sound nice, don't they?

Incidentally, while we're loath to cite the Old Grey Lady, Michael Kinsley's review of Lawrence Wright's original book version of Going Clear is a beautiful piece of snark.

“It was a part of a lecture Hubbard gave in 1963, in which he talked about the between-lives period, when thetans are transported to Venus to have their memories erased.”

Oh, that period. Of course. How could I forget?

We are all thetans, spirits, trapped temporarily in our current particular lives. Elsewhere, though, Hubbard says that when a thetan discovers that he is dead, he should report to a “‘between-lives’ area” on Mars for a “forgetter implant.”

Oh dear, oh dear.

Finally, pulling up the caboose of our woo choo train is everyone's favorite not-Oprah, Vani Hari a.k.a. the Food Babe! If you haven't heard of Food Babe before, you've definitely heard of her antics. She was the one who claimed Subway sandwiches were made out of yoga mats (they weren't) and that Pumpkin Spice Lattes cause cancer (they don't). She caused a bit of a kerfuffle last year when she revealed to a horrified public that our airlines were cheating us out of precious oxygen .

The air you are breathing on an airplane is recycled from directly outside of your window. That means you are breathing everything that the airplanes gives [ sic ] off and is flying through. The air that is pumped in isn’t pure oxygen either, it’s mixed with nitrogen, sometimes almost at 50%. To pump a greater amount of oxygen in costs money in terms of fuel and the airlines know this! The nitrogen may affect the times and dosages of medications, make you feel bloated and cause your ankles and joints swell.

Good heavens! Almost 50% nitrogen! That's a full 28% less nitrogen than we breathe just walking around outside! I feel faint, or maybe it's just the 100% oxygen I'm breathing.

Ms. Babe also happens to oppose vaccinations , because of course she does.

While Food Babe herself has been quiet of late, what with her latest book coming out, her followers are in rare form as ever. As documented on the satire account Chow Babe , one of Vani Hari's fans is in quite a pickle with her hubby's, ahem, affliction.

 
 Image from The Chow Babe 

This poor man is so sick that he is cumming Doritos into his wife. She shouldn't worry none though; in frontier parts they just call that Cool Ranch Lovin'.

Well, folks, it sure is time for this old medicine show to mosey on into the next town. Shoot me a telegraph if'n yer ever in need of any more potions and poultices to perk your pecker all the way up to St. Peter. Also too, does anyone know exactly how much blood is safe to cough up on an hourly basis? Just askin' for a friend.

[ Right Wing Watch / Spirit Science / Spirit Science on YouTube / Business Insider / New York Times / Food Babe / Neurologica / MIStupid / Chow Babe on Facebook ]