Sylvia Browne Looks Foolish On Radio Show

[Doug]

I went to the spirit fair - not much of a fair - a double seminar room at the Clarion with about 25 vendors - had the cards read (at the cheapest one - $10) & was told there'd be big changes at work by next October & that I was a nun in a former life (I was congratulated on having matured from religion to spirituality). It was fun, but the incense got to me in short order.

DOUG
I just did a reading for you. There will be big changes for you in November, and you were a warrior in a previous life.

That will be $10.00. Cash only, please.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

Well, the current department chair is going on sabbatical as of 7/1, so I suppose that could count as big changes by either October or November. Also, I seriously considered becoming a nun 25 years ago, which is so different from my life now as to almost be considered a previous life. Depending on your definition of warrior (as well as previous life), that could be true, too - I was a member of a group that fought 1970's Austin mayor Roy Butler on his "didn't want to ruin a man's business" routine of rezoning residential areas to benefit companies that were illegally started there (amongst many other political battles I've been part of - that one we won).

[Betsy]

Doug, OMIGOD, you're AMAZING! Your reading of Barbara was so right on. Could you do one for me, too?

[Doug]

Doug, OMIGOD, you're AMAZING! Your reading of Barbara was so right on. Could you do one for me, too?

DOUG
Sometimes when you get up in the morning, you feel tired.

You wonder about what will happen to you in the near future.

There is a side of you that you don't show to your friends.

You think that you worry too much about money.

You are concerned about your weight.

Etc. etc.

Remind me sometime to tell you about "the classic reading." I did a presentation on this a few years ago for the Freethinkers. It's a set of statements based on psychology that almost all people will agree with yet for some reason gives people the impression that you know some deep secrets about them. It beats the heck out of most psychic readings where the psychic just pops off a few guesses off the top of his or her head.

[Dardedar]

DAR
Didn't you buy an expensive top of the line cold-reading book Doug?

A good psychic extracts information from you and then feeds it back to you in disguise, along with a bunch of semi-secret truisms that most people like to believe about themselves (and think they are special for believing them).

In the early ninties my ex-wife decided to go to a halloween party as a gypsy tarot card psychic and give out free "readings" for fun. She knew just a little about them, just the basics. Everyone was amazed and astonished at her psychic abilities and advised her to go into the business. It's built into the game. It doesn't matter too much what you tell people because they are so extraordinarily good at making almost anything fit into some aspect of their life. But once you get a little better at it and learn the lines and patter that work most consistently, then you get a regular spot on Montel and/or Larry King and people pay you millions to feed them this horseshit.

Frank Whalen (formerly of 104.9 FM "The X") used to regularly have a psychic lady on his radio show (Laurie Brown I think). She would take calls and just shamelessly milk people for information (remember they were calling her to find out information via her supernatural powers), and then she would feed it back to them with her common sense opinions sprinkled in with the odd guess. Frank, as dull as he is was and is, was able to figure out how to do this himself after a while and they had a falling out because she was supposed to be the guest psychic expert but it quickly became obvious that Frank could make up and shovel this crap just as easily as her (or anyone else).

D.
----------------
“My father, a doctor, was an aggressive atheist who dismissed religion
as bullshit and was happy to expand on this theme to his many show
business patients. My dad used to do house calls, and he got a call in
the middle of the night from Oral Roberts the famous televangelist, who
had hemorrhoids really severe. My dad said: ‘You call me at three in
the morning ' why don’t you stick your own finger up your ass and cure
yourself?” --Randy Newman, songwriter, Guardian

[Doug]

DAR
Didn't you buy an expensive top of the line cold-reading book Doug?

DOUG
Yes. I even have a special booklet and tape on The Classic Reading, and a CD of a British mentalist explaining how to do it.