MAGIC OF THE MIND

"BLUE" JIMMY:  STUDENT OF OCCULT SCIENCE

BLIND DOG OZZY:  NEUROTIC CHIHUAHUA

BD OZZY:  We went to the movies the other night and we saw a trailer that scared the f*** out of me!

"BLUE" JIMMY:  It was for a new film called "The Possession" which of course, is one of many films released in recent years which deals with the subject of demonic possession.   "The Exorcism of Emily Rose," "The Last Exorcism" and "The Devil Inside" being some of the more popular ones that deal with this topic.

BD OZZY:  The worst toda madre scary film of all time though, was "The Exorcist."  Tell William Peter Blatty he owes me 30 years of sleep!

"BLUE" JIMMY:  You were just a puppy.  But the one constant throughout all these films and in real life cases of demonic possession is that all rational scientific and medical jive has to be eliminated before it can be considered a real possession by The Church.  Even hometown country preachers are getting hip to this.  All it takes is for some big mouth to suggest that The Devil is at work and some mentally unhinged person will start twisting their head backwards and spouting blasphemies in Latin.  

BD OZZY:  This brings us to our topic -- the incredible power of the mind!

"BLUE" JIMMY:  I was reading through Anthony Robbins bestselling self-improvement book entitled, "Awaken the Giant Within" and in chapter 4 page 77 I came across a story which hit close to home because I was indirectly involved in it.  The story recounts an incident of mass hysteria which took place at East Los Angeles College in the 1980's which demonstrates the incredible Power of Suggestion.  I was a staff writer and Chief of Photography on the college newspaper and I had sent a photographer to take shots of the school's Friday night football game.  He came back the following Monday with the most bizarre photos of people being carried out of the stadium on stretchers writhing in agony.  What happened was that one person got violently ill from something or other and some genius suggested that it was food or drink from the concession stand  that had caused the illness.  Instantly, hoards of people started fainting, vomiting and had horrible stomach pains and paramedics had to attend to a whole lot of "poisonings." The Health Department investigated and tested all foods and drinks and found no contaminants and miraculously, everyone recovered from their symptoms  -- Power of Suggestion is a b****!

BD OZZY:  Some people have learned to use the power of their mind to such a degree that it seems like sinister forces are at work.

"BLUE" JIMMY:  One such cat is mentalist Marc Salem author of "The Six Keys to Unlock and Empower Your Mind" whose public demonstrations of mind power will convince you that he has indeed, sold his soul to The Devil.  He makes no claims of paranormal ability and says that all he is doing is using his highly developed mental abilities.

BD OZZY:  On one radio broadcast, he advised that it is important to develop your powers of observation and to demonstrate, he asked the listening audience if they knew what is directly on the middle and back of a one dollar bill -- something we've all had in our hands hundreds of times.  Many people thought it was the mysterious, Freemason pyramid with the eyeball on top which is the subject of endless conspiracy theories.  No, he revealed, it is simply the word "one" written in large letters.  The pyramid is off to the side.  I kicked myself too.  After much conversation, he then told the host and listeners to draw any geometric shape they wished inside of another geometric shape and he would do the same.  I was determined to draw something incredibly complex like a hexagon inside of an octagon but for some reason all I could think of was to draw a triangle inside of a circle.  He then told the host to take the first caller and ask them what shapes they had drawn.  The first caller was a woman who said she had drawn a triangle inside of a circle.  The host also revealed that he had drawn a triangle inside of a circle.  Marc Salem then showed the host that he had drawn a triangle inside of a circle.

"BLUE" JIMMY:  Did he read everyone's minds all across the world? ( this syndicated broadcast  was worldwide).  I am not one to let a mystery lie, so I used my own beer-soaked brain cells to figure this one out.  It took awhile, but I figured out how he blew our minds with this apparent bit of sorcery.  The most logical explanation was that he had somehow "planted" the image of a triangle inside of a circle in our heads.  Then I remembered that several minutes earlier he asked people to remember what is on the middle and back of a one dollar bill and most smartasses thought it was the mysterious Freemason pyramid with the eyeball at the top -- a triangle inside of a circle!  He hardwired this image into our brains and that's all we could think of.  What else could someone plant into our heads without us knowing it?

BD OZZY:  If you want to go further into this territory, you got to read "Sleights of Mind: What the Neuroscience of Magic Reveals About Our Everyday Deceptions" by Stephen L. Macknik and Susana Martinez-Conde.

"BLUE" JIMMY:  This book, written by two neuroscientists who also have an interest in stage magic, is a fascinating journey into the world of magic and magicians and seeks to explain the exact neurological processes that stage magicians exploit to blow our minds and make us see what we couldn't possibly be seeing.  And yes, the book is full of spoiler alerts and tells exactly how many impossible feats of conjuring are done.  The only thing more mindblowing than the way these acts of visual wizardry are done is the thought that these secrets have been passed down through the ages by magicians centuries before modern science was able to explain them -- where did this knowledge come from?

BD OZZY:  And who has used this knowledge for maximum gain -- Advertisers?  News Organizations?  The Government?  The Church?

"BLUE" JIMMY:  Dude!  The mind is truly an incredible entity and it would be sheer arrogance to think we got it all figured out.  And like a pie plate hanging from a telephone wire and someone calling it a UFO, we have to make sure that cases of paranormal ability are not just someone being a whole lot smarter than you.

BD OZZY:   I bet I can read your mind right now.

"BLUE" JIMMY :  What am I thinking right now?

BD OZZY:  You're thinking can i read your mind right now.

"BLUE" JIMMY:  A**hole!  Check out the photo of me in Sedona, Arizona in classic Baphomet pose, absorbing pure energy!

"BLUE" JIMMY:  Sake's Alive!

BD OZZY:  Wow! Wow!