Astra's Batshit Roundup...

Vintage Batshit; News of the Weird, and More….

This week, I’ve shoveled some of the best batshit available for you –no need to go to the local zoo; you’ve got it all, right here!

First up, we’ve got a whole list of people who qualify for ‘batshit’ status this week; Sarah Palin tops the list, for her attempt to trademark her name (seems I remember a Mickey Mouse episode where Scrooge McDuck tried to ‘patent the alphabet’); Tila Tequila went off the rails (again) this week; David Barton (my favorite non-historian) claims that Obama is ‘trying to remove God from America’ and that the Founders ‘intended’ to ban abortion (hey - creating alternate realities is fun for some folks; David Barton’s been doing it for over twenty years); and, while this one’s got some age on it, Michele Bachmann is certified by no less a luminary than Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi as being batshit-insane (hey – what do you expect from someone who says that she ‘wakes up every morning with one goal – repeal Obamacare?’).

News of the Weird

In news-of-the-weird, the whole spa-craze has gone ‘round the bend into Batshit Land, also – it turns out that you ladies can schedule a steam-bath for your va-jay-jay.  

Afternoon naps are prohibited under Islamic law in Abu Dhabi.  (Vuvuzelas are all right, if the screech is kept to a minimum.)

General Batshit

Donald Rumsfeld received a “Defender of the Constitution” award; Tucker Carlson and Ken Timmerman received an “Accuracy in Media” award at the CPAC convention this week.  (No word on whether they’d found a recipient for the “Adolf Hitler Humanitarianism Award”, or the “Joseph Goebbels Truth in Media Award”).

Charles Krauthammer, a Washington Post pundit and climate-change denier, came up with his very own theory about Al Gore:  Godzilla; and spores.  I’m serious.

Here’s the entire Oklahoma GOP Platform – just click on the link; you know you want to. 

Speaking of batshit by the ream - here are eleven of the Tea Party Republicans’ pending bills in Congress.

(Note to the reader:  Click on any part of those last two; anywhere.  It doesn’t matter which page and which line – anywhere you look, what you read is almost 100% guaranteed to be batshit-insane.)

Vintage Batshit

For vintage batshit, I really don’t have to go any farther than my own home-state of Oregon.

Turns out that back in the late ‘40’s, a nice couple with way too much time on their hands decided to start a restaurant out on the Oregon coast, just for kids.  Their creation, the Pixie Kitchen, served straight-up hash-house chow (burgers; fish-‘n-chips; bad pizza) – but the waitstaff catered to the kiddies with free gum-balls and jellybeans, and the tables all had recessed centers covered with glass, with sand-bottoms and little Pixie Villages in them (hey – I told you the owners had too much time on their hands).

The basement had a full-on arcade, where parents could send their older kids downstairs unattended with a sackful of quarters to play pinball.  (Back then, it wasn’t considered strange, much less creepy, to send your kids downstairs to play pinball), even though the place looked on the outside like it had been designed by the same guy who did ToonTown for “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?”)

They had so much success parting tourists from their money that they decided in 1967 to create a theme-park based on the restaurant.  They called it (are you ready for this?) – Pixieland. 

There was a Pixie Train, which pulled into a Pixie Depot.  There was a Pixie Log-Flume ride; there were Pixie Mermaids in the Pixie Lagoon; a Cheese Cave (sponsored by a local dairy) where you find more cheese for sale than a person could eat in a year (I know – ‘WTF’; right?).

There was a Bread Hut (sponsored by a local bakery); a Scone Hut; an Opera House, where you could see Evil Bart and Gorgeous Nell, along with a cast of other cardboard characters.  The Pixie Kitchen people sank $300,000 of their own money (long cash in 1967) into this agglomeration, as well as opening it up to public ownership via two stock-offerings.  In all, it’s rumored they sank $3M into this operation. 

The result, as you can see by the photographs, looks like a more-than-vaguely-disturbing Twilight Zone-esque creation.  I never went there myself, because it opened when I was fifteen – and in my world, there were three things a fifteen-year-old boy was interested in –and if it couldn’t help me play my guitar better, get more girls or masturbate more effectively, I and my buddies didn’t want anything to do with it – this place was strictly geared to kids 10 and under.  

Two problems – first; the demographic was too small (even Disneyland has 'something for everyone'); second, on the Oregon coast, there’s (maybe) two and a half months where an operation like this can make any money – the rest of the time, it’s raining and cold.

Predictably, the place folded within five years.  The two main rides (none of the others were ever built) were sold to an outfit in Colorado; the rest was abandoned, and became a bit of a project for archaeology students from Portland, who went out to the place every so often to check on the decomposition.  Huge blackberry vines grew up through the walls; the concrete which made the ‘cave’ turned out to be substandard, and started to crumble off the chicken-wire forms in a couple of years – by 1980, the place was barely recognizable.  

(In 2005, the State began to bulldoze and remove all of this crap and return the wetland areas to their former state.   That’s the best thing that’s happened with this joint since it was built.)

So, my official Vintage Batshit Award goes (at least, this week) to Pixieland and the Pixie Kitchen – because there no batshit like the kind of batshit that spends $3M to build a creepy biodegradeable theme-park.

Funny Batshit:  

If you’re not familiar with Benny Hinn, he’s a televangelist (read:  Batshit scam artist who uses religion to bugger people out of their money) with a huge national following here in the ‘States.  He’s fond of getting up on stage; ‘casting out demons’  from people and performing other acts of hoodoo.  

Kudos to the guy who did this video – he managed to put a light-saber into Hinn’s hand – which makes a lot of what he does, if not plausible, at least enjoyable for those of us who don’t buy into his batshit-behavior.

(Does this mean that Benny is ‘Imperially Batshit'?)

Batshit of the Week Award:

Finally, we come to this – Astra’s Batshit of the Week Award.

Now, understand – the reason I write this piece is to have fun.  Batshit behavior is supposed to be funny – but in most cases, much of what you’re seeing here is actually dangerous.   Bigots fall into that category, generally, because they’re attempting to get the rest of society to exclude one group or another based on their narrow worldview.   However, sometimes their behavior is so egregious it actually becomes funny.  Or borderline-funny, depending.

Bryan Fischer is one of these people.  Normally, he takes gay-bashing to a level we don’t normally see (unless it’s from that old bastard and his family at Westboro Baptist.)  This week, however, Fischer delivered, in spades – this time, he took on Native Americans. 

Fischer says, with a straight face, that they were ‘morally disqualified’ from exercising or retaining control over the continent – and that the best thing they could do is to leave the reservations, convert to Christianity, and become ‘real’ citizens.

I swear.  It’s true.  Cross my heart and shoelaces.   The guy actually said that.   But hey – as I’m fond of saying – stand on a streetcorner and spout gibberish, and they’ll take you to a rubber room.   Avoid the padded cell long enough to get some followers, and you get a tax-exemption, a radio show, a seven-figure salary, and a megachurch to call your very own.  (Note to those who might think of trying this:  It helps, at least in this country, to invoke the word ‘Jesus’ a whole lot.):

Until next week; folks.  Leave your comments below...