Wed 5 Mar 2008
Pretender to the Throne Room
Posted by anaglyph under Insane People, Peter Popoff, Skeptical Thinking
[16] Comments
While we’re on the subject of Peter Popoff, it will come as little surprise that Prophet Pete continues to pester me with his daft letters. I’m not so cruel that I would subject you, dear Acowlytes, to all his circumlocutious waffle even though there are many droll moments in his baffling epistles, but today’s offering is certainly Cow-worthy. It takes him less than a paragraph to get to the point (he’s obviously been tipped off to my usual technique of scanning the first page of his drivel and then chucking it straight in the bin):
You’d better prepare yourself and open up your heart and soul, because what I’m about to share with you comes (literally) from the very Throne Room of Heaven.
Literally from the very Throne Room of Heaven! Literally!
You’re imagining something like this, right?:
Wow, Prophet Pete is really connected! Are you scanning the picture to see what it could possibly be, this thing that comes literally from the Throne Room of Heaven. Well, on page 2 of the letter there’s a photograph…
Oooh. A sparkly gem in a ring! Directly from the Throne of Heaven! Maybe an old trinket that God has lost behind the couch or Mrs God has gotten a bit tired of! I rummage through the envelope…
Oh crap. Surely this can’t be it…
Come on! That’s just a bit of gravel in a bag. What gives Prophet Pete??? I speed-read through the letter: …very special object… will supercharge your faith… powerful ‘faith additive’ (wha?) … Aha! Here it is!
This extremely unusual green stone that I’ve sent you was formed as a result of a meteor shower. It comes directly from a very unique slab of anointed Moldavite from a large crater field in Eastern Europe.
So you say, Prophet Pete. It still looks like a bit of gravel to me. And I don’t know where you got this ‘green’ thing from. It’s a sort of grey. Gravel-coloured. Even under a greenish light. And, not to press a point or anything, you now seem to be talking not so much about a shiny gew-gaw from God’s jewellery drawer as pictured, as about an astronomical phenomenon with a fairly solid basis in science, which for reasons that are quite obscure to me are related to your ability to grant me Three Very Special Wishes. Maybe I misunderstand what you mean, and you’re saying that the Throne Room of Heaven is full of meteorites? Perhaps it’s set up somewhere in the Asteroid Belt? Once again I am two pages in and utterly confused.
Anyways, faithful Cowpokes, the letter rambles on with much impenetrable blah-de-blah-de-blah-de-blah which sheds no further light on the matter, eventually signing off with the usual Popoff farewell of ‘A-great-big-cheerio-and-can-you-send-me-twenty-seven-dollars’.
One thing you can say for Prophet Pete – he’s persistent. I now have no less than thirteen reply-paid envelopes from him, and I really, really want to make some use of them.
Acowlytes! Help me out here! What can I send back to Prophet Pete in return for his generous gifts of Miracle Water, holy wafers, paper leaves, shredded money, golden thread, Divine Fragrance* and Gravel from God?
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*I haven’t told you about the Divine Fragrance yet. I’m saving it.
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Sounds like he gave you Fool’s Kryptonite.
I read somewhere once about someone sending Reply Paid envelopes back to some annoying institution packed with as many thin sheets of metal they could get in there, in order to increase the reply paid cost as much as humanly possible.
He forgot the Aza Thoth took over from God in the 16th Century
I guess he figures if it fell out of the sky, it must have come from heaven. Although is he certain about which throne room it come from? It might well have come from the Divine Lavatory.
Which, when you think about, suits Profit Peter perfectly.
You’ve already heard me go on about spiritualists and how they rob the real and abiding beauty out of solid chunks of logic like minerals with their bullshit (see the virgin mary pebble or the “energy” of kyanite), so I’ll contain that tangent.
Anyway, Moldavite is real stuff, but I really doubt that’s it. Moldavite is a mineraloid that formed in high temp/pressure setting, probably meteor related as opposed to anointing related. Tough to tell by the picture, but it seems like that sample isn’t glass. Look for conchoidal fracture and small grainy inclusions. You can cut and facet the stone, but keep in mind it’s basically glass, so not hard enough for heavy use.
Atlas: Well it certainly hasn’t affected my super-powers any.
Universal Head: Hmm. I suspect that the post office would just throw them away if I did that. No, I’m trying to think of something a little more personal…
Malach: You seem to know an awful lot about God.
Phoebe Fay: Where does the light shine from when God’s in his Other Throne Room, do you think?
Casey: Hmmm. I was prompted by your in-depth scientific analysis to whip out the ol’ magnifying glass and take a closer look at Prophet Pete’s rock and now I might be forced to eat humble pie.
And damned if it isn’t actually a little greenish too, if you let light shine through it. I’ll try holding it close to my heart and making three wishes and let you know how that goes.
I was sure I left a comment here yesterday…..?
ooops…. I did. but it was yesterday’s post
I think you got the real deal there. It’s basically an amorphous SiO2 melt with some high temp metamorphic mineral inclusion, which gives it a green color from the olivine. I would say tumble it, but I think it’s too tiny. Maybe take it to a rock shop and have them lap one side.
I can’t vouch for its wish fulfilling properties.
Ooh don’t tumble it, you’ll wipe off all the anointment.
nursemyra: Might be time to start supplementing those kegel exercises with a few rounds of cryptic crosswords ;-)
Casey: It’s shaken my belief system somewhat to think that Peter Popoff has sent me something real. I can only assume (going by the other ‘gifts’ he has sent my way) that this Moldavite is as common as dirt. Please don’t tell me it’s rare or I’ll have to start believing other things he tells me…
Cissy Strutt: With my close connections to Prophet Pete, I’m sure he’d anoint it again at no charge.
Send him a small sliver of mirror- broken.
He can then see the true facc of his god.
Um…it’s rare outside of Germany and Austria, mostly because it’s a regional varietal, but glass from craters is hardly rare. Uncut and raw, it might be worth a dollar or two if someone knew what it was. Personally, I think it’s cool as hell, but my coolness bar is very low. I’ll trade you for a Dominguez flourite and microcrystaline amethyst matrix, equally worthless.
I promise to shut up about rocks now.
hahah… very funny. you know I can’t do a cryptic to save my life
meggie: I think if I sent him what he keeps asking for he’d be (happily) seeing the true face of his God…
Casey: Now now. I happen to think your coolness bar is set extremely high. Who else talks about glowing rocks and recipes for cooking wild game on their digs?
nursemyra: Never too late to learn!
You should consider yourselves lucky, all I got was a pinch of salt