Tag Archives: astrology

283 – Call Of The Wild: Jack London And The Paranormal

When you think of turn of the Twentieth Century writer Jack London, you immediately think about of the Yukon and his most famous works like White Fang or Call Of The Wild. And in fact, Harrison Ford returns to the screen next week with the latest version of the classic novel (written from the dog’s perspective, there are few works like it!)

When the mushrooms wear off and you realize you’re not an intergalactic smuggler with a Wookiee…

Jack London led a tumultous and adventurous life, just like his characters. And he didn’t just write stories about the Gold Rush to Alaska, but also wrote plenty of ghost stories and science fiction. And even though he was an avowed atheist, that didn’t mean that the rest of his family was. And that doesn’t mean that the people around him didn’t experience paranormal activity like:

So whether it was the rejection of his real father or the fact that his mother famously attempted suicide twice after she found out she was pregnant, Jack London wasted little time in his life. In fact, two months before he died he said this quote to his friends that would later be known as his credo:

I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.

Jack London

And that’s the theme of this week’s song, “I’d Rather Be Ashes Than Dust”.

‘fore I was born my mother did her best to die 
but the bottle and the bullet didn’t kill her 
So I came out a little stronger, stronger than the average guy 
Gonna write my bio as a thriller 

Ohh ohh 
I got to hit the road 
ohh ohh 
Don’t you hear the call 
I’m gonna go out shooting ‘fore my body turns to rust 
cuz I’d rather be ashes than dust 

Half a world away is where I will find my passion 
Someone told me that there’s mountains full of gold 
Headfirst into the fray looking for some action 
I’ve got to see this world before I’m old 

Ohh ohh 
I got to hit the road 
ohh ohh 
Don’t you hear the call 
I’m gonna go out shooting ‘fore my body turns to rust 
cuz I’d rather be ashes than dust

171 – Darkest Hour: The Paranormal Life of Winston Churchill

It’s getting near the  end of the year, so that means it’s  Oscar-bait time and one of the performances getting great reviews this season is Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour. Of course, Gary Oldman isn’t afraid of a radical transformation (just see his work as a computer-generated dwarf in the movie Tiptoes) and the skinny Oldman gets out the fat suit to play the more squat Sir Winston. The movie looks good and I’m a sucker for World War II flicks, especially set during the Blitz .

While we all know Churchill from his amazing speeches and his steadfastness in the face of the Nazi threat, he also had plenty of supernatural experiences as well.

In this episode we talk about

So, there’s plenty of stories about the paranormal life of Winston Churchill, but as the “Last Lion” of the British Empire, he was a man very much of his time with an aura of greatness that proceeds him as almost no other leader of the Twentieth Century. He was a great author, orator, leader, and politician and helped shape our world.

We mention him in our song “No Place Like Home” because it’s that greatness that this song is looking for, the idea that you have to run away to find your purpose because you’ll never find it where you grew up. But we don’t always get to choose where we are most needed, where we are most valuable. Churchill was perfectly suited to his time and his place, but even when it doesn’t feel like it, aren’t we all exactly where we are supposed to be?

I was looking for any kind of way out,
I’ve been planning my escape since the day that I was born,
I took a map, threw a dart, and hit a target.
Anywhere but here was a better place to be for me.I am the puzzle that is missing lots of pieces,
I am  the paint by numbers that don’t all add up.
I am the Christmas gift with batteries not included,
I am the greatest book you ever read whose ending sucks.I said that I was coming back as a big shot,
when I found more of my kind,
I promised I would have a laugh at the townies,
the poor bastards left behind.I left town like a prison break,
Anywhere was better than this place,
I thought I was a rolling stone,
When I went out to the Twilight Zone,
But in the end there’s no place like home.There must be some kind of error in the geography,
I’ll never grow old in this locality,
I’m Buck in the 25th century,
I felt like Dorothy, but don’t call me Dorothy.
I always felt like I belonged in the 70s.
or with Churchill or even DaVinci,
but the further I run from this proximity,
The bigger the hole gets inside of me.

I’m still the puzzle that is missing lots of pieces,
but I’m not lonely anymore.
We’re all expatriates confused by our coordinates,
The cosmic refugees who washed up on this shore.

I left town like a prison break,
Anywhere was better than this place,
I thought I was a rolling stone,
When I went out to the Twilight Zone,
I left town like a prison break,
Anywhere was better than this place,
I thought I was a rolling stone,
When I went out to the Twilight Zone,
But in the end there’s no place like home.
No place like home.
No place like home.
No place like home.

P.S. – Here’s the awesome map of UFO sightings we talk about in the episode from our friend, John. UFO sightings in Wisconsin broken down by city!

167 – Paranormal Pumpkin: Billy Corgan and the Shapeshifters

When Billy Corgan from The Smashing Pumpkins was on the Howard Stern show promoting his new album, Ogilala, Howard and Robin were grilling him on his relationship with everyone’s favorite radio host/internet conspiracist, Alex Jones. Corgan (who now goes by his full name, William Patrick Corgan) has been on Infowars three times.

https://www.infowars.com/billy-corgan-infowars-interview-1-trend-on-facebook/

So, Howard asks Billy about the reptilians as a joke and Billy Corgan proceeds to see that he’s seen a shapeshifter. Oh yeah! You can hear some of the interview at this link, but he doesn’t get too detailed because he said he fears for his career and the lives of his loved ones. He is still freaked out about the whole thing

billy corona shapeshifting
Billy Corgan rocking!

We talk about everything we can find on Billy and the reptilian shapeshifters, and also other paranormal experiences that he’s reported. He’s always been a sensitive guy and has had his eye on the spiritual and we go over some more of his conspiratorial ideas, craziest moments, fights with Courtney Love, the ghost of David Bowie, and more. You’ve got to expect some paranormal business from the man who starts one of his most famous songs with the line, “The world is a vampire”…

Wendy and I were always huge fans of The Smashing Pumpkins, so it was fun to relive some of our favorite musical moments from the 90s and if you’ve never heard the band before, this little ditty from Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, might be their most paranormal track (lyrically at least). It’s called “We Only Come Out At Night”.

So The Smashing Pumpkins recorded two of their albums with Butch Vig, one of the greatest producers of the alternative rock generation. They recorded the entirety of their debut album, Gish, at Smart Studios right here in Madison, Wisconsin.  When we recorded at Smart in 2001, we tried to get all the stories of our favorite bands, including The Smashing Pumpkins. There was a particular effect in the studio that they called “The Pumpkinizer” that helped get the Pumpkins their distinct hard rocking guitar sound. We tried to find a way to “Pumpkinize” our tracks a little bit when we recorded this track. This was the track we used to close our Sunspot sets for years, it’s called “Summer Day”.

The purposelessness of a summer day,
well I don’t know where the road will lead me next,
I asked my old man what will become of me and he said,
“Nothing is all you do and it’s all you’ll ever be.”

It might make you sad that this is my home,
it might seem too bad that this is all I know.

A purposelessness for a summer day,
nothing is all I do and it’s all I have to be.
It’s all I’ll be…

A driftless waste of space,
another welfare case,
you can’t make me grow up.
I won’t waste my time,
on your assembly line,
you can’t make me grow up.

A lazy lawn chair and an ice cold drink,
why on earth would I ever want to change?
Ambition falls away as I drift to sleep,
this moment’s gone but it was mine to keep.

It might make you sad that this is my home,
you’re just like my dad what do you know?

The purposelessness of a summer day,
nothing is all I do and it’s all I have to be.
It’s all I’ll be…

A driftless waste of space,
another welfare case,
you can’t make me grow up.
I won’t waste my time,
on your assembly line,
you can’t make me grow up.

It might make you sad that this is my home,
you’re just like my dad what do you know?

The purposelessness of a summer day,
nothing is all I do and it’s all I have to be.
It’s all I’ll be…

A driftless waste of space,
another welfare case,
you can’t make me grow up.
I won’t waste my time,
on your assembly line,
you can’t make me grow up.

84 – Vote With Your Star Chart: A 2016 Election Astrology Special with Jeff Harman

We’re still on tour this week, performing music and checking out strangle tales and haunted history around the country. We just finished enjoying a few days in Austin, TX and performing at the Music Madness ATX Showcase with our good friends there. (Check out their website right here!)

And for a quick Texas tale of weirdness, our buddy, Victor Hidalgo, from the Music Madness Showcase talks a little bit about growing up in San Antonio and the legend of the Midget Mansion in the podcast intro.

Speaking of San Antonio, here we are on St. Patrick’s Day, performing on the Riverwalk!

So, the meat of this episode is all about the 2016 election. Now, we’re not astrology experts (most of my knowledge of astrology comes from horoscopes in the newspaper and the tablets at Chinese restaurants), but our guest on this episode, Astrologer and Spiritual Consultant, Jeff Harman is.

Jeff gives us some of the history of politicians that have used astrology (including saying that Nancy Reagan took the heat for her husband Ronald’s reliance on guidance from the stars and he describes astrology like a weather forecast. Patterns emerge over time of where the stars are located when certain kinds of events happen and astrology tries to predict the likelihood of the success or failure of things according to those patterns.

Just a reminder: We don’t endorse any political candidates on this podcast and we don’t guarantee any future predictions. But this is a lot of fun to talk about.

So he’s read and interpreted the charts of where the stars were when the candidates were born and  goes into depth on what he thinks the stars have to say about this year’s crop of political aspirants from Donald Trump to Hillary Clinton to Bernie Sanders.

The track this week is the Sunspot song, “Dangerous Times” – some people would call this election year a dangerous one because of the candidates in the running and since the imagery of this track is all about stars colliding, we thought it would be appropriate for the episode.

If you would like to purchase this song or the album that it comes off of, please click on this link: https://sunspot.bandcamp.com/track/dangerous-times-2

Alive breath to breath,
Existing mouth to mouth,
Thieves, dealers, and whores,
all living in my house.

Shoot yourself invincible,
Kiss yourself goodnight.
You’re not invisible,
Not a lowlife.

These are the dangerous times,
When stars collide,
We’ll make it right,
If we survive.

A little sleight of hand,
can cover a landslide.
the center cannot hold,
with too much to hide,

Shoot yourself invincible,
Kiss yourself goodnight.
You’re not invisible,
Not a lowlife.

These are the dangerous times,
When stars collide,
We’ll make it right,
If we survive.
These are the dangerous times,
When stars collide,
We’ll make it right,
If we survive.

And all the monsters that you kept under your bed,
are now the kind of people that you call your friend,
this is the way little girls and boys wind up dead,
and lose their head.

Shoot yourself invincible,
Kiss yourself goodnight.
You’re not invisible,
Not a lowlife.

These are the dangerous times,
When stars collide,
We’ll make it right,
If we survive.
These are the dangerous times,
When stars collide,
We’ll make it right,
If we survive.

This Week’s Planetary Alignment and The X-Files

You can bet a pack of Morley cigarettes and bag of sunflower seeds that I’m excited about The X-Files returning this Sunday night. But it’s not just Mulder and Scully that are going to be gracing our lives once again, it’s also the beginning of the first planetary alignment in the sky that’s going to be visible to our naked eye in over a decade. Oh yeah, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn are all going to be lined up and easily visible looking like stars lined (and on January 28th, even the moon is going to get in on the action and be lined up as well!) Now if you’re interested in viewing this cool astronomical phenomena then you can get help with that from the fine scientific writers at National Geographic.

TV shows and movies love to tackle the alignments of planets and stars in the sky and give them some kind of significance. Like we’re dumb enough to believe that when everything in the sky lines up, something horrible is going to happen. Yes, even my beloved Doctor Who had a ridiculous episode where the Daleks aligned 27 planets to make a (ahem) reality bomb.

The X-Files gave planetary alignments a special significance in season three as well with their episode “Syzygy” (also known as the episode where Scully gets jealous of the local detective that Mulder has been hanging out with). A syzygy is a term for an alignment of three celestial objects and it’s that alignment on a particular night in the 1970s that creates some very intense energy for a pair of girls born on that date.

Now szygys where the Sun, Moon, and Earth line up are known to cause “moonquakes” and I didn’t know moonquakes were a thing up until now, so that’s kind of awesome, but aside from fiction from Lovecraft to Pitch Black dealing with the apocalyptic aspects of an astronomical alignment, there’s not much else that’s going to happen except a sweet light show.

There are some people that believe planets aligning for a massive New Age Harmonic Convergence in 1987 was a big supernatural deal that was going to lead to the building of a thing called the Rainbow Bridge that was going to envelope the Earth in a aura of positivity (man), but the only Rainbow Road I’ve ever seen is in Mario Kart.

Ima Wario and Ima gonna win!

Anyway, if you’re looking for a mystical aspect, this author believes that there is a spiritual component to this week’s planetary alignment and it’s basically the fact that each of the five planets that are going to be lined up are associated with some aspect of our personality when it comes to Astrology, so if you’re into Horoscopes it’s a nice hopeful (and harmless) article.

But with new X-Files and a planetary alignment to light up the sky, our eyes have lots to look forward to!

Looking For Love In All The Weird Places… ParanormalDate.com

Good news, everyone! The Android and iOS apps for ParanormalDate.Com are live! What’s that? If you’re heard of things like JDate.com (for Jewish singles) or Christianmingle.com (for Gentile singles) then you kinda know what this is about already, except instead of looking for people who are the same religion as you, you’re more interested in their openness to new beliefs (or if they’re just into ghosts, aliens, conspiracy theories, etc…)

Nobody wants to be judged by their potential significant other for what they believe in and let’s say you’re a psychic medium, well, your first date with a Richard Dawkins-spouting atheist is probably going to be some kind of a bust. And let’s be real as well, if you can’t respect another person’s beliefs, you’re going to have a hard time staying in love with them.

Now, I’m a happily married man and not in the market for a love connection, but I decided to log in to the site to check it out and let you know what it’s all about.

paranormaldate.com logo
It’s hard not to love that motto…

Let’s start out with the tagline, “You Are Not Alone”. Clever, I like it. Makes you think about aliens, makes me think about Doctor Who, and it makes people feel that they’re not out there by themselves believing in fantastic things in a very ordinary world.

The questions on the profile are pretty straightforward, things like “What do you like to do for fun?” “What’s your favorite book or movie?”, and “Who is your greatest inspiration?” It only gets a little on the strange side when it asks, “What’s the scariest thing you’ve ever done?” So that part is like most traditional dating sites, I assume, so that people can suss out your common interests and see if they want to talk to you further.

The other parts of your profile are similarly straightforward, asking about your eye color, if you’re a smoker, drinker, vegetarian, etc…

There is an online diary where you can write journal entries for others to see and give a little more insight into yourself and where you are in life. That’s a good way to see what’s going on in the community, you can sort by age, but you can’t sort the diaries by location so you might be reading someone’s thoughts in California or New York and not necessarily close by. But this is the Internet, where long distance love happens!

If you’re looking to meet people in a more Tinder-like experience, then that’s where the encounters section comes in, and then you can start looking through people nearby and mark the ones that you’d like to meet.

The only paranormal thing I’ve really seen so far is the Astrology section and that’s where it gives you your horoscope for the day, which is nice, but not necessarily paranormal enough. Here’s what I’d like to see from a paranormal dating app and let me know if you’d agree:

paranormaldate.com
Hey, there’s Bigfoot waiting for his ride…

Being able to sort people by WHAT paranormal stuff they believe in 

I’m into ghosts, UFOs, meditation, and more, but when people start talking about crystals, giants, alternative histories, and the akashic records, I’m kinda rolling my eyes. Not saying that stuff isn’t true, just saying that it’s not something that I’m particularly into and wouldn’t necessarily want to date someone who is.

paranormaldate.com
What’s your sign, baby? You know that my Scorpio could fit perfectly in your Virgo…

Automatic matches by astrological sign or Numerology

Now I’m not the world’s biggest believer in astrology or numerology (I’m a huge skeptic on both of those things) but I do think that it would be fun to see “who the universe picked” for you based on those belief systems. They know your birthdate and your full name when you sign up (and they could ask a lot of questions about where you were born, the number of letters in your parents’ names, etc…), how about a feature that integrates that knowledge and helps select the kind of people that your sign would attract? Chinese restaurants have had the exact same placemats since I was a little kid and they could tell us that…

paranormaldate.com
And now I’ve made you hungry.

Local Meetups With Speed Dating

I know, I’d wanna go to these things just so that I could advertise the podcast, because anybody who’s on paranormaldate.com obviously might be interested in a listen but also so that people could meet each other in a safe situation where they might be more comfortable in a “mixer”-type situation. And can you imagine speed dating, just bring your own Zener Deck and if they can predict your cards, well, then you’ve just made a psychic match!

Hey, it worked for Bill Murray didn’t it? (And with Gwendoline from Charles In Charge to boot, yowza!)

Anyway, if you’re looking to meet likeminded individuals it seems like it would be fun, and we’re interested in supporting any kind of service that brings people together to talk about the unknown. We’re not the kind of people who would make a fake account just to troll others looking for love online, so we’re not going to get too deep into the site, but it looks legit (at least I didn’t see any Ashley Madison chatbots so far) and if you have any experiences with paranormaldate.com or have some hot love success stories, then we’d love to know about it!