Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Barking Moonbats Fly at Dawn, Dr. Schnabel, Chemtrails, Massholes, the Zionist-Hitler League, the Volcano Conspiracy & Teddy Kennedy's Funeral.

Meet Dr. Schnabel, the Plague Doctor who showed up on Lexington Green.

This is a woodcut of the original Dr. Schnabel:



No one who was at the Oath Keepers event will forget Dr. Schnabel. He was upset about vaccines and was there to tell us all about how we were all going to die of the plague. Here's an explanation of what the original Dr. Schnabel's various clothing and accoutrements were:

A broadside on doctors in Rome and their protective clothing against the plague; with an engraving after an Italian broadside showing a figure dressed with along coat, gloves, mask and hat, holding in the right hand a stick with a winged hourglass, in the left background the same figure and children running away, in the R background a view of an Italian city.

About Doctor Schnabel's costume, the attempt to treat people ill with plague and the remedies they used:

► A wide-brimmed black hat worn close to the head. At the time, a wide-brimmed black hat would have identified a person as a doctor, much the same as how a hat may identify chefs, soldiers and workers nowadays. The wide-brimmed hat might have also been used as partial shielding from infection.

► A primitive gas mask in the shape of a bird's beak. A common belief at the time was that the plague was spread by birds. It was thought that by dressing in a bird-like mask, the wearer could draw the plague away from the patient and onto the garment the plague doctor wore. The mask also included red glass eyepieces, which were thought to make the wearer impervious to evil. The beak of the mask was often filled with strongly aromatic herbs and spices to overpower the miasmas or "bad air" which was also thought to carry the plague. At the very least, it may have served a dual purpose, also dulling the smell of unburied corpses, sputum, and ruptured bouboules in plague victims.

► A long black overcoat. The overcoat worn by the plague doctor was tucked in behind the beak mask at the neckline to minimize skin exposure. It extended to the feet, and was often coated head to toe in suet or wax. A coating of suet may have been used with the thought that the plague could be drawn away from the flesh of the infected victim and either trapped by the suet, or repelled by the wax. The coating of wax likely served as protection against respiratory droplet contamination eventhough it was not known at the time if coughing carried the plague. It is likely that the overcoat was waxed to simply prevent sputum or other bodily fluids from clinging to it.

► A wooden cane. The cane was used to both direct family members to move the patient and other individuals nearby, and possibly to examine the patient with directly. Its precise purpose with relation to the plague victim isn't known.

► Leather breeches. Similar to waders worn by fishermen, leather breeches were worn beneath the cloak to protect the legs and groin from infection. Since the plague often tended to manifest itself first in the lymph nodes, particular attention was paid to protecting the armpits, neck, and groin.

The plague doctors' clothing also had a secondary use: to intentionally frighten and warn onlookers. The bedside manner common to doctors of today did not exist at the time; part of the appearance of the plague doctor's clothing was meant to frighten onlookers, and to communicate that something very, very wrong was nearby, and that they too might become infected. It is unknown how often or widespread plague doctors were, or how effective they were in treatment of the disease. It's likely that while offering some protection to the wearer, they may have actually contributed more to the spreading of the disease than its treatment, by unknowingly serving as vectors for infected fleas to move from host to host.


OK, fascinating history, right? How do I know it was a "him?" Why because I went up and asked him. See, when he first showed up I heard this little kid scream and turned to see this grim visage strutting about. Had to be hot as heck in there, so obsessed by curiousity I went over and kind of peered in the eye lens.

"Are you my ex-wife?"

"NO," boomed this deep male voice from under the cowl.

OK, certainly a guy, but I was skeptical.

"Is your last name May?" I asked.

"No," came the same deep voice.

Still in doubt, I asked him, "Are you from Ohio?"

"NO!"

"OK, thanks," and I walked away, shaking my head. I mean c'mon, a guy dressed like that had at least a fifty-fifty chance of being ONE of my ex-in-laws.

Earlier in the day, this female street person came up and asked me if I would drive her to her car where she had some leaflets she needed to hand out. Eternally skeptical, I asked her, "What kind of leaflets?" She wouldn't tell me, but she offered to show me if I would just take her to her car. Where was her car? Why in Boston of course. Seems she had hitched a ride out to Lexington, or levitated or something. She finally fessed up that her leaflets warned of deadly chem trails in the sky over Boston and how George Bush should be tried for war crimes.

The chem trails upset her most because unless they were stopped, everyone in Boston WAS GOING TO DIE!!!!!! Well, I gotta confess, I thought about that. I mean, I did a cold calculation of how many rabid liberals would be erased from the civil war equation and thought, "So, this is a BAD thing?" I was about to ask her more, but she turned around and went looking for another Mr. Goodbar to give her a ride. I don't think she ever found him, because of what happened later.

"Chem-trails."

The crowd began to gather and one barking moonbat drew attention to herself immediately -- the bow-lady.

"Baaking Moonbaat."

(NOTE: "Barking Moonbat" is apparently a Massachussetts' term in common usage. The first evening Pete and me got there, we went to a local restaurant open late that offered, among other things, "laabstah pah." That's "lobster pie." A local told us that it had been a nice family place until the new owner had fancied it up and priced it out the ying-yang. Said the owner was a "baaking moonbaat." We also discovered that other New Englanders called people from the state of Sam Adams "Massholes," but that's another story.)



Anyway, the "Bow Lady" had this huge white bow in her hair and walked around staring into people's eye from about six inches away, identifying her intended targets and then backing up, pointed her finger at them and made a cross in the air. She got in front of the podium, obstructed camera views and other obnoxious moves until we got the local law enforcement guys (and they were GREAT!) to check her out. Seems she was an inhabitant of a local group home and after speaking with the officer in charge, she declared she had made her point and left.

Her place wandering around and looking goofy for the cameras was taken up by the Court Jester (aka Mr. Propeller Head) who actually we had seen the night before sitting at a table by us in the Chinese restaurant. He engaged us in conversation then and everyone assumed he belonged to somebody else's table, probably a local. Boy were we stupid.

Anyway, he start parading around, first in his propeller beanie and then in his court jester's hat. Now my smell-o-meter gets going because he is obviously doing the "fool counter-demonstrator" deal that I remember from the 70s.

(My favorite memory from a demonstration on the lawn of the Ohio State Capitol. A stoned Yippie climbs up on the statue of William McKinley, wraps his legs around the Spanish-American War-Era President's head so that it looks like he's getting fellatio from the old boy, and interrupts the dreadfully boring speeches of these doctrinaire Marxists by thrusting his fist in the air and yelling, alternately:

"HARD ON, MAN! HARD ON!"

"RIGHT ARM, MAN! RIGHT ARM!"

"BLACK POWDER! BLACK POWDER!"

Even the hardhat counter-demonstrators began to laugh. The Marxists kept stumbling over their dialectical materialism. It was a hoot.)


But the Court Jester settles down just about the time he gloms onto the fact that I am now watching him like a hawk. Goofus comes over and sits down near me, and I manage to get word to him that I want to talk to him. Over he comes.

"Uh, hey buddy, are you from the Southern Poverty Law Center?"

He knows what that is and pretends offense, "Isn't that the FBI front?"

"Yeah," I agree, "something like that."

"NO!" he says, working on his outrage.

He walks away and don't see him until afterward when, after driving the twenty miles to the bed-and-breakfast, there he is in his Court Jester hat, eating the free food. He tries to explain to LTCMDR Cunningham about how he was offended by something one of the other speakers said. The speaker's error, Court Jester avows, was in not seeing that most of the problems of the world are caused by the forcible implementation of Talmudic Law. I separate Guy from this loon and start the process of REALLY trying to figure out who he belongs to.

While unsuccessfully and very belatedly vetting, I run into Chem-trail lady, who like Court Jester has hitched a ride to the party under false pretenses and is busy explaining, between bites of free pizza, about Bush Lied, People Died, Chem-trails over Boston, and (said in a whisper) the Volcano Conspiracy.

The Volcano Conspiracy?

Well, you're supposed to have knitting needles stuck in your ears before being briefed on this, but here goes:

The target area of this Russian Woodpecker scalar signal as the "Northwestern" part of the United States. Therefore, for the past 27 years, the Northwestern sector of the United States has been continually pinged with this scalar signal; YOWUSA reports, above, that scalar waves are responsible for building up super volcanoes like Yellowstone! The geologic location of the huge Yellowstone caldera is the Northwestern section of the United States! Is is possible that the reason the Russians have been pinging Northwest America for 27 years with scalar signals is to slowly, quietly, and almost invisibly build up the Yellowstone super volcano so that it would explode in horrific fury? The "Russian woodpecker" is supposedly a (now turned off) Soviet system that gave off regular electromagnetic signals in the 3 to 30 MHz range.


Ah, but someone has turned it back on. Here is what it will look like:



Well, kiss those Mormons goodbye. And all those western Free Staters, no matter what state they live in. The shift of freedom-loving people to the western states is all part of a nefarious plan to blow them up when they get concentrated. (Note how none of the collectivist-dominated portions of California are wiped out, just the independent north. And -- my current mother-in-law will be pleased -- "Vegas lives!")

That's why we must whisper the Volcano Theory -- so the government doesn't know that we know what they know that we know what they don't know. If they figured that out, then one day Dick Cheney and his fellow Bilderbergers hit the detonator and BLOOOIE!

Ooh, kay. I turn my back on Barking Moonbat #1 to deal with anti-Semite Barking Moonbat #3. It seems if we're to get rid of him, we need to drive him back to Lexington where he can get his bicycle and ride back to Cambridge. Of course. I could've guessed.

I look at Pete, he looks at me. It must be done. But first there is a struggle for who gets in the back seat. I am, I insist. He is, he insists. I beat him to it, and lock the back doors manually. If he wants a ride it will have to be in the front, where I can strangle him with my cane if he gets out of line. He reluctantly agrees. I have this flashback: "Leave the gun, bring the canoles."

So off we go the many miles back to Lexington, with Barking Moonbat #3, his pizza-greasy hands, body odor and bad teeth. On the way he explains how the Zionists and Hitler intrigued to get rid of the anti-Zionist Jews, thus clearing the way for the state of Israel. Those extermination camps, though, weren't EXTERMINATION camps, you see, just big open air labor farms where public health measures were a little off.

Ooh, kay, then. I can still strangle him, I console myself. I don't. We drop him off at his bicycle. I tell him he's the first Holocaust denier that I ever gave a ride to and lived. He denies he's a denier. I don't deny it, I just jump in the front and we drive quickly away, marvelling on the dense native population of Barking Moonbats in the Boston area. Probably has something to do with them being an endangered species and nobody allowed to hunt them, we decide.

As we drive off into the sunset, we laugh once more about how we missed Teddy Kennedy's funeral.

See, that morning we stopped at a grocery store to stock up on the favorite poison of fat Southern white boys, Diet Mountain Dew. While I was at the register, the lady running it realizes that I talk funny. (OK, no real Southerner would be fooled that I'm anything but a transplant, but she surely hasn't been south of the Potomac. I am a stranger in a strange land.)

So, she asks, "Whe-ah aah ya from?" she asks in her nasal twang.

"Alabama, ma'am," I answer.

Why, she demands both nasally and snootily, have I come to Massachussetts? I'm a bit upset at her attitude and decide to throw her a curve ball. Pete has been joking about it the whole way up. I steal his line.

"Well, ma'am, we're here for Teddy Kennedy's funeral." I smile sweetly.

Her eyes bug out of her head and she begins to stammer, "Bu-, Bu-, Bu-."

I save her from strangulation. "Yeah, I know, he's still alive." I pause. "We were misinformed." I pause again. "More's the pity." She looks ready to kill me. Oh, yeah, she wants to kill me BAAAD. Problem is, she's from the People's Soviet of Massachussetts and she doesn't have a firearm. I get to live.

That night and all the next long day, Pete and me laugh about it all the way back to Alabama while singing snippets from Firesign Theatre albums. An especial favorite is Paster Rod Flash and the Church of the Presumptious Assumption of the Blinding Light.

"Oh, Blinding Light!
Oh, Light that blinds!
I cannot see!
Look out for me!"


In between the hilarity, we agree that it is a good thing Stewart and his fellow veterans had us to cow-catch the Barking Moonbats. Somebody would have ended up with "Laabstah Paah" shoved up their Masshole.

I still don't know how Barking Moonbat #1 got back to Boston. If she told her ride about the Volcano Conspiracy, I hope she whispered. You can bet Dick Cheney's itchy trigger finger is on the Volcano button.

I'm sure Dr. Schnabel drove himself. Be tough to hitch a ride in that get up. I'm still not convinced he wasn't one of my ex-in-laws.

Mike Vanderboegh
The alleged leader of a merry band of Three Percenters and recently a stranger in a strange land, thankfully back in Dixie, where most of our loons are safely tucked away in political office.
III

17 comments:

Scott T. said...

Ah, Mike! I forgot about her.

She started her conversation rationally then went off the deep end. I excused myself to go "out behind the barn".

I wish I could have stayed and partaken in more of the festivities, but when you ride a motorcycle in New England during the early Spring, you avoid sunset the way the Massholes avoid logic and the truth.

You had some lobsta, how about I send you some Massachusetts Soul Food? Portagee Sweet Bread and linguica?

GunRights4US said...

Godamighty! I bet you felt like a turd in the punchbowl up yonder!

I once went to Newark and was constantly pestered by folks wanting me to "say something...say anything".

There's nothing more pleasing than a good Southern accent, and few things more grating than a New England accent; to me anyway.

Sounds like y'all had a great time. 'cept for all those pesky moonbats.

jon said...

i'm a masshole myself, and -- after reading this and laughing myself out of my chair -- i'm beginning to form this theory that the local official types like to unleash the crazies on demonstrations they don't like. anything that actually has to do with, say, the history of massachusetts, but doesn't have to do with, say, "a human right to health care," would be included under "don't like."

speaking of that illustrious "human right:" a couple years ago, quite a number of state mental hospitals were defunded and closed. a bunch of these folks are now out on the street. from the few times i've been anywhere near boston, much less in it, it seems to me they ought to have built more. you can hardly tell the difference.

"Bill Hicks" said...

Mike,
Absolutely hilarious. I made my way up to Massachusetts once. Took a little vacation and saw all the sights. I still could not believe that Bunker Hill wasn't a hill at all, at least not like the hills here in Eastern Kentucky.

Glad you made it out OK, but we will have to keep a close eye on you. We know by now that liberalism is much like the plague of old. Hard to figure out how it is spread. Since you came into close contact with some of these Barking Moonbats, you might be at risk.

However I have heard rumors that gunpowder, contact with brass, cosmoline fumes, Hoppes No. 9 exposure, and prodigious doses of the Constitution could ward off any ill effects, so you may make it out of the woods yet.

jon said...

oh yeah, and, those volcano conspiracy folks ain't takin' into account the effects of global warming, y'see. the strong climate trends will toss that ash all willy-nilly; it spends a lot of time up in the atmosphere. there's just no way an eruption of the yellowstone caldera could ever cause destruction in such a perfect circle. in fact, historically, the blast shot out all southward and eastward:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lava_Creek_Tuff

this time around, of course, you can expect a pattern of destruction which will leave an imprint resembling al gore's face on the midwest. makes perfect sense when you think about it.

Anonymous said...

That story reminds me of a Grateful Dead concert I went to in Eugene OR.
I don't have a clear memory of the music. Ya see this guy dress in a rainbow outfit was passing out free acid......
Did you come to under a VW bus?

BrianF said...

Mike,
I spotted that giant crow as well. I tried to get tickets to the screening of the Heckyl and Jeckyl movie that I thought he was promoting.
If you think that amount of moon battery was unusual, you should see Boston Common when they hold Hemp Fest. Stay away.

Sean said...

Had similiar experiences in New Haamsha, with listening to "exactly" about twenty times a converstation. Ah, the freaks. Don't you just love 'em?

closed said...

The term "Barking Mad Socialist Moonbat" was originally coined by British Libertarians to describe columnist George Monbiot.

It then got broadened to include anyone like Monbiot.

By the time it hit the internet, it had transformed into "Barking Moonbat", a label for any completely unhinged socialist.

Anonymous said...

Wow, I can't believe I missed all the fun. LOL I would have loved to debate with these moonbats.

Anonymous said...

Hello all. Been reading your blog for a while now. It is great!

Having just read the "Barking Moonbats Fly at Dawn..." piece I had to comment. Back when I was a dum bass college student we played Firesign Theater's "Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me The Pliers" pretty much every day. Have several parts memorized. Remember well pastor Rod Flash and his powerhouse church of the presumptuous assumption of the blinding light.

Very funny piece.

drjim said...

Wow.....and I thought things were whacked-out here in Kalifornia!
Glad you had an enjoyable time, and you made it back home safely.
"I read only GOOD books, over!"
Jim

Anonymous said...

It wouldn't have been a debate. A debate depends on logic. Moonbats have no logic. Therefore . . .

And, I, too, grew up in MassHole Moonbat territory, the little city of Malden, just south of Cambridge, back when Teddy was still a freshman junior Senator. It wasn't the Soviet State then that it is now. And, I wasn't born there. So it took me over a year to understand anyone on the telephone the first time. Drove me crazy. And everyone else that I had to ask to repeat the same thing three or four times to understand them. Ahhh, the memories.

B Woodman

Grenadier1 said...

I once did a Road trip to Pennsylvania from my beloved Georgia. See we were tracing the steps that some of my forefathers took into that same sleepy little PA town about 140 years ago. well we got into PA late in the evening and we stopped at a Gas station. We all piled out of the truck and went in to buy cokes. We get to the register and I start counting out change. I looked at my friend who is originally from Rhode Island. I put on my thickest southern draw and said "Don, do they take aur kind o money up ere?" The look on the clerks face was priceless.

Grumpyunk said...

The Ted Kennedy Funeral thing was great. I'd have had to add
"We didn't stop to piss the whole way up."

Anonymous said...

Thought the articles were great. Quite an occasion. I have been sorta out of the new for a month or so. How about your book. Didja get it done? Is it available for purchase somewhere?

Thanks

Jim

ParaPacem said...

RE: Ted K's funeral - let's hope it comes soon. And maybe they could do soemthing classy with his body - like toss it off the Chappaquiddick Bridge for the fish!