Richard Dawkins spotted hawking alternative remedies

Richard Dawkins is up to his old tricks again, but this time he has overstepped the Mark.  Not to mention the John, the Luke, the Matthew and the whole friggin' book of Revelations.

Professional atheist Dawkins, inventor of Evolution back in the 1970's and author of 'You are a Selfish Bastard and it is your Dad's Fault' and the controversial 'Beaver Dams: why they prove God is a twat', likes to sit on a cushion stitched from the skins of catholic schoolchildren in his mansion in Uxbridge, sipping pureed Beluga Sturgeon whilst dreaming up new ways to rid the world of all wonder, meaning and worth.

But, not content with taking good, old fashioned fundamentalism and hijacking it with Science, now Dawkins has set his sights on alternative and complementary therapy, the last refuge of those trying to live a life sans reason.

Dawkins has been buying up vast quantities of alternative remedies and selling them at discount prices at Camden Lock Market.  We saw the crafty  academician hopping from one leg to the other doffing his cap and waving a battered suitcase shouting: "Three bottles of Aerobic Oxygen* a pound, clinically proven to let you breathe underwater, double-blind tested, I tell ya, get 'em while you're still alive!".  When confronted, Dawkins, who may or may not have been drinking laudanum, just laughed and said something incomprehensible about evidence before dancing off down Camden Road in the direction of the bank, his long coat-tails trailing behind him like the forked tongue of a biblical serpent.


This comes only days after it was mathematically proven that the biologist, sophist, misanthropist and philatelist PZ Myers, whose Pharyngula blog consists of 217000 repeats of the phrase 'I hate God, he drowned my kitten!', has been running a homeopathy clinic for pets in Southern California for over 15 years. 

Homeo-Hero and computational astrologer Sir David Treddinick MP was unavailable for comment, but a computer simulation of the politician's brain gave a 91 to 167.8 probability that, had he been aware of the situation, he would have thought: "This is an absolute outrage!  Criticising alternative therapy was bad enough, but what technophobic luddite simpleton is going to want to buy anything that Dawkins has had his grubby, falsifiable mitts all over?  He may as well go and prove that God does exist after all.  Then we'd all be fucked!"

In other news, papers were recently found suggesting that, before his death, Stephen J Gould was about to reveal that he had found a 500 million year old fossilised Chihuahua in the Burgess Shales.  The animal was said to be wearing a tartan collar with a bell and a tag inscribed with a phone number and the name "Jehovah".   


* Aerobic Oxygen is a revolutionary new product that delivers stabilised oxygen into the blood stream, via the digestive system, in a safe, convenient and highly effective way. It has been shown to be an effective treatment for bleeding gums, gout, toe rot and Cancer

A letter to the Reiki master

Colin Cobalt recently wrote to the fully qualified Reiki master, crystal healer, homeopath and certified Angel Therapist Practitioner Christina Moore:

Dear Christina,

Sorry I have not had the chance to write to you for the first time until now, but I was involved in an accident at work and my time has been taken up in trying to understand the court settlement.

Anyway, I have recently come into a little money and am looking to invest it in some Reiki and you came very highly recommended (second hit on Google - Congratulations!).  I have always felt I have a gift for healing and have noticed that people are very rarely ill when I am around.  My ultimate dream is to become a fully paid up professional Reikist, just like you!   I just have a few questions about the courses you run, and hopefully you can get a sense for the course that is best for me.

I see you offer to teach all levels of Reiki.  I do have a BSc(hons), so is it possible for me to move straight on to the Masters Degree?  I have plenty of transferable skills and came third in my class for my second year poster presentation.

Is it a problem that I recently lost a hand in a freak industrial accident?  I was trying to fix the aeration pump in tank 77 at the fish farm, but my hand became caught in the pump blades.  Luckily, I was used to the sight of large amounts of blood in the water from all the Salmon clubbing I had to do, or I would have been really distressed!  On the plus side, my other hand is absolutely fine, in fact, if it were an eye it would have 20-20 vision (I do wear glasses, however).  Should I be concerned about the 'high pressure hose pipe effect' of the healing energy as it leaves my stump?  Do I need to invest in a diffuser attachment?  Could you provide this through your Reiki suppliers, or could I fashion my own with material from a garden centre and some duct tape?

Strangely, my accident has led me to much more compassionate feelings towards fish and all other creatures of the deep.  I think I would have left my job anyway, even without the lawsuit.  Have you ever tried to heal fish with Reiki?  I once heard of a man who rendered a Portuguese man-o-war safe for children to handle using energised crystals and ear candles.  It is now being kept as a family pet.  I would love to be able to give something back to the fish community in recompense for the thousands I butchered and sent off to be minced into pies.  Could I incorporate an aquatic element into my studies?  Have you any experience in SCUBA Reiki?

When I gain my Reiki Masters degree, do you have any advice for setting up my own practice?  I could even use my monodextrous status as a unique selling point! 

I look forward to your response and to giving you my compensation payment in exchange for unlocking the secrets of your long lineage of Reikists.

Colin Cobalt BSc(hons)
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Letter to David Treddinick, MP for Bosworth: In support of homeopathy

Dear Mr Tredinnick,

Holy Jesus Effing Christ on high, why do people have to keep on having a go at homeopathy? 

I have been a long standing supporter of homeopathy and alternative medicine for some time now; from astrology and acupuncture to  lesser known remedies such as Tactile Pipistrelle Therapy, Activated Yams and Colonic Coelacanth Flushing.  Like you, it beggars my beliefs why Brussels bureaucrats and the Liberal/Labour Aristocracy are so intent on cutting funding for these miracles of nature and stopping me from putting whatever  I like in my bathwater!

I am glad to hear that you are one seat in politics that is standing up against this outrage.  Now is the time for action!  Also, now is the time for anecdote:  Use of alternative therapy has a long history in my family.  I remember my old mother saying: "I've only gone to hospital once in my life, and they sent me home with this bloody baby!  Never again, that son of mine!"  I took that to heart and have never knowingly gone to a hospital, although I did once wake up in one after I made a serious misjudgement about the potential danger associated with a rutting male trout in the main breeding pool (I work in a fish farm as a trout clubber - the money is ok, but it is difficult to get the stench of fish death off your skin).  I know what you mean about the moon as well.  The only time I have ever been arrested was during a full moon, and what is more, it took the renewal of the lunar cycle for all the charges to be dropped due to ambiguous forensic evidence.  If it wasn't for that, I could have been put away for a LONG time!  Thanks, moon!

I want you to know that in the coming election campaign that I am behind you 100% (Not in the 'scary stalker hiding behind the horse-chestnut tree while you walk your dog in the morning' kind of way).  I agree with you.  We should put a stop to all surgical medicine and replace it with complementary therapies.  Just think of all the money we could save cutting all those lying doctors' salaries.  We know this will work because biblical medicine was entirely homeopathic.  Noah Ark and his wife, Joan, both lived to 302 and never went near a hospital!  Jesus, as well - He is still alive now, even after being crucified!  I'd like to see Michael Brooks try that!  He wouldn't last three days!

Can I help you in any small way?  Maybe I could feature on one of your campaign leaflets with my thumbs up(Possible byline: "Using homeopathy to treat childhood diarrhorea - what's the worst that could happen?" or "If you don't use Lahiri-based medicine, you are a racist")?

Anyway, best of luck with the campaigning, you can count my vote on May 6th.

Best wishes and distance healing,

Colin Cobalt, BSc (hons)

Homeopaths stand up and be counted for World Homeopathy Awareness Week

In case you were not aware, this week is World Homeopathic Awareness Week, a traditional celebration where homeopaths and homeophiles across the world get together to spread the word of the un-ineffectiveness of the incredible medicinal amazery that is homeopathic medicine.  For years, on this week, we have swapped shaking techniques and anecdotal evidence, played traditional homeopathic games such as 'pin the remedy on the donkey' and 'guess the number of molecules of active ingredient in the bottle', planned new ways to extract money from overstretched health services, perfected our compassionate smiles and studied libel law.  When it gets dark we all head for our nearest Grumble Tent to have a moan about healthcare professionals who didn't send off for their PhD's with a coupon from the back of Homeopathy Today, while we knit hemp bread and listen to the sound of the inner vibrations of quartz crystals.  In the festival closing ceremony, we all dress up as butchered sacrificial chickens for the result of the hotly contested 'most memorable water' competition.  It is truly a thing of beauty.


So, you can imagine my anger when I heard about the hijacking of this centuries old traditional homeopaths' celebration by an aggressive and dangerous gang of skeptical bastards! The audacity of these people to take something that has been sacred to us and our kind for millennia and then subvert it to pursue their own wicked ends is so twisted and evil that it makes me foam at the mouth with each of my four humours.  The first reaction of several of my homeopath friends was to try and find all of these people and nail them to trees them for their lies, but after restraining and repeatedly slapping them for a few hours, I hatched a plan so cunning and ingenious that no-one will ever question homeopathy again, so it will take its rightful place as the only kind of medicine available on any health service anywhere in the world.  But for it to succeed, I need the help of all of the homeopaths in the world!

Join me, my dilute and watery flock!

The plan is simple and fiendishly effective - like selling snake-oil to a bus-load of 'flu-ridden morons.  We will demonstrate the ineffectiveness of modern non-homeopathic 'medicine' by staging a mass, global paracetamol overdose.  All of the worlds homeopaths can gather together in parks around the world this coming Friday and neck about 40-50 of the tablets just after breakfast.  Two hours later we can all have a 'Homeopaths stand up and be counted' photo session for the press.  Can you imagine the looks on the faces of all those non-homeopath 'doctors' as we show the world exactly how useless their quack remedies are?  How we will laugh!  This will teach them to never mock our sacred festivals again, and also should convince the proprietors of large high street chemists to stop stocking these useless and overpriced products.  Maybe even, next year we won't even have the need for a Grumble Tent!


We are the ones who dare to dream!  Join me, and with homeopathy we can make ourselves a remedial world!  Don't let these vile skeptics take our festival away from us!


We will be meeting at Dartford Park at exactly 9.37 this coming Friday morning.  If you want to stage your own smaller demonstration elsewhere, then let me know and I will be sure to disseminate the information for you, particularly if your typing is impaired by your unclipped hooves. 

Colin Cobalt: Letter to the Ghost hunters

I recently wrote this email to the ghost investigation team of Manchester Paranormal, following an esoteric incident I had last week. (Be sure to vote for them in the Haunted England top 100 most effective ghost hunters):



Dear Ghosthunting team,

I found your site after looking for it on a web, and was hoping that you will be able to help me with my confusing and ghostly problems, as I know you are constantly looking for answers to the paranormal.

In short, I think I am the victim of a haunting, and want your help in dealing with this, ideally while taking a few photographs for my family journal, which has been quite un-appended to since most of my family went into hiding after a national Sunday newspaper got hold of their address and they had trouble with mobs.

I found a lovely pair of trousers at my local charity shop. They cost me £2.75 and are a rather fetching blue corduroy. The fit is excellent, which was a pleasant surprise for me, as it has often been commented that I have an unusually shaped behind, a little like a Yampie Yam. I did look really quite flash!

My astral-plane conundrums started the very next night, however, when my trousers levitated across my bedroom while I slept, suspended by orbs. This is the only explanation I can think of, since I am sure I hung them up and didn't leave them in that damp patch under the window. The weirdness continued the next night, when I felt a distinct feeling of coldness after I took them off, as if some mischievous spirit wanted me to wear them constantly and go out on some kind of violent attack. By now you can imagine I was becoming worried about this Pantaloon possession. Late that night I woke up to hear a smashing sound in my kitchenette. When I went to look, I saw that a jar had fallen off a windowsill and the window was ajar. I found this all very jarring, and my trousers remained suspiciously silent, although they were folded on the floor in such a way that they looked like they were smirking, you know the look: like a gloating box jellyfish after paralysing a surfer.

I went and spoke to the lady who sold me the trousers. Her name is Viv, and she likes to have a natter after her husband had the accident with the electric carving knife the Christmas before last. She said that she had heard of criminal types disposing of their old clothes in charity shops before changing into the expensive new suits they would buy with their ill-gotten gains. She said that it is possible that those trousers were worn by a robber who kicked his victim to a tragic conclusion at the back of some garages, and the tortured and lost soul of the victim found its way into the creases of the corduroy. Is this something that you see a lot?

Would your team consider investigating my trousers? I am free most evenings, other than Thursdays (when I wash) and am happy for you to film them for your website. Do you think we would be more likely to see ghostly activity if I am wearing them, or will my own movements confuse things? I am prepared to stand very still for a couple of hours if needs be, as long as I have had some sugar. Do you supply a priest to do the exorcism, or must I provide my own? I used to know one called Father Gary, but he was sent off to start a new missionary in Canada, and people round here don't talk about him any more.

If you need any more information, please let me know. I can probably send you a Polaroid of the trousers, if I can find an envelope.

Hope to hear from you,

Colin Cobalt BSc (hons)

Up Yours, Dawkins! Proof of the existence of a designer god

Anyone with a head cannot have failed to have not missed the ongoing argument between lying, thieving, godless, nazi-sympathising, seal-clubbing, kitten-torturing, malignant evolutionary atheists and those of us with the glowing beauty of true faith in our milk-crying hearts.

The continued insistence of the satanic Darwinians for us to come up with the tiniest shred of evidence for what we all know is true has long clouded this debate, but I have finally found the proof of this great theological plum pudding, and it is sweet, sticky and a bargain at only $11,797!

Yes, skeptics, you can take your fossil records of intermediate forms, your plethera of obseved cases of artificial selection, your examples of bad design in nature, your genetic code conserved across all life and your fucking morphological homologies and you can shove them all up your collective atheistic un-enema'd arses, because here is a real spiritual healing instrument that was actually designed BY GOD!

Behold:  The Professional One Force, 50 times the universal invisible spiritual force of the next best instrument designed to promote wellness, emotional centredness and spiritual awakening on the market.

Note the on/off switch and the hand placements of God.  It all fits in a handy briefcase so you can creep about and furtively open it to show to strangers like a spoon thief at Dartford Market.













Now, to the layman, this looks just like any other instrument that will give you a glimpse into your spirit, cleanse yourself of all impurities, revise '10 tons' of errors, resonate with blissful tranquility and wholeness, go into all problem areas on all levels, wash each part of your body, cut your toenails, extract belly button fluff, make your breakfast, press your trousers, perform oral relief and make funeral arrangements for your recently deceased relatives.  All excellent, you will agree, but this goes a step further because God himself (in his workshop in Virginia Beach, VA),  was actively involved in both the design process and the marketing.  Admittedly, going by the site, his spiritual engineering skills may be a bit beyond his web programming, but hey, what do you expect, omnipotence?

So what does this all mean?
Firstly, Paley's watch.  It bloody was God and if Richard Dawkins bothered hanging around for a bit instead of having a go at blind people, he would have probably found the blueprints!
Second, If God can make a half-Angel, half-Will, three quaters-Oneness machine for total spiritual fulfillness, don't you think he could make something as simple, basic and unpleasent as a person, which even two very stupid people can make in a single drunk, bored and dissatisfied rutt against a recycling bin?  Of course he could!  You were designed and made, like a rancid sausage roll in a cockroach infested bakery.  Get over it!
Third, If God wanted us to solve our problems with reason and science, he would have built in more controls than a simple on/off switch and at the very least have provided a graph of how it works.  He didn't. Ipso facto, we shouldn't.
Sleep tight and wait for the day of reckoning, not the day of recombination.

Letter to the most remarkable healer of his generation

A of Q contributor Colin Cobalt recently wrote to the Energy Worker, teacher, psychic and 'most remarkable healer of his generation', Adrian Pengelli:

Dear Dr Pengelli,

I have been searching for some time for some healing and was impressed by your 100% success rate for many conditions.  I have also often thought of healing as being 'both simple and complex'. Are you happy for me to plump for some free distance healing first, before I 'dive in' with a one-on-one session?  Please don't think that I am doing this merely to test you out or to get something for nothing (I know just how valuable your healing time is!).

I know you say on your website that you don't need to know my name, address or anything at all about me to heal me of all of my problems, but I thought I would tell you a little about myself, so perhaps you could address my issues more specifically.  Also, I have a cousin with the same name as me who lives only a few miles away.  We fell out a few years ago after I caught him trying to break into my garden shed and damage my wormery.  I wouldn't want my healing to go to him by mistake as, frankly, he doesn't deserve it.  He still rings me from time to time and just breathes heavily down the phone. It is very off-putting.

Anyway, enough about me.  I work on a fish farm in the UK, and it is a pretty miserable existence, I can tell you!  Most of my days are spent measuring fish such as salmon and cod to get an estimate of their size and then repeatedly clubbing them in their heads before throwing their still-thrashing bodies on to an ice block.  Some days I can see off around 3000 fish, and by the end of it I am covered with blood and fish brains.  The stench is appalling.

I am worried that all of this carnage is having an unbalancing effect on my Chi.  Particularly I am concerned that I may have lost my heart chakra and it is stagnating somewhere at the bottom of pond #4, buried under some fetid fish meal, following a particularly heavy cull last month. I had a poke around with a boat hook but to no avail.  How long can someone survive without one?  I hope long enough for you to heal me.

You say that your best results have been on people who were not aware they were being healed.  That is just amazing!  A friend of someone I know had a perfect and remarkably rapid recovery from a bayleaf-in-the-throat-home-made-curry incident, for which the hospital was almost no help at all.  Perhaps that was you and she didn't even know it?  Thank you if it was!  Would it be better if I didn't know you were going to heal me?  Maybe you could email me back, refusing healing before actually healing me anyway.  Or you could make me forget I ever sent this email, surely for someone who cures cancer from a thousand miles away this must be a trifle?

Finally, would you mind holding off for the healing until after Monday, as I was planning on a sick day (This is honestly the first time I have done this all year - I am no immoral toad!), and would feel more guilty if you healed me beforehand.

Finally again, do you think, with the job I do, it would be better for my karma if I stopped eating fish?

Really looking forward to the healing,

Yours faithfully,

Colin Cobalt BSc (hons)