paranormal – Go Retire Psychiatrist

The Secret of Wiffle Ball Farm

I sometimes enjoy watching one of the paranormal TV shows, “The Secret of skinwalker Ranch.” I don’t want to mention the word “skinwalker” too often because some people consider it dangerous to even say it loud because they believe the skinwalkers will latch on to you. It’s kind of a boogeyman thing. Anyhow, the actors on the show can be pretty funny, even when they don’t intend it. There’s even an astrophysicist involved. My spellchecker says the word “skinwalker” should be capitalized. I figure if I don’t do that, I’ll be safe.

Anyhow, it gives me an idea for another show some producers might want to consider, “The Secret of Wiffle Ball Farm.” It would probably get an astronomically high rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It would have a similar format to “The Secret of skinwalker Ranch.”

The setting would be in Monticello, Iowa where the headquarters is located. It’s Whiffle Tree Mercantile. There is some controversy about whether or not you should leave the “h” in the spelling or not. If you’re the least bit superstitious, you might wonder if leaving the “h” in would open a wormhole vortex which would allow a giant Wiffle Ball to zoom in with a vicious curve trajectory and bean you on the back of your head.

This isn’t so far-fetched, at least not as far-fetched as the “skinwalker” capitalization phobia. There is a story about the cartoonist, Gary Larson, getting a letter from Wiffle Ball, Inc. lawyers insisting that Larson capitalize all the letters in WIFFLE in the future and should only be used in reference to a product made by The Wiffle Ball, Inc.

Everybody knows you can put a righteous curve on a wiffle ball, maybe especially if you alter it in sneaky ways (see below). The ball has holes in it and I think I might have played it when I was a kid. If I had been a kid in 2011, I probably wouldn’t have been allowed to play it in New York instead of Iowa. It was banned as unsafe for a short while by the state legislature. People laughed at that so hard they probably peed their pants.

The name Wiffle Ball got its name from the whiff sound you heard when players struck out, mainly because of the outrageous curve a pitcher could throw with it. I think I read somewhere the inventors left the letter “h” out because it cut down on the cost of advertising. Regardless, you’ll still sometimes see Wiffle Ball spelled as Whiffle Ball.

But to get back to Whiffle Tree Mercantile (is it too late?), the mystery about it is whether or not you can find Wiffle balls for sale there. There might be a controversy about maybe a conspiracy to hide the ball from the public by favoring another meaning for “Whiffle” by tying it to the word “tree”.

Hang on to your hat, it gets pretty confusing pretty fast. The whiffle tree (which is often spelled “whiffletree”) is supposedly a mechanism to distribute forces through linkages. It can be used to connect an animal harness to a vehicle like a cart or plow. The name would be understandably be used as a cover for an antique store in Iowa.

But wait. There’s another dimension to the meaning of whiffletree. One guy says it’s a mechanical digital-to-analog converter. It’s based on the mechanical one described above, but it was a kind of calculator used in typewriters. The comments in the YouTube video are pretty enthusiastic about it, which makes you wonder what star system they’re from.

But hang on, the conspiracy and mystery go deeper than that. Some say that the whiffle tree is where you hang your whiffle bat. Okay, we need an astrophysicist or at least a scientist of some kind to play a serious role here—sort of.

In fact, there’s a story on the internet posted in 2010 about a mechanical engineering professor who studied the unhittable Wiffle Ball pitch and possibly discovered the secret. Dr. Jenn Stroud Rossmann studied the aerodynamics of the Wiffle Ball as well as something called “scuffing” which is to cut or scrape the ball so as to give it almost magical properties to make batters strike out. Scuffing is legal in Wiffle Ball, but not in regular baseball. What’s up with that?

The connection of all this with Whiffle Tree Mercantile in Monticello, Iowa is the biggest mystery, of course. What are they hiding? Why don’t they just tell us on their web site whether or not they sell Wiffle Balls? Is there an underground cache of scuffed Wiffle (Whiffle) Balls somewhere in the back of the store? Did extraterrestrials teach humans how to scuff them? Why does the internet story about Dr. Jenn Stroud Rossmann show her juggling Wiffle Balls? Is there a wormhole connecting Jones County (where Monticello is located) with Area 51 and when will the Federal Government simply admit that?

These and countless other questions could be answered in the soon to be considered blockbuster paranormal TV show “The Secret of Wiffle Ball Farm.”

Do Not Lie to Me!

In about an hour (a galactic standard week), I plan to watch yet another rerun of Men in Black. That’s the first one of the trilogy. I nearly always can find a connection with some quotes from the MIB movies and current events. I don’t care to specify the current events because they’re depressing.

The title of this post is actually part of quote from MIB 3, “…do not lie to me!” I can apply this one to just about every news story.

Another quote is often applicable in the daily news, and it’s from Men in Black:

Agent K: “We do not discharge our weapons in view of the public!”

Agent J: “We don’t got time for this cover-up bullshit! Look, I don’t know if you forgot, but there’s an Arquillian Battle…”

Agent K: “There’s always an Arquillian Battle Cruiser, or a Korilian Death Ray, or an intergalactic plague that is about to wipe out all life on this miserable planet. Agent K: “There’s always an Arquillian Battle Cruiser, or a Korilian Death Ray, or an intergalactic plague that is about to wipe out all life on this miserable planet. The only way these people can get on with their happy lives is that—they do not know about it!”

Unless there is something we can do about it, I do not want to know about the Arquillian Battle Cruiser.

Jim Learns About Induction Cooktops

I’m learning about induction cooktops. I know I’m way late in the game. The house we bought a little over two and a half years ago came with an induction cooktop. It’s the first one we ever had; we always used gas or electric stoves.

The main topic here are the noises including clicking noises we heard when using the induction cooktop. I say “we” but I should say Sena because I am allergic to kitchens.

I had to search the internet about induction cooktops. I found out way more than I wanted to know about them. I guess I can summarize that in a few lines:

Induction cooktops:

They work using electricity, not gas. They generate energy from an electromagnetic field below the glass cooktop surface which transfers energy to the magnetic cookware, which causes them to heat up.
They’re more energy efficient than gas.
The electro magnetic field (EMF) they emit have not been shown to increase the risk for cancer.
Although some chefs say hard anodized cookware won’t work on induction cooktops, they will if the bottom of the cookware has a ferromagnetic surface (meaning it has iron in it).
You can tell most of the time if a pan will work on induction cookware by holding a magnet up to the bottom of it and checking to see if the magnet sticks. If the magnet sticks, you’re good to go.

I finally checked that last point about magnetism by suddenly realizing that we had a magnet. It happens to be the magnetized lid for the space holding a deck of cards and pegs on our large cribbage board. It stuck to the bottom of one of our new KitchenAid hard anodized pans.

The old pans we had clicked a lot and there are reasons for the variety of noises you can hear. Most of the websites I noticed which describe this problem also have videos about which don’t have audio. Many of the websites say that some clicking is normal. Others will make an effort to identify the cause for the noises.

Our new cookware doesn’t make any noise at all. And they heat up very quickly. You don’t need to crank up the heat and can keep the power level pretty low.

The sound of screaming is probably from the extraterrestrial you’re trying to fry. Don’t do that.

Men in Black Movie Marathon

Sena and I have favorite movies. We both like “Up” and “WALL-E.” My favorites are the Men in Black trilogy. That doesn’t mean I think the 4^th sequel was bad. But I have lost count of the number of times I’ve watched the first three.

I haven’t watched them in the last several months because I couldn’t find them on cable for some reason. I’ve just learned that that there will be a marathon of the trilogy on January 14, 2023 beginning at 2:30 PM. They’ll be on the Comedy Central channel.

I’m a fan of comedy and I like the chemistry between the two main characters, Agent J and Agent K.

I have favorite lines from each movie. In the first Men in Black film, I like the exchange between the two agents after the recruitment scene following Edwards’ (the soon to be Agent J) first visit to the MIB Headquarters. They’re sitting on a park bench and K is talking about people and what they don’t know about them and extraterrestrials.

Edwards: Why the big secret? People are smart. They can handle it.

Agent K: A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it. Fifteen hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you’ll know tomorrow.

Another favorite where Agent K is showing Edwards a universal translator, one of the many wonders in the extraterrestrial technology room, which gives us a perspective on how humans rank in the universe:

Agent K: We’re not even supposed to have it. I’ll tell you why. Human thought is so primitive it’s looked upon as an infectious disease in some of the better galaxies.

In MIB II, the dialogue between Newton and the Agents makes you wonder what extraterrestrials really want from us:

Newton: Gentlemen, before I play the tape, there’s just one question I need to ask; what’s up with anal probing? I mean, aliens travel billions of light years just to check out our…

Agent J: Boy, move!

This is part of the Men in Black 3 dialog between Agent J and Jeffrey Price about how to use the time travel device:

Jeffrey Price: Do not lose that time device, or you will be stuck in 1969! It wasn’t the best time for your people. I’m just saying. It’s a lot cooler now.

I remember 1969. Things are not perfect now, but they are better. What we don’t need is a “big ass neutralizer.” As long as we remember what dark times were like, we have a chance to make cooler times.

Blockbuster Sasquatch Cribbage Game Antics!

Brace yourselves! Sena and I are going to break the internet with the never-before-seen YouTube video of our antic-filled cribbage game on our Sasquatch cribbage board—and playing with the Sasquatch cribbage cards!

This had an extremely rare outcome. Wait’ll you see what it is.

I also shared a few nuggets of knowledge about Sasquatch that I learned from the internet. One of them is that the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization (BFRO) credits the state of Iowa with 76 reports of Bigfoot encounters (not necessarily sighting per se, but so what?).

Sasquatch Playing Cards Arrive!

We got our Sasquatch playing card deck! The images of Bigfoot are strikingly similar to the carved image on our new Sasquatch cribbage board. And they both resemble the image of Patty, the female Bigfoot supposedly captured on 16mm film back in 1967 by Bob Gimlin.

That’s the legendary Patterson-Gimlin video of Bigfoot. There are two opposing views on the existence of Bigfoot which I think are probably influenced by Patty.

The TV show, The Proof Is Out There, aired an episode of experts who talked a lot about evidence for Bigfoot. I watched the show, which ran on December 3, 2021. The Daily Mail UK ran a big story about it. I honestly can’t remember what they decided.

On the other hand, there are a few people who claim to know for a fact that a guy has admitted that he put on a stinky monkey suit and played the part of Patty—and said he’s blowing up the whole thing because he never got paid for doing it. That was way back in 2004, and the story is all over the internet.

I tend to be skeptical about most things like Bigfoot and extraterrestrials. I’m not exactly saying they don’t exist.

But why can’t anyone find a corpse, roadkill, or a definite fossil of Sasquatch? Is that why people are starting to call Bigfoot an interdimensional being, coming and going through a wormhole vortex? And why does everybody still pay attention to the tale?

I think it’s because just about everybody likes a good story—which is what Bigfoot has always been.

The Proof Is Out There Airs Debunked Rerun of Simulated Reality

I watched one of my favorite TV shows last night, The Proof Is Out There, and I was surprised to see the rerun of a debunked segment from last year. It was the simulated reality spot in which a photo of a girl showing her reflection in a mirror with apparently two different facial expressions was determined to be an “unexplained phenomenon.” Even the forensic video expert was fooled.

It was the same photo that was debunked on the show last September because an alert viewer notified the show it was a smartphone camera trick which was done in panorama mode. The effect had been known for years. I duplicated the trick and published a post about it, entitled “Proof of Simulated Reality—Or Cool Camera Trick?”

I sent an email to the show this morning and got an automated reply indicating the Proof Team received it, and indicating they might reply.

We’ll see. Anyway, Sena and I made updated weird pictures. I think motion creates artifact—which itself can look pretty cool (see the featured juggling photo in which we minimized it).

I’m Running on a Tight Schedule

Because I’m running on a tight schedule today, I’ll have to write this holiday flower-oriented post with lightning speed. There could be minor mistakes and you’ll just have to live with them.

First, we need to talk about the meaning of the usual Christmas holiday flowers. One of them is the Amaryllis, about which I’ve already given the important details in a previous post.

The other flower is the poinsettia, properly pronounced “flower.” Sena brought one home yesterday and it’s a beauty. The lore surrounding this holiday favorite is a bit convoluted. An angel ordered a peasant woman named Maria to gather roadside weeds. Maria was a little hard of hearing and thought the angel said “weed,” so she dug up a lot of marijuana growing wild in the ditches.

She took them to a little church, where the members of the congregation and the preacher lit them up with a little fire at the altar. The smoke got a little thick and everybody got a little confused and really hungry. They giggled a lot and their eyes burned a little, making everything look like it had a reddish color, including the “weeds.” Somebody knocked over the altar, spilling them all over the floor, which everybody swore they could feel through their shoes.

The poinsettia was known by the Aztecs who originally called it “Cuetlaxochitl,” which means “flower you can feel through your shoes, dude!”

There’s another version of the origin of the name of poinsettia. Some botanist in South Carolina named Poinsett (get that, har!) called it the “Mexican flame thrower,” probably because there was a legend in Mexico that extraterrestrials brought a plant with them that shot fire from its flowers, scorching all of the weed for miles.

Anyway, I think that’s how the history goes.

Sasquatch Cribbage Board Game!

Today was the inaugural game on our new Sasquatch cribbage board. It’s a very handsome item, made of walnut by the maker, David Sprouse, in Ferndale, Washington. His website is 3MoonsMakerSpace and he markets the boards on Etsy. It was delivered only a couple of weeks ago. It came with pegs and deck of cards. It has a hole in the back for hanging on a wall, if you want.

We played the game to 61 just for the sake of brevity since the point was to show off the board itself.

I don’t know really what to make of Bigfoot stories. Many claim to have spotted the creature way out in places like Washington state and elsewhere. There are reports of a few sightings even in Iowa.

I wonder why you never find corpses or even fossils of Sasquatch? Probably because extraterrestrials beam them up too quickly in order to harvest the fur for throw rugs for their space ships. The usual problem, of course, is getting the smell of beef jerky out of them.

Amaryllis Bending at Will?

The Amaryllis Star of Holland is starting to act a little strange. Last Friday night it bent way over, seemingly away from the ceramic space heater in the sun room. I had turned it on for a half hour before going in and kept it on for about 15 minutes before turning it off—out of concern that the plant was reacting adversely to the heat. The next day it straightened up.

Friday night I was listening to the blues on the radio. Was it leaning toward the music?

And then it started bending back and forth, seemingly without rhyme or reason. It doesn’t consistently bend right or left based on heat, light, or sounds.

Maybe it’s exercising. I wonder if an extraterrestrial is bending it to its will. I would think the plant is big enough to defend itself. It’s a little over 17 inches tall now. I wonder if it’ll get tough and demand that we feed it raw meat, like something out of Little Shop of Horrors?