Monsterquest/Is It Real?

[Diabolical]

The aspect I can't get past anymore is, and this applies mostly to the ghost ones, why in the hell they do their investigations in the dark?

Shows like Ghost Hunters will often investigate a place that usually operates during normal business hours. The eyewitness accounts almost always say someone was giving a tour or sitting at his/her desk or it was business as usual when they see the ghost. So...why come back in the middle of the night?

Apparently they think darkness = scary.

Also, the darkness probably accounts for 99% of the things they "see" even though its pitch black at the location. "I just saw a shadow peek out from that doorway!" No you didn't dipshit, it's fucking dark in there and your eyes are playing tricks on you.

[Ran]

I watched a few of those shows where they are looking for ghosts. Not sure if it was Ghost Hunters or some other one. I liked the part where they played back their audio recordings and decided bumps and static where voices answering their questions. In one episode, they were looking for the ghost of John Wilkes Booth in a theater. One of the "hunters" were sitting in the balcony and suddenly felt the room get cold. It took them a little while, but they finally figured out he was sitting under the air conditioning vent.

[anarky]

Saw one this morning called "Lost Tapes." I was bored and there was nothing else on but royal wedding dreck everywhere. This one actually pissed me off. It was a 30-minute show, and the synopsis said it was two stories, both supposedly dealing with people who might have possibly almost seen some undiscovered creature. It was interspersed with scientific facts and shit.

The entire episode turned out to be one story, about a college-age girl who was supposedly finishing up an around-the-world sailing expedition and broadcasting it via webcam. This is plausible, and people have done it, so I didn't immediately turn it. I figured they'd show her say, "That was weird," and then move on to the next story, where you're an idiot to not figure out whatever she saw was a whale. Nope. She discovers an apparently abandoned boat and calls the coast guard, who don't respond, then decides to get going. The whole thing is shown from a few camera angles, but it periodically shows a website with feed from multiple cameras. Still believable, and, heck, maybe they tossed in a bit of reenactment to spice it up. But then she hits something falls off her boat and the camera supposedly on the mast shows a fucking plesiosaurus come up and eat her.

And this is the first indication, in the last two minutes of the show, that the whole thing was fictional. As fiction, it was awful. As fact, it might've been obviously misinterpreted, but interesting. I have to say it's a tad irritating as fuck to present a show on one of the educational channels as fact when it's a complete fabrication, not even a bunch of crazies misinterpreting shit.

[Ran]

I've seen this Giorgio A. Tsoukalos fellow on several alien conspiracy shows. I finally looked him up to see what makes him an expert. Apparently a Sports Information Communications degree he got from Ithica qualifies you as an expert in aliens.

[anarky]

No, it's the hair. That fucking hair did not come from this Earth.


But David Icke, the wackjob behind the "all our leaders are immortal alien shapeshifters" bullshit, was a sports commentator. So was Sarah Palin (love her or hate her, she did give us the stupid "death panels" conspiracy theory). I think you're onto something.

[Agent Mulder]

Why would they go to all this trouble? Out of a need for security? Security of what? I think there's a huge conspiracy here, Scully. They've got a UFO here, I'm sure of it. And they'll do anything to keep it a secret, including sacrificing the lives and minds of those pilots, because what if that secret got out.

[anarky]

Explain that hair, Mulder. Even your alien invasion theories can't explain that. EXPLAIN IT, DAMN YOU!

The hair has its own Facebook page. How does hair set up an account unless there's more to it than standard human keratin? The truth is out there. I can feel it....

...and it's really quite soft and luxurious.

[Rollo Tomassi]

Eh, props to these fellows. If I could dupe a cable network into giving me steady work for doing something so outlandishly moronic, I'd do it too.

I'd do a show called "Sprites, Elves, and Gnomes" and I'd keep pointing a shaky camera at the ground in various places yelling "Ooh! There's one! There's another one!!! Quick little devils!! There too fast for our camera guys! But they're there!!!! Trust me!!"

[Ran]

Over the past month, my friend at work and I have been in a competition to find the best conspiracy theory. That led us to the Jesse Ventura show, which had a bunch of conspiracies. Unfortunately, I haven't seen the show yet because trutv has been showing re-runs of other shows. However, they are filming a new season.

Then I found a few different bigfoot shows. The best is "Finding Bigfoot" on Animal Planet. It is 4 people going around the country investigating bigfoot sightings. It is hilarious. They take it so seriously and constantly remind you they have been doing it for 20-25 years. There are some awesome quotes. Bigfoot is frequently refered to as a "Squatch". As in, "This deer carcas is textbook squatch". Or my new favorite, "You can't catch a squatch running through the forrest in the dark".

We believe that the only thing that can top this show is the next season of Jesse Ventura.

[mabudon]

dude, after seeing the ads for Venturas show every 10 minutes for a few weeks, I started spontaneously uttering phony Jesse quotes in the past while- once you get the vocabulary and the method (making your mouth into a ridiculous rubber band-type thing and pulling a fresh face with almost every syllable) it is pretty much totally fucking hilarious. I like how, on the show, the "other totally plausible explanations" for whatever are completely ignored, in favour of whatever angle the episode is taking. Ventura reacting in amazement is one of my favourite things ever, especially given his super-questionable provenance.

The funniest particular one I can quote is from an episode called "The Great Lakes" (hint to Ran- pretty much every episode is available in its entirety on youtube, just take a look)

In the opening bit where he is assessing the worthiness of the featured "conspiracy", Jesse asks a guy just how bad the corporate control of fresh water reserves is. The guy tell him that it is SO important, in fact, that people refer to it as "blue gold". Jesse responds with plenty of shock, outrage and attitude "Like BLACK Gold!!!!" and at that moment I started laughing so hard that I couldn't watch the rest of the episode, choosing instead to try various versions of the quote, my fave being "Like GOLDEN gold!!!"

That show is fucking funny if you are in the right frame of mind, I especially like it when Ventura gets super indignant and confrontational

[anarky]

There are some fucking bizarre conspiracy theories out there. I still think David Icke's batshit "reptoids" theory is the worst. Every person in power is secretly a shapeshifting alien reptoid. The alien "greys" are, depending upon which weirdo version you subscribe to, either the reptoids' masters or their sworn enemies. And, to make it worse, they're all serial child molesters, too. Don't ask why an alien reptile wants to molest children. Try to approach this shit with logic and your head WILL explode.

[Diabolical]

That's why I like Destination Truth on Sci-fi/SyFy.
Host Josh Gates is intentionally funny, but at the end of every typical "investigation" he states what the real truth probably is, and despite some of the "unexplained evidence," the creature they investigated was probably a local animal (or whatever) that has been turned into a monster by local folklore.

[Ran]

There are some fucking bizarre conspiracy theories out there. I still think David Icke's batshit "reptoids" theory is the worst. Every person in power is secretly a shapeshifting alien reptoid. The alien "greys" are, depending upon which weirdo version you subscribe to, either the reptoids' masters or their sworn enemies. And, to make it worse, they're all serial child molesters, too. Don't ask why an alien reptile wants to molest children. Try to approach this shit with logic and your head WILL explode.

That one is almost too silly. Wikipedia's article on reptoids says it is the 10th most popular conspiracy in the US.

That's why I like Destination Truth on Sci-fi/SyFy.
Host Josh Gates is intentionally funny, but at the end of every typical "investigation" he states what the real truth probably is, and despite some of the "unexplained evidence," the creature they investigated was probably a local animal (or whatever) that has been turned into a monster by local folklore.

I'm going to have to track this one down.

dude, after seeing the ads for Venturas show every 10 minutes for a few weeks, I started spontaneously uttering phony Jesse quotes in the past while- once you get the vocabulary and the method (making your mouth into a ridiculous rubber band-type thing and pulling a fresh face with almost every syllable) it is pretty much totally fucking hilarious. I like how, on the show, the "other totally plausible explanations" for whatever are completely ignored, in favour of whatever angle the episode is taking. Ventura reacting in amazement is one of my favourite things ever, especially given his super-questionable provenance.

The funniest particular one I can quote is from an episode called "The Great Lakes" (hint to Ran- pretty much every episode is available in its entirety on youtube, just take a look)

In the opening bit where he is assessing the worthiness of the featured "conspiracy", Jesse asks a guy just how bad the corporate control of fresh water reserves is. The guy tell him that it is SO important, in fact, that people refer to it as "blue gold". Jesse responds with plenty of shock, outrage and attitude "Like BLACK Gold!!!!" and at that moment I started laughing so hard that I couldn't watch the rest of the episode, choosing instead to try various versions of the quote, my fave being "Like GOLDEN gold!!!"

That show is fucking funny if you are in the right frame of mind, I especially like it when Ventura gets super indignant and confrontational

I'll be spending some time on youtube. Ventura was on Opie & Anthony on XM (sort of like Howard Stern type guys) when he was promotiong the show. I heard a good part of the interview. After he left they were talking about the show and how he just makes random conclusions.

[Diabolical]

I'm going to have to track this one down.

It should still be on Netflix Watch Instantly.

[anarky]

I somehow once came across a bizarre conspiracy theory. I was looking up something about Time Warner Cable, seeing if other people had had some weird issue I'd come across. Anyhow, supposedly Time Warner had remotely gone through the DVRs of people who'd taped a particular episode of Jesse Ventura's show and deleted it. Which proved that the reptoid Illuminati Bilderberg Jewish conspiracy of McDonald's workers who secretly rule the world had told them to.

Wish I could remember what it was....