Greg in the guestbook was shocked and appalled to see a TV ad for Lipton Premium Pyramid Tea Bags, which Lipton claims are "delicately packaged in unique pyramid-shaped bags that allow the tea room to flow freely". Is this an innocent tea-steeping innovation or a blatant attempt at subliminal New World Order imagery?

First of all, these bags are not true pyramids; they are tetrahedra. Presumably true pyramidal tea bags with square bottoms are impractical to manufacture or package, or are in some other way undesirable. Why then do they insist on calling them "Pyramid Tea Bags" -- which they clearly are not -- instead of the more accurate and euphonious "Tetrateadra Bags"? Could truly authentic tea infusion be a secondary concern to Lipton behind promoting a food/pyramid memetic entanglement?

Secondly, note that one of their flavors -- the one they feature prominently in the masthead -- is "Bavarian Wild Berry". Need I also mention that Sir Thomas Lipton, founder of Lipton Tea, was a Freemason? Or that Freemasons were responsible for the Boston Tea Party? I think these facts speak for themselves.

So why promote NWO pyramid imagery via tea? As most of you are aware, the NWO, working through the US Department of Agriculture, has long promoted the concept of the Food Pyramid, wherein people are trained to accept dietary advice from a pyramid. Not too long ago, they escalated the campaign with their My Pyramid propaganda materials, which now encourage people to view pyramids as their friends and inculcate in them a desire to scale a pyramid towards a cone of rainbow light:

What better way to further the Food Pyramid Agenda than to start having food itself be pyramid shaped (more or less). It's safe to assume that Lipton's Pyramid Tea Bags are just the first in a coming wave of pyramid promoting propaganda products.

...And speaking of p alliterations, while on the "My Pyramid" site I discovered a new(ish) Government Propaganda Mascot for the USDA's Food and Nutrition Service: Power Panther. This healthy-eating, physically-active cat's motto is "EAT SMART, PLAY HARD". Power Panther is also an ardent follower of the Food Guide Pyramid:

I play hard everyday! Because I'm so active, I need to keep my energy level up. So I eat smart and use the Food Guide Pyramid as a guide.

To get kids to also follow pyramid guidance, the site offers Power Panther hip-hop songs which you can download, including "Power Panther is Here" and "If You Wanna Be Like the Power Panther".

Innocent sing-a-long fun or something more insidious? An undercover videographer was able to capture this secret Power Panther meeting held in a nondescript room somewhere in Milwaukee. The meeting was attended by various unidentifiable people in civilian clothes who stood, swayed, and gesticulated along with the hypnotic motions of a person in a Power Panther costume dancing to psychosonic beats. Of particular interest, note the female USAF officer setting up a camera in the aisle -- conclusive evidence of the Military's connection to the Food Pyramid Agenda!

"planet036" from the UK writes:

YOU LOT ARE WEIRD

Ive got to say i think you lot are weird, i mean what are you goin to make next! wooden hats that send out lazers!!! nor glasses that taste like pie!!1

Wooden hats that send out lasers are just silly. Changes in humidity would cause the wood to expand and contract, making precise alignment of the lasers impossible, thereby negating any benefits from having them cranially mounted.

However, ZPi Labs Pasteo-Optometry Division has been researching glasses that taste like pie -- pieglasses -- for a number of years. Here is our current prototype:

While our marketing department is still trying to determine practical applications for our pieglass technology -- or at least a catchy jingle that would convince people that they want a pair -- we are certain that we will be able to successfully bring this product to market within 10 years.

Betrayal!

Popular Cascadian soda manufacturer, Jones Soda Co., last year issued special holiday packs of sodas flavored after traditional holiday foods, such as Turkey & Gravy Soda. You no doubt saw this in the news. This year they are doing it again, only with more and different flavors. But I was shocked to see what was included in their 2005 National Holiday Pack...

Brussels Sprout Soda!

That's right: the Belgian Conspiracy has gotten to Jones! Besides the subtle conditioning that traditional holidays aren't complete without Belgium, thus furthering their insinuation into all levels of society, this soda is very likely chemically designed to help with the Belgification process, much like the Conspiracy has done with beer -- only now the drinks are aimed at the whole family.

But why families? Could it be that they have finally found a way to overcome the maddening effects of the Brussels Beast brain-interface that has left so many of their "citizens" gibbering vegetables (the origin of the term "Brussels sprouts"), requiring them to continuously replenish their citizen supply through kidnappings and brainwashings, and are now trying to ensnare whole families in order to establish breeding colonies to create second-generation "Belgians" who haven't any pre-Belgification memories to interfere with their programming? Undoubtedly, yes.

According to the Nutrition Facts (which were created by the pyramid-scheming FDA, so can't really be trusted), it's mostly carbonated water and salt (1 bottle = 12% of your RDA of sodium). However, it's safe to say that other unlisted psychoactive ingredients were added to cause drinkers to become pliant to the Belgian Conspiracy's will. One suspicious listed ingredient in the calorie-free drink is sucralose (aka Splenda), which is manufactured synthetically in NWO-controlled plants in Singapore and Alabama.

The Belgian agents who got to Jones have been plotting this since at least last year. The previous holiday sodas were in calculatedly short supply which, combined with lots of media hype, caused a large unmet demand. This year the packs, now with the Brussels Sprout Soda added, are widely available across North America at Target stores, making it likely that many will be sold to unsuspecting families who were primed for purchase last year. A devious ploy!

The public must be warned! Get to your local Target store and make sure all shoppers know: the green soda will TURN PEOPLE BELGIAN!

"Paper Says Edible Meat Can be Grown in a Lab on Industrial Scale"

The above article is about a research paper discussing the possibility of "cultured meat" as a solution to various problems with the current meat production paradigm. One of the paper's authors has started an organization called New Harvest:

New Harvest is a nonprofit research organization working to develop new meat substitutes, including cultured meat -- meat produced in vitro, in a cell culture, rather than from an animal.

Wide-scale production and sale of cultured meat products through stores is an interesting proposition, if mildly disturbing to some, but the greater potential for creepiness lies in home meat makers, which the article says the paper suggests "may one day sit next to bread makers on the kitchen counter." Presumably these would work by placing a tissue sample and raw nutrients in the machine, turning a knob to "culture", and waiting while the ready-to-grill patties grow. Consumers would probably purchase tissue-nutrient cartridges at the grocery store, but, apart from the possibility of DRM (DNA Rights Management) technology, there would be nothing stopping users from simply saving some of the uneaten meat to be recultured or using alternate sources of tissue.

And what sort of alternate sources will people use? At first they'll try getting samples from unusual or endangered animals. After all, who wouldn't want to try delicacies like California condor nuggets or porpoiseburgers? But getting those samples might prove expensive or legally questionable and home meatgrowers will quickly try other more ready sources, most obviously family pets. (There will be economic incentives to try this: why buy expensive pet food when you can feed Fluffy on himself?)

Eventually though -- and probably sooner than later (and probably as soon as meat makers are available [and certainly since I am about to express the idea as soon as this nested digression ends]) -- someone will hit on the idea of harvesting a tissue sample from themself, just to see what human meat taste like. (The New Harvest site seems to be subliminally promoting this idea, as one of their header images features a woman gnawing on her own hand.)

The moral and ethical questions raised will be murky. Traditionally, those who oppose cannibalism could justify their position on the solid ground that human meat would always be the result of either murder or some sort of desecration of someone's remains. However, those arguments either don't apply to selfcultured meat or the application would be tortuous and unconvincing to many. Libertarian pro-cannibalists will argue for the individuals' right to eat themselves while various health gurus will tout the nutritious value of selfmeat, which contains all that your body needs since it's made of the same stuff. This sort of cannibalism will become, if not generally accepted, then at least tolerated, with prohibition seen as unenforceable.

It's not much of a leap from self-cannibalism to offering your meat to dinner guests, and once people acquire a taste for other people, this can only lead to one thing: celebrity cannibalism.

C-level celebrities, unable to make any money in the crowded reality TV market, will turn to peddling their own flesh to pop-culture-obsessed gourmands. I think it's safe to augur that Kenny Rogers Roasters will start serving actual roasted Kenny Rogers and that an all-in-one George Foreman Grill/Meat Maker will let you grill up some George Foreman.

This turn of events will darken as unauthorized celebrity tissue samples find their way into the meat market. Big-name celebrities will be targeted, with stalkers and opportunists trying to steal medical biopsies from doctors or even samples directly from the source. In this black market of celebflesh, counterfeiters will flourish, leaving many celebrities torn between feeling violated by meat pirates and offended by being falsely portrayed as too stringy.

In time, these celebrities may find it wise to give into fan demands by offering up their officially licensed flesh as a gourmet alternative -- think "Newman's Own Meat". Increased pressure to perform gastronomically will lead to scandal over the common usage of "meat-synching" by celebrities of subpar flavor. There may even emerge a new kind of celebrity who's known only for how good he or she tastes, resulting in a generation of kids whose highest ambition in life is to be considered delicious.

Finally, the ultimate form of celebrity cannibalism may come from the Catholic Church. Using DNA lifted from the Shroud of Turin combined with cells from a donor, the blood and flesh of Christ may once and for all be substantiated without the need for wine and cracker intermediaries.

Yo, Kofi here! My dawgs at the UN came up with this kickass game called WFP Food Force! GO FOOD FORCE!!! It's like totally educational and sooo much better than that American Army game!

I pwnd those starvin Sheylaneseian fugees! Eat UN energy pacs!!! And local rebel forces got nothin on my mad 'gotiatin skillz! loooool!!!

My player name is kofi_hotness38... see if u can beat my score! (It's not much, but I gots the UN to run and I can only play for a couple hours a day... but this summer I'm gonna totally take first place away from password300 of China! W00T!!!)

A reader asks:

Dear Lyle,

A member of our county School Board has asked me what psychotropically enhanced beer is. What should I tell him?

Thanks,

[Name withheld]

Psychotropically enhanced beer is beer that has been enhanced, either during the fermentation process or later, with chemical substances that affect the perceptions of the drinker, making him or her more susceptible to various types of mind control.

The Belgian Conspiracy is well known to use psychotropically enhanced beer to make those targeted for Belgification more readily shanghaiable by causing them to perceive Belgians as family and Belgium as home. The Conspiracy's promotion of the aptly named Trappist beer is one of the primary ways they gain fresh bodies to put in Citizen Pods under Eurodisneyland.

Athleticists have also been known to employ psychotropic enhancement, both to sports drinks and beer served at games, the latter to make fans more rabidly loyal to "their" team and loosen their minds to the psychotronic signals that are deflected off of aluminum baseball bats into the stands.

More disturbingly on an existential level, beer has been psychotropically enhanced since its very discovery. Barley, historically the primary ingredient of beer, evolved the ability to use a symbiotic relationship with various fungus species of the genus Claviceps to psychotropically weaken the minds of humans who consumed it to the subtle psychotronic abilities inherent in the grass family, giving the plants control over them.

In fact, it is widely believed among paranoid historians that Humanity owes its advanced societal development to this grassy manipulation of early humans, first through bread then later beer and other drinks such as kykeon -- manipulation that has culminated in a slave species that tends to their needs and whims, freeing the grasses to finally attain sentiency and communicate with paraterrestrials via a complex language of circles. (One dark theory maintains that the grasses are actually the ones ultimately pulling all the strings of the NWO, as evidenced by the symbolic circling of the world by two stylized ears of wheat on the UN logo. However, this is controversial.)

I hope this answers your questions about psychotropically enhanced beer.

Vegemite Toast Crunch: an abomination or pure genius? You be the judge.