And nothing of value was lost

At times it must seem that Riddled is just a long-prolonged campaign to convince some publisher with an excess of moneys and a deficit of market judgement that a book-length investigation into the topic of GcMAF (and the interesting characters who deal in the stuff) would sell well enough to recover my insignificant advance. Not to mention my travel expenses.

So to prove that there is more to Riddled than the snake-oil industry, let's look at what appears to be a reënactment of The Mosquito Coast, on location in Belize, with a cast of mostly non-professionals, possibly to become a reality-TV show. Of great interest to the Riddled Amateur Dramatic Society.

Heavy Metal: Not a reliable source
about classical Yucatán culture
Belize, Uncle Smut? Isn't that where John McAfee was holed up, experimenting with a radically transhumanist diet of cognitive enhancers and herbal antibiotics and cocaine, until he was spirited away in precipitous haste by a phalanx of well-remunerated lawyers, to avoid tedious questions about the murder of the neighbouring beachcomber along the Caribbean coastline?

Indeed it is, well done younglings. The McAfee episode was just another example of the over-representation of Belize in the fictive realm. Belize punches above its weight in terms of literary footprint... it must be a tradition, or an old charter or something. Or due to its status as an English-speaking enclave along the Yucatán peninsula.

Bonus Heavy Metal Mayan porn

It may be that Desmond Bagley novels are more reliable that Heavy Metal as a source of information about the Yucatán. About cenotes, and diving, and the anthropological perspective on Conquistadorean encounters with Mayan culture, which is to say, about acquiring someone else's gold. Bagley novels are also a good source of key life lessons about soil liquefaction, and avalanches, and model train-set scheduling as a Turing-complete universal computer.


One can only speculate if cenote diving is part of the curriculum for Amanda Mary Jewell's Healing Training Centre:

Amanda Mary the bleach-enema hotelier and GcMAF peddler, last seen in Mexico as Senior Cancer Researcher, claiming the dubious imprimatur of a Mexican cancer-quackery clinic? Talking patients out of treatment and generously setting up crowd-sourcing fundraisers for them to pay for her own ministrations protocols?

...Maybe.

You promised a break from GcMAF.

I lied. Oh look, a skwirl more details on the Holistic Certified Training and Healing Centre from AMJ Enterprises! The basic idea is admirable, to scam wannabee-scammers who already call themselves "holistic healers"... in the manner of Stone Soup, they will pay $3000 to pass their unique skills in different Healing Modalities on to one another.

But there were two drawbacks to this scheme. First, the location pencilled in to accommodate the three-week group encounter consists of four cabanas for guest couples and a one-bedroom bungalow for the owners, so 40 larval-stage grifters would present some over-crowding, even if the 7-acre grounds become a camping site. Second, the reason why wannabee Alt-Med scammers want to be Alt-Med scammers is that they don't have money, so discouraging expressions of impecunious enthusiasm comprise the comment thread -- "I would love to attend, if only I had spare $3000!"

So the posts were unposted from the FaceBukkake, and all those comments were lost in time, like tears in rain. Their place has been taken by the Other Other operation, targetted at a more select clientele of unwell persons -- fewer of them, but each willing to spare $25000 for food & board (therapy prices extra), 1/2 deposit in advance.

Just look at it:

[more details here]

This is a completely mad scheme. It is a scheme cobbled together from wistful thinking and purloined beach scenes, with a layer of pebbledash to cover over the holes. It is as mad as a barrel of green squirrels dancing a jig on a giant blue flower. It is as daft as inviting people to pay €1.5mill. for a billet on the Apocalypse Ark -- the isolated, undetected impregnable village, with Free Energy self-sufficiency, to which the billet-holders will be evacuated by a fleet of "high speed, long distance helicopter’s" in the event of the End of Civilisation As We Know it. No, wait, that was the scam Amanda Mary was trying five years ago.

Details of the Platinum Program have changed little from the non-precious program -- which cost $3000 in Feb. 2016, $5000 in September, and then metamorphosed like a beautiful butterfly into the Diamond Program at $25000 for two -- bruited about in the days of Amanda's purported affiliation to the Flor de la Salud disk-surgery-cures-everything butcher, when she claimed to be their agent and was inviting payments on their behalf.* But the imagery of promised accommodation (all blue-sea-and-palmtrees) is new; the photographs are not the Bamboo Beach Resort and there are many silver milk-bottle tops payable to anyone who recognises their actual source. Though the scheme does not require the provision of genuine Belizean accommodation, fine dining, or trained medical personnel even in the unlikely event of some sucker ponying up the deposit, so the question is noncupatory.

This will leave the Bamboo Beach Resort free to become the campus of Healing Oracle University!

Until more details are revealed, or the post is unposted -- whichever comes first -- it remains unclear whether the curriculum will include sniper schools and military survival games for children.

BONUS AMJ deleted FB post. Human-centipede-style repetition of the "abortions cause cancer" lie made up decades ago by shameless forced-birthers, adorned with freshly-fabricated numbers like so many non-pareils, and presented warm and still glistening with rectal mucus...

... but later the post was aborted. Amanda is burnishing her 'spirituality' credentials and cuddling up with the fetus-fondling theocrats, perhaps in the hope that the sense of affinity will make them more gullible, in which case I am cheering for both sides.

[Thx Malarkey and Dora]

* It is not clear quite why and when AMJ and the Flor de la Salud clinic parted ways. Perhaps the latter changed the locks to stop her sneaking in to pose for lab-coated selfies in the head-quack's office and in the operating room, which all attracts publicity, but not the right kind.

In other news, Desmond Bagley had really crap luck with movie adaptations.


UPDATE². B⁴ is being wrong in the comments:

Needs more "Classical Maya Astronaut Bas-Relief"...

You say "Mayan Astronaut", John Sladek says girl-abducting Robot.