Oh Shut Up and Keep Marching

There's a new theme for the faithful few at the Academy for Psychic Studies:

For a little more information on this topic, I'd ask you to get in touch with the Academy for their side of the story.  In fact, there is a "church" service this coming Sunday that has endurance as its theme.  It's a great opportunity to go see how warm and nourishing they really are.  Just don't go there without at least 50 bucks in your pocket because after all the donation buckets are passed around and the sales pitches for the after-church trance experience (which is available for a donation of 20 bucks or so), the helpful recordings are sold to you and whatever else has been laid on you, you'll need that much to pay for it all.

Considering the current straits of the Academy, I think endurance is a topic that fits - if the remaining eight or ten or whatever fearful souls don't hang in there, the Witches will lose out on a chunk of income.  And you know how much they hate that.

So, it's a good time to tell the remaining few to stick to their guns or whatever their weapon of choice and keep dumping their spare money into the cauldron.  At least, it's a good time for the Witches to do that.

After considering what that church service may contain, I looked around on the interweb and found a piccy that might be a bit more apropos...

The things they wish for are the things that are out of reach.  Things like public interest; public adulation; getting the public to come on over to experience the warmth, nourishment and pickpocketing that only our beloved Academy for Psychic Studies can provide.

Looks like all these kinds of orgs are having some kind of crisis.  Interest in the wacky and weird teachings these guys have are not exactly setting the world on fire - especially now that Oprah is off the air and that sweat lodge guy is sweating it out behind bars.

But there is some good evidence that good PR can indeed reform and re-establish a once tarnished image.

Take a look at the Berkeley Psychic Institute site.  Not only are there smiling pics of their ministerial staff (it's on their DejaVu site and one of them can possibly be called HOT) there is a sense of activity there, a sense that there is a mission (what that mission is, I don't know but you'd have to ask PsychDoctorate about it) and a sense there is an atmosphere of warmth and nourishment you wouldn't find at a Victorian house a few blocks away.

And amazingly, there is a piece that aired on ABC's Nightline right there up front.  It's not scandalous.  Not in the least.  In fact, it puts BPI in a pretty favorable light.  It's exactly the thing BPI needed to maintain their position of prominence in the psychic world.

Of course, it took a while to get that piece and it required some luck and some good PR to gain the visibility to interest Nightline.

I always considered BPI to to the smart thing.  That's not to say I endorse their teachings or methods.  But if you really look a t their activities from a marketing standpoint, it's all the right things to do.

So, here is really no need for BPI to round up the troops and inspire them to continue a Death March straight to hell. BPI doesn't have a Death March at all.

I just wonder what those unfortunate faithful few in that Victorian house down the street are marching towards besides the edge of a cliff.