Unless you've been living on a rock, it's been impossible to not notice the UK General Election which is speeding our way like a runaway train full of grinning men in suits. Estimated time of arrival is in about 5 days. It's rather amusing to note how different things are on each side of the Atlantic: while every Brit in the country was avidly watching the US election and (for 90% of the country at least) praying to whatever deity they believed in that Kerry would win, or at the very least that someone would win who wasn't Bush, the US takes a decidedly different approach to our political system i.e. they don't take any approach at all. And for once, I share their lack of enthusiasm.

Why don't I? I'm political as anything, I should be in my element...but I'm not. Fact is, I have precisely zero reasons to give a shit anymore. The British public have had to endure 25 days of the most horrific bullshit ever inflicted upon them by their political parties. Endless proclamations about immigration and asylum seekers, ranging from acceptance to outright xenophobia, we've heard so much from Mr Blair's New Labour about how voting for anyone other than them lets the Tories in, every single party claiming that every single other party's figures do not add up. People aren't being given a chance to think for themselves; given that none of the party's figures add up, it seems the electorate now have to go on nothing but their own dogma.

Admittedly, it isn't as bad as the US's system. Our "Republican" party (The Conservative party, or the Tories) over here doesn't wheel out old soldiers to discredit the other guy, they wheel out old women with bad shoulders. We still have a long way to go before we reach the truly horrifying depths of "I'm Michael Howard and I approve this message"; here our politicians actually get reprimanded by the public for calling the prime minister a liar! But it seems that with every single election we slip closer to this nightmare, where the actual policies of the parties become absolutely meaningless behind all this utter, utter crap about immigration and asylum, concocted by spin doctors and designed to play on peoples' fears and an underlying sense of racism. It could be said that we simply have no way of introducing any kind of decent political debate not marred by this sense of rash, thought-terminating slogan warfare, not in a nation of "It was the Sun wot won it", and the sad thing is if you said that you would probably be right.

Britain as it stands is a three party system, more or less, with two main parties (Labour and Conservative) with about a 30% share of the vote each and the Liberal Democrats, who tend to hover around 25%. The Liberal Democrats, it have to be said, tend to represent the zeitgeist: I'm seeing a lot more people who consider the Lib Dems, as they are known, a sensible option. But at the same time I'm seeing lots of people who would under all other circumstances vote Lib Dem, and agree with their policies, but would never vote for them, under the ridiculous pretense of it being a "wasted vote". The idea is ridiculous because there can simply be no such thing as a "wasted vote", unless you're so utterly thick as to assume that if the party you voted for doesn't win the election, or doesn't come second, then your vote is wasted because you didn't back the winning horse. And that appears to be the mentality these days, that it's always better to vote for someone who you think is going to win, rather than who you actually want to win, because who really wants to say they voted for the loser? So the votes keep on going to Labour and the Tories, and more and more both these parties continue to fuck the loyal people who voted for them, fuck them right in the ass without lubrication; stripping them of civil liberties, breaking their campaign promises, destroying public services and refusing to fix that which is broken. And why has nobody realised this? Do people really think that the only choices are between the Bad and the Slightly Worse? Is it really too much to ask that people stop reading the Sun and get out of the stupid two party mindset that is bringing this party down? I'm sure that if people stopped this whole "wasted vote" mentality and actually voted for who they agree with, we'd be seeing a very different party in power in a month or two's time.

Maybe I'm asking a bit too much. I mean, why bother thinking for yourself, when the Sun is backing Labour? And aren't there asylum seekers we should be deporting, and terrorism we should be stopping, or whatever the excuse is this week? Yeah, I think I am asking a bit too much, altogether it's a bit of a pipedream. Sadly.

"My baby don't you worry
This cold world is not for you.
So lay your head upon me,
I have strength to carry you.

Lazurus
--Porcupine Tree--

RV means remote viewing to people in the know. It's not a silver lozenge Airstream containing blue-haired retirees out to rediscover the world they passed while they were raising children and making enough money to be blue-haired retirees in silver Airstream trailers.

Remote Viewing.

This means you can see things far away from where you are. With your eyes. And far away means time as well as space. It means dreams as well as reality.

The federal government of the United States uses Remote Viewers to psychically spy into the doings of our enemies and allies. Because it's cheap, we presume they're doing it to us. Because it works, usually, in one way or another, we know people are doing it.

The federal budget on RV black-ops can be quite low. Just a couple of cheeseburgers and a few pots of coffee.

You do it this way: one person sits or lies or stands and becomes contemplative. The other person is there to take notes, and to tell the person it's time to look for a "target". The "target" can be anything -- a person, a place, an event, something someone thought up one day. The important thing about the "target" is that it is unknown to both of the people involved in the Remote Viewing operation. A third party has selected the "target" -- a picture or a drawing or some words on paper -- and placed it in a sealed envelope, or into a drawer, or a safe. Somewhere inaccessable to the viewing team.

The contemplative person starts spewing impressions the other person writes down. These impressions can be anything from vivid imagery to abstract impressions.

"I see a gray metal tower."

"There's a woman who's crying."

"My feet feel like I've been walking on aluminum foil."

Anything.

Usually then, the contemplative person draws a picture and makes an interpretation. Then, when the picture is drawn, the work is done. The team hands over the output to the third party who selected the target. That person now has their data to use as they see fit.

There is a "protocol" to RV. There are people who will say there is no RV if "The Protocol" is not followed. Something other than RV has happened then.

"The Protocol" was established by the U.S. Psychic Spying operation during the 1980's. You can go to "The Monroe Institute" in Virginia to be trained in "The Protocol". Other people from the Stargate program offer training sessions in RV for money. You pay them, they teach you to be a psychic.

In 2005, anything is possible with money.

I bring this up because of Laura.

I have mentioned Laura before, I think. Laura is a woman with whom I have spent four weeks being trained to be a psychic. I can mention that Laura is a member of The Priory of Sion, that figured prominently in the book The DaVinci Code which I read and thought sucked. We didn't know The Priory of Sion was such a big deal when Laura learned she was in it because of her bloodline. All we knew was that she owned, quite suddenly, parts of Paris, works of art the Lourve has sent her and she has hanging in her bedroom, and a chunk of the island of Guadalupe, which she promises me an acre of. But that's another story I will tell you someday. Today we'll talk about this miracle.

It happened by accident that we wound up together in these psychic classes. Though, once you start studying psychic methodology, you come to the conclusion that every coincidence that has ever occurred is the work of one invisible external agency or another. God, wood sprites, angels, ghosts, aliens, higher-selves. Whatever. There is terrestrial life we can't see. There is extraterrestrial life we can't see. God, for instance.

Laura and I are friends along with Paul and Mark and JJ and we have all experienced psychic events together.

I wrote in my somewhat abstract and emotionally-distorted story You and Me about the time during a psychic trance session the five of us "saw" a woman crying in a train station in East Germany, and how six years later I met the woman in Antarctica, and how getting to Antarctica and meeting her all seemed happen along the lines of a preordained set of coincidences, which due to my philosophy I must ascribe to an invisible external agency who remains unnamed to me.

My guardian angel, maybe.

I've been somewhat distraught about this whole thing, because I'm not able to write it off as some sort of minor life event. Lots of dominoes had to fall for me to go to Antarctica and meet that woman. Could it be the entire world moves in such massively abstract ways for each of us, that it doesn't matter? That we should just move along with life?

I don't think so. Neither does Laura, and so I asked her if she could RV something. I wanted it to be connections. Connections between all five of us and the woman on the bench in East Germany, and then in Antarctica with me. As I was the third party, I would choose, and Laura wouldn't know what I was thinking it should be when she had the session.

It took Laura a month to get up the guts to give me the picture. I don't know why. I suspect she didn't like what it intimated, she was afraid the conclusions would hurt me, or hurt our relationship.

Finally, after much badgering, she sent me the picture. There are lots of ways it can be interpreted. I tried one way, and my friend from Antarctica interpreted it in another.

But I think if Laura can discover missing evidence and quote lost books, then maybe there's something in his picture. All Laura asked him to do when RVing the situation was to investigate "A connection". It could have been anything. A key to a lock. Gasoline to an engine. The trigger for a world-war or the incident that spawned a poem.

In the infinity of things Laura could have seen, he drew what I wanted. She drew you and me.