By Deepsack Woo-Hands

Walter Cronkite, the prominent and prolithic news anchorman, died a few days ago. What the news outlets won’t tell you, of course, is that Cronkite’s death was predicted by numerology. In fact, a prominent numerologist, who wishes to remain anonymous, had been predicting for years (ever since Cronkite’s 80th birthday) that Cronkite would soon pass away. Amazingly, a mere 12 years later, at the surprisingly young age of 92, Cronkite suddenly and unexpectedly passed away from complications relating to dementia.

“I saw this coming from a mile away,” said the numerologist, knowingly. “Possibly two miles away, but at least one mile away for sure.”

According to the numerologist, the numbers in Kronkite’s life had been pointing toward an untimely end, and they all culminated in the ultimate numerological sign of death on July 13, 2009. Mysteriously, Cronkite did not die on that fateful day, but four days later, on July 17. But as we all know, 4 = 2 * 2, which can be written as (1 + 1) (1 + 1), which can further be rewritten as (0 +1 + 1)(1 + 1 + 0). “Those two zeroes on either end of the equation signify death, with the four ones signifying the month of July, which has only four letters.”

The coincidences don’t stop there. “Walter’s life was dominated by the numbers 1 and 0. Traditionally, the number 0 signifies nothingness or everything, which is annihilation or death in the Eastern mode of thought. The number 1 represents the individual, the physical world. Having the number 1, symbolizing the mortal coil, so tightly wound in with the number 0, tells us that his life would be prolific, great, and soon to end.” And for those skeptics who would dispute the significance of these numbers, one need only look at the numerologist’s chart, which he referred to as “my super-duper number thingy”. The chart of Cronkite’s life is filled with the numbers 1 and 0. In fact, the whole chart is 1s and 0s.

In explanation, the numerologist said, “Almost 12 years ago, I took all the important dates from Walter’s life, put them into my computer, converted them to computer code, and printed them out. For some reason, all the dates, all the ages, and all the numbers were represented as 1s and 0s on the paper. The computer was trying to tell me something by converting the numbers to this strange, mystical script.”

The numerologist listened to his numbers. He immediately began predicting Cronkite’s death only a decade ago. “Skeptics tried to tell me that numerology is bunk, that my predictions failed year after year; their minds are closed to the possibilities.” He took a sip from his coffee and pointed to his chart filled with numbers. “According to my super-duper number thingy, Cronkite was headed to doom, as indicated by the proliferation of 1s and 0s. The skeptics scoffed and tried to tell me that the computer had converted it to this mystical (and probably made-up) thingamajig they called ‘binary,’ which strikes me as ad hoc special pleading—as if a computer can think and possess enough intelligence to turn numbers into different numbers! Next they’ll be saying computers can turn 6s into 7s and 30s into 23s!” He held up his chart, the 1s and 0s eerily filling the page. “But who’s laughing now? Cronkite died, just as I predicted!”

“The numbers never lie.”

Of course, not everyone accepts numerology. After finding a random token skeptic, a Mr. Saint Gasoline, I asked him several hard-hitting questions, questions for which he had no answer. I asked him to tell me the meaning of life, and he had no real response. I asked him to tell me the sound of one hand clapping, and he looked at me in confusion. I asked him to describe for me the taste of honor, and his eyes merely glazed over. I even asked him a basic science question, how many protons are in the element kryptonite, and he couldn’t respond. He was, in short, a fool without answers, and not just because I asked meaningless questions. It was also because I forgot to take notes.

“In the grand scheme of things, Numerology is but a wart on the ass of claimed ‘psychic’ powers, somehow managing to be more ridiculous than cold reading and tea leaf divination. Of course, tarot card reading is a meta-wart, a wart upon the wart that is numerology, probably with a big hair growing out of it, or at least a cancerous growth called Sylvia Browne protruding fiendishly from it, which is the most malignant of all incredulous cancers,” said the token skeptic, who was wearing a dirty t-shirt, smelled bad, looked incredibly dishevelled, and probably had never been laid.

But despite the single skeptic, the coincidences are too many to count—unless you know numbers well and numerology even better! How, after all, is it possible that 0s and 1s filled Cronkite’s life a mere moments (or decades) before his death at the tender age of 92? How can the skeptics explain away the fact that Michael Jackson’s death was similarly preceded by a string of 1s and 0s when converted to binary computer code? And how can they explain the fact that celebrities always die in threes, which can be reduced to three 1s, or which for some reason comes out as 11 when converted to computer code, which can be written as 11 + 0? Ones and zeroes, again! Does it mean our lives are all governed by mystical numerological principles? Perhaps. We’ll never know for sure. Or will we?

(This piece is a guest post written by resident Saintgasoline.com alternative medicine and health expert Dr. Deepsack Woo-Hands.)

In a recent study performed in my basement with a number of bewildered dogs and unwilling children, I uncovered a wide assortment of efficacious uses for acupuncture.  While skeptics continually criticize acupuncture, calling it mean names like placebo and scrawling its name and number onto bathroom stalls while promising it will deliver a good time, the research nevertheless continues to truck along, showing more and more advantages to acupuncture.  The study I performed in my basement, for instance, revealed that a variety of forms of acupuncture can be quite useful, from problems ranging from the treatment of pain to training dogs not to soil your couch.

As the ever skeptical Dr. Ziztur has even admitted in her own anti-alternative medicine blog, ”electroacupuncture” can sometimes be effective.  Regular acupuncture needles lacking electricity, however, lack any real efficacy. It is thus strange that combining the needles with electricity would make them so effective. Nevermind that transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation is already a proven therapy.

Naturally, the novel practice of adding electricity to acupuncture needles has led me to introduce even more ingenious methods of acupuncture that show great promise in treating various ailments.  Such research indicates that acupuncture can serve a useful purpose in medicine and should be practiced by all doctors immediately, provided that the acupuncture needles are combined with something else that already works.

Specifically, my own research showed positive therapeutic value for four forms of acupuncture.  Each form of acupuncture was assessed in comparison with an adequate placebo and a control group receiving no treatment.  The placebo consisted of dropkick therapy, in which case I told the terrified children or confused dogs locked in my basement that I would attempt to cure their ailments by kicking them in the face with a stunning, professional wrestling-style dropkick.  In the end, my research showed that all four acupuncture groups performed significantly better than this placebo group, experiencing less jaw and head pain and receiving fewer concussions.  Strangely, the group receiving no treatment also fared better than the placebo, which has led me to conclude that not treating people can be an effective modality for various medical problems.  Indeed, I have found that not treating my colds, itches, and headaches often leads to their relief within a few days or hours.  For doctors to overlook the amazing health benefits that can result from doing absolutely nothing is simply appalling.

At any rate, the four acupuncture arms of my study proved helpful for a number of different problems, depending on the form of acupuncture used.  What follows, then, is a brief description of the various forms of acupuncture used, followed by the evidence of its efficacy, proposed explanatory mechanisms, and possibly brief digressions about ponies, as my five-year-old niece did the final proofread for this piece and she frickin’ loves ponies.

Tube Acupuncture
In this acupuncture group, patients were treated with specialized acupuncture needles fitted with plastic tubes that had plungers at the top.  The tubes were filled with various ingredients, and the plungers were pressed down upon administering the acupuncture treatment.  (The acupuncture needle looked something like this.) Depending on the ingredient, this form of acupuncture proved immensely effective for a variety of common medical problems.  When the acupuncture tube was loaded with morphine, for instance, it proved tremendously effective at relieving pain and inducing constant pleas for more among the increasingly fidgety children receiving this therapy.  When loaded with killed or attenuated microorganisms, they proved almost as effective as vaccines at preventing infectious disease and boosting immune system responses.  Of course, my research does not yet explain why tube acupuncture should be so effective against such a variety of problems.  It seems, however, that this form of acupuncture could one day become quite mainstream, taking the place of the traditional and outmoded western medicine use of syringes, vaccines, and so on.  Were I to hazard a guess, I would assume the mechanism of action of this form of acupuncture is that, upon releasing the substance’s energy in the tube, the various meridian channels of the body become activated with qi, which subsequently boosts immunity to pain, disease, and so on.

Dental Acupuncture
My research also surprisingly showed many beneficial dental uses for acupuncture.  When modified by applying a curve to the acupuncture needles, they served very well as dental probes.  When modified by adding motors that would rotate the needle, acupuncture proved amazingly effective at preventing tooth decay.  In this form of acupuncture, the needle would be rotated by the motor in such a way that it would drill into the tooth, at which point the decayed tooth material could be removed and replaced with a restorative material.  The proposed mechanism of this dental acupuncture is entirely speculative.  The evidence suggests, however, that because meridians do not travel through teeth, there must be some as yet unobserved force or energy that transfers the energy from nearby meridians to the tooth.  I suspect the answer is tiny, invisible, metaphysical leprechauns, but more research is needed.  Also, ponies are awesome and beautiful and amazing and I want one for my birthday.

Dog Acupuncture
One wouldn’t expect it, but poking dogs with sharp needles after they’ve urinated on your couch can provide amazing dog-training benefits.  In my study, the many dogs in my basement (who constantly urinated on my couch) were treated with standard acupuncture.  Whenever they urinated on the couch, I would immediately treat them with acupuncture, causing them to yelp, cry, whine, and squeal in joy.  (They love acupuncture!)  After only a few treatments, the dogs stopped urinating on the couch.  In fact, the treatment was so effective that the dogs almost stopped urinating completely, refusing to go at all until after they had eyed me suspiciously for at least an hour, smelling me warily and contenting themselves that no needles were present.  The only explanation for this effect, obviously, is that dogs have souls and when they urinate on couches, their souls become tainted with bad karma, and only through eastern mystical practices like needle-poking can the bad karma be lifted.  Also, ponies.

Chair Acupuncture
If I were to say that acupuncture can help restore the mobility of quadriplegics and paraplegics, most western medical doctors would scoff at me with derision and pelt me with rotten eggs and scorn and maybe even rotten eggs that they’ve injected with their scorn.  But their closed-mindedness shuts them out to the true power of acupuncture.  For in this fourth and final arm of my acupuncture study, my research demonstrated improved mobility for patients with spinal cord injury.  These acupuncture needles were specially designed, attached to a chair with wheels.  The acupuncture needles were put on the arm rest and inserted into the side of the patient, who then sat in the seat with the wheels.  (The chair acupuncture device looked something like this, but with needles.)   After receiving treatment, patients often moved about by turning the wheels on the chair, only occasionally wincing from the needles, and I instantly recognized that acupuncture had improved their mobility significantly.  Previously the paraplegics had been lazily lying about, not walking or running or jumping or moving much at all, and now, suddenly, acupuncture had given them the ability to roll around in the special chair acupuncture device I had given them.  Clearly, the meridians were at work here.  The patients’ meridians had been disrupted by a blockage of their qi, which led to their paralysis.  The chair acupuncture helped divert the flow of qi into a new path, allowing better mobility.  Acupuncture had been vindicated once again.

Conclusion
As can be seen, my new research reveals that continued skepticism of acupuncture is baseless and foolish.  More and more, acupuncture is proving to be effective in treating a number of medical problems.  When you combine it with electricity it helps to relieve back pain.  When you combine it with plungers and tubes and morphine it relieves pain.  When you combine it with chairs with wheels on them it helps improve mobility.  To deny acupuncture in the face of these successes is thus ludicrous.  Who knows what acupuncture may accomplish in the future, after all, when it is combined with many more outlandish things?  What will the skeptics say when acupuncture allows people to travel to the moon by attaching rocketships to the needles?  What will the skeptics say when acupuncture uncovers fundamental theoretical particles like the Higgs boson when Large Hadron Colliders are attached to the needles?  Obviously, they will remain skeptical regardless of how many things acupuncture proves capable of accomplishing when attached to other things that can accomplish these things.  And this is why skeptics will never, ever be welcome in my practice as a licensed acupuncturist.  And they can never ride my pony.

—Dr. Deepsack Woo-Hands