Purple dinosaurs, brown meteors

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 27/01/2018 (3107 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Back when my kids were barely larger than garden gnomes, our house was declared a Barney-free zone.

It’s not that we banned our kids from sitting in front of the TV and watching the giant purple Tyrannosaurus rex prance around on his infamous children’s show on PBS while singing his sickeningly sweet signature song, wherein he belts out the following lyrics: “I love you/You love me/We’re a happy family/With a great big hug/And a kiss from me to you/Won’t you say you love me too?”

(For the record, that song is so mind-numbingly horrible that it was actually used by interrogators at the Guantanamo Bay detention centre to inflict psychological stress on detainees.)

No, thanks to some kind of primordial psychological kid-defence mechanism, our children boycotted Barney on their own, because they harboured deeply held suspicions that something terribly creepy was happening inside that 70-pound purple dinosaur costume.

Once, while cleaning up our house, my wife stumbled on a tape recording that consisted entirely of our five-year-old daughter repeatedly chirping the following heart-felt phrase: “I hate Bawney! I hate Bawney!”

The point is, without any guidance from mom and dad, our kids decided Barney was not the kind of dinosaur they felt comfortable welcoming into our living room.

It turns out they knew what they were talking about. I say that because I have just read dozens of online news reports about how the actor who played Barney for 10 years, David Joyner, has gone from starring in a children’s show to running his own tantric-sex business.

I think I speak for most modern parents when I say that my initial reaction to this news was something along the lines of: “Huh?!”

It seems that three years after hanging up his dino suit in 2001, Joyner launched a career as a spiritual healer and tantric-sex therapist, wherein he offers his female-only clients a whole lot more than just a “great big hug and a kiss from me to you” at his practice in Los Angeles.

In an interview with Vice Media, the 54-year-old former actor said he treats about 30 clients — he calls them “goddesses” — charging $350 for a three- to four-hour session that can include chakra balancing, a bath, a massage, and cosmic, “mind-blowing orgasms.”

According to the stories, his tantra training helped him survive long, sweaty days in the Barney suit, and he’s convinced being a purple dinosaur and a sex guru balancing people’s chakras have a lot in common.

“The energy I brought up (while) in the costume is based on the foundation of tantra, which is love,” he is quoted as saying. “Everything stems, grows and evolves from love. Even when you have emotionally blocked energy, the best way to remove it is to remove it with love, and then replace it with God’s divine love. Love heals and allows you to continue to grow.”

Now, don’t get me wrong — I am not trying to say I find the notion of a kid-friendly dinosaur evolving into a tantric-sex guru sort of creepy… no, wait, hold on, that is exactly what I am trying to say.

The point is, when you look deep inside something, including a singing purple dinosaur, you often find it is not what it appears to be on the surface.

Which, coincidentally, is exactly what I was thinking the other day when I read breathless news reports about how a group of Indian villagers were incredibly excited this past Saturday, when a frozen meteor rocketed out of the skies and crashed into a farmer’s field, creating a deep hole.

According to the Indian Express and the International Business Times, excited residents of India’s Fazilpur Vadli village gathered pieces of the yellow-brown space rock and stashed them in their refrigerators, because meteorites can be worth thousands of dollars to collectors.

“I rushed to the spot and saw the object,” Govind Singh was quoted as saying. “It seemed to weigh at least eight or 10 kilograms, judging by the dent it had made on the ground. Initially, we thought it could be ice, but it was not melting. So, we figured it must have some kind of chemical in it.”

The thrill faded fairly quickly, however, when a team of scientists from the India Meteorological Department arrived to collect samples of the mystery object that had plummeted from the skies.

It turns out the unidentified falling object was (pause for dramatic effect) a hefty clump of frozen poop that had been ejected from an airliner passing overhead.

“The news was a setback for the souvenir collectors, who realized their refrigerators where preserving airplane lavatory poop,” a report on SFGate.com noted. “They had to clean the appliances and anything else in their houses that come in contact with the frozen excrement.”

At risk of sounding judgmental, we should remember that things are not always what they appear to be on the surface, and until further notice, we should probably perspire heavily and maintain a healthy skepticism about what lurks inside everything we come in contact with.

And then, out of an abundance of caution, we should probably wash our hands with antibacterial soap.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca