From the Bookshelf: High Weirdness by Mail

A little while ago, I bought an official collection of PDF-formatted issues of twenty-nine years of the "Skeptical Inquirer" magazine. (This inclination, perhaps towards "counter-counterarguments" in general, seems to come from when I was a kid and my grandmother kept getting me books about "the unexplained"; instead of being intrigued by intimations of "things I wasn't mean to know," though, I was just terrified by the pictures.) Working my way through them, I happened to notice an approving book review in an issue from 1989 of a book called "High Weirdness by Mail" by the Reverend Ivan Stang, cofounder of the Church of the SubGenius, which offered mailing addresses and capsule descriptions of "strange organizations." Among promises of "Weird Science," "UFO Contactees," "Jesus Contactees," and "New Age Saps," the review also mentioned the book covering "creativity outside the mainstream" and tossed "Japanese animation" right in the middle of that subsection. I admit that caught my attention. Wondering if used copies of the book could be bought online, I started looking into it, and noticed another brief review mention the book covered the perhaps unfortunately named author of a conspiracy I'd written a MSTing of. That added fillip was enough to make me place an order.
( Weirdness within )