The recently-featured classic article on the origin of the Paisley pattern is everything we’ve come to expect from a Straight Dope column, but it neglected to mention one thing. Paisley is, apparently, EVIL: http://www.demonbuster.com/paisley.html (warning: bad background MIDI)
ummmmm… wow <boggle>
<wanders off bemused>
Weird and puzzling. I thought at first the essay was too far-fetched to be serious, but it’s too labored to be funny. It exhibits the sort of reasoning typical of mania or amphetamine abuse. I guess it just goes to show there’s literally nothing that can’t be found on the Web, if you look in all the odd corners.
Almost 4 milion hits on the counter? If that’s true, that’s the scariest part of the page.
Welcome to the SDMB, strathclyde.
When you comment on one of Cecil’s online columns, it is appreciated if you could provide a link to the same. Doing so can be as simple as pasting the URL into your post, making sure to leave a blank space on either side of it. Like so: http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_021a.html
I also question what Cecil said about the original paisley being based on either the cashew fruit or the pine cone. I believe the inspiration came from India itself – the mango. Anyone who has seen a mango in profile will notice that it is curved like a comma. Furthermore, in Hindi, the term for the paisley design (which is indeed a common motif in shawls and other media) is the ‘ambi’ desgin. Ambi is also the HIndi term used to describe small, unripe green mangoes (‘aam’ is the term for a ripe mango).
Aside from ending the conspiratorial silence on the evils of Demonic Paisley (saw these guys open for Motorhead once in '86; they rocked!), this is also a site unfraid to end a diabtribe with the most important of all questions:
“DO YOU NEED SKIN CARE PRODUCTS?”
I have read in several different books (all of which may be quoting the same source, which may of course be wrong) that the origin of the Paisley emblem is a curled palm frond.
Apparently the demonbuster is trying for that heavenly Mary Kay pink Cadillac.
Darn, I was hoping there would be more detail about the Paisley/Catholicism connection.
… especially odd considering Ian Paisley!
The conspiracy must be vast… :rolleyes:
My reaction to the MIDI was the same … and then, I came across this paragraph on the main page -
“If you can hear the “Oh the Blood of Jesus” midi file, and it gets under your skin, don’t turn your speakers off. The demons absolutely hate this song or any song that is about the Blood of Jesus. The more this bothers you, the more demon infested you are. You actually could get some Deliverance by having this tune play in the background, and some demons may actually leave your home or apartment too. Tape the song and play it in your home over and over.”
So … the more this droning Hammond-by-cellphone noise bothers me, the more demon-infested I am? Must be severely crowded in there … But, if the solution is to “tape the song and play it in [my] home over and over,” well, it’s a cure-is-worse-than-the-disease issue for me.
Clay
Welcome, Strathclyde - another from the U.K. side of the pond? Join up - we’ll stage a takeover of the SDMB yet. :). I’m glad you posted that - I had seen it before but I had forgotten all about it. Like others here, I found it really hard to believe it isn’t a spoof site.
Of course, I see that Crandolph has been reading my mind re. the Ian Paisley/Catholicism idea. Rats, foiled again. I’ll never get any points for comic timing.
It does occur to me, though, that Paisley, by which I mean the town, or city or whatever it is these days, never seems to hit the news for anything GOOD. It just might be evil: how are we to know? 
Jesus drives a Cadillac, and so should you.
Ah, but the pagans are standing up to the evangelical onslaught:
http://www.witchvox.com/va/dt_va.html?a=cabc&c=whs&id=6207
Perhaps the end is nigh after all…
David