You’d think that he’d go with “Theo” instead of “Ted,” though.
I mean, if my given name was Theodore, and I was cultivating a baroque psychosis and delusions of religious grandeur, I would shun the diminutive in favour of the literal Theo. Maybe elaborate it to THEOne when I was feeling manic, or maybe THEOdours (with oblique reference to Revelations 5.)
I like how he accidentally broke one of his own commandments by trimming his beard to much. But no worry, he’s going to photoshop it.
Where are all the sexually adventurous saviors? I want commandments like
Thou shalt not be afraid to let thine wife insert her vibrator into your nether regions.
and
Thou shalt attempt sex on the beach at night at least once.
I don’t mean to spoil anyone’s fun (because the web page * is * funny), but amusing as it is, there has to be a pretty tragic story here. I did a little bit of poking around the net and the guy’s biography checks out – there was a Ted Kurts who had some role at Quest Systems. In the one post I found (from 1993) he was a coherent and articulate senior executive of a software company. To go from successful entrepreneur to homeless schizophrenic is a long way down, but maybe also a frighteningly easy step.
According to the second and third rules, videotaping sex is okay if you have the parties’ consent. But according to the first rule and the last three, it’s never okay to videotape sex, or basically have anything to do with it. Hmmm. It’s like he’s saying, “People named Bruce are evil if their last name is Boxleitner,” and then, “All people named Bruce are evil.”
I sure hope this isn’t the guy that Polycarp thought could’ve been the second coming…
Anyway… I’m terribly disappointed that I’m going to have to scrub my plan to overthrow God. I had troops positioned for storming the Pearly Gates and everything. I even managed to bribe St. Peter into “accidently” leaving the gates unlocked…
And is it really necessary to say “Do not Murder” and “Do not Mass Murder”?
<Devil’s advocate>What if a country has enslaved my people unjustly and keeps them from their homeland? May I not visit it with plagues and slaughter their firstborn?</da>
Finagle, I may be a little bit more cynical than you, but I wouldn’t be nearly so ready to say that the bio “checks out” on the strength of a single archived usenet posting. On the contrary, it seems a bit suspicious to me that that’s apparantly the only posting he’s ever made.
I think it’s very possible that Ted is sort of anti-confidence man, and his site is intended to stir up sympathy for such a wretched creature. It is mirrored in diverse places, and there are always solicitations for donations, either to P.O. boxes or via Paypal, like here, here, here, here, here, and here.
Quest Systems Corp was real enough.
I’m not sure about Quest Systems Ltd, though, which, for the last several years has done nothing but spam and scam usenet, through dodgy e-mail addresses – looking for donations to help a “severely disabled person” become more independent. Sounds familiar. I’d think it might be someone from Quest who really knew such an unfortunate, if they didn’t do things like use phone-billing fleecing on their “contact” numbers, and send out “Make Money Fast!” scams. Maybe there’s no connection at all.
I dunno – he could be a fellow who’s fallen on hard times, or he could be a cynical scammer playing on your sympathies. God knows the “craaaaazy” panhandling routine is a well-established con.