Magic to clean up Great Pacific Garbage Dump?

An individual using the alias "Rumplestiltskin" claims to be removing tons of plastic garbage floating in the North Pacific Gyre.

According to an e-mail sent directly to this blog, Rumplestiltskin possesses a magical object, a chantment, that extracts pollution from seawater without damaging marine plant or animal life. According to Rumplestiltskin, the object, a baby's teething ring, was a 'gift' and came with written instructions on how to use it safely.

"Nothing on the materials provided says whether this object came to me from Sahara Knax and the Alchemites, but I am not a believer in the Alchemite cult," writes Rumplestiltskin, who added that some of the plastic is being burned in a home-built generator to provide power for their effort to clean the ocean.

The North Pacific Gyre is located in the Northern Pacific Ocean and is reputed to be heavily polluted with small particles of plastic garbage, over an area twice as big as the State of Texas.

Rumplestiltskin is not the first chantment user to claim to have successfully turned ordinary electricity into power for magical objects, a claim that has yet to be verified. The proposition that people use some form of recitation, sometimes referred to as "cantation," to channel power into their mystical objects is becoming widely accepted. Cantations have been said to allow mystics to draw power from their surroundings: including the life energy of nearby animals and people. This last procedure, known as vamping, has been used to deadly effect by Alchemites in their clashes with law enforcement.

The fact that magic requires energy has been well-documented, and in one well-publicized experiment, physicist Ravi Sharp has shown that a candle and a light-generating chantment use the same amounts of energy to produce comparable amounts of light. Sharp argues that this implies that magic cannot be used to simply reverse climate change and other devastating effects of human habitation on earth. This runs strongly contrary to claims made by Sahara Knax and her followers.

"If the power requirements are comparable, we will still need fossil fuels to accomplish large-scale effects, just as we would through the use of technology. This implies that using magic to combat pollution might simply beget more pollution."

In a related story, Sharp went missing from his home in Brooklyn, New York, two weeks ago.

Rumplestiltskin's e-mail message includes a call for a volunteer video-blogger and a marine biologist to witness and document the use of the magical teething ring. The e-mail message promises future communications, including a schematic of the power generator and information about the cantation used to turn electricity into magical energy.

The Canadian and U.S. Coast Guard have statements to the effect that individuals caught using magic in coastal waters will be arrested and prosecuted under the increasingly strict anti-mystical laws.

Missing officers said to be "caught in dreams"

By now, hundreds of missing U.S. soldiers, police officers and National Guardsmen have appeared in the dreams of their family members, lovers and close friends. Though there is no way to conclusively prove that these people remain alive, a number have been able to provide answers to "third-party" questions from loved ones.

"Essentially a third-party question is something only the missing party and one other person would know," says Jules Mayfern, a 2nd year psychology student at the University of Alberta who pioneered the questioning technique. "My brother, for example, went missing in December and I wrote down two questions for my parents to ask. They gave me a question as well."

"Neither of my parents knew the answer to my questions, but my brother did. So, six weeks later, my father was able to ask Del for a 'secret code' we'd exchanged as kids. When he woke up, he contacted me and I was able to confirm he'd gotten the answer right."

The widespread success of this questioning technique has led many to assume that Alchemite activists have been truthful when they say these so-called 'prisoners of war' have not been harmed, but merely trapped in dreams. There has been no response to calls for the Alchemites to prove the imprisonment can be reversed. The cult's spokesperson, Passion, has declined to comment on a growing number of reporters, anti-Alchemite bloggers and former members of the group who have also been similarly trapped.

Mystical activity on the rise outside U.S.

Quiet rumors of magic-wielding "do-gooders" are continuing to circulate among the blogosphere, coming from every nation on earth and giving rise to speculation that the Alchemite Cult is far from down and out, as authorities have claimed.

Some reports will no doubt prove to be hoaxes, but claims have been made about people with chantments working miracles of every type and description--erecting shelters in flooded areas, combating or curing diseases from cholera to malaria, extinguishing forest fires, fixing broken toys, repairing roads and solving crimes.

As yet, none of these alleged Alchemites has come forward to take credit for their actions, and the cult's spokeswoman, Passion, will only say that the hand of their imprisoned goddess, Sahara Knax, can be found wherever you seek.

Within the United States, Alchemite gangs have continued to clash with police and the National Guard, most recently in Selma, Alabama where ten Guardsmen are reported missing. One Alchemite, Jemmy Burlein, was captured in the skirmish.

As far as anyone knows, Astrid Lethewood remains alive and at large.

Since Sahara Knax was captured in a failed attack on a military base in Northwestern Oregon, a series of mysterious technical glitches have prevented me from posting to this blog. I'm back now, and here's a few of the news stories I'm tracking as the mystical outbreak continues--

• In the weeks since Knax's arrest, there have been several major clashes between Alchemites, various police forces, the National Guard, and the actual Army. The skirmishes have taken place across the country. A half-dozen Alchemites have been captured in these clashes; over thirty police officers and soldiers are rumored to be MIA, but the government has declined to confirm this.
• Those same missing soldiers, it is rumored, have turned up in the dreams of their friends and loved ones, apparently safe and sound. (No official confirmation on that either, but the phenomenon's pretty widespread.)
  
• In the absence of Sahara Knax, the leader of the Alchemites still at large seems to be a woman known as Passion. Little is known about Passion, but a two million dollar reward for information leading to her arrest has nevertheless been posted.
• As even the mainstream media has reported, the mystical contamination in Oregon has spread radically, and three more towns in the Indigo Springs / Great Blue Reservoir region have been evacuated.
• The mystical celebrity known as Patience has not been seen since Sahara Knax was arrested. It has been rumored that Patience may have left government custody, and that perhaps Astrid Lethewood has escaped, too. Again, nobody in a position of authority seems willing to confirm or deny this.
• What the government is willing to tell us is that Sahara Knax will be facing charges of terrorism, assault and treason in Federal Court as soon as a facility can be secured in which to hold a trial.

Signal lost...

Followers of this blog will note it hasn't been active for a few weeks--ever since the Alchemites sank that aircraft carrier a month ago, I've had a host of problems logging on and posting. Alchemite interference? Government tampering? Nobody wants to be paranoid, but those of us trying to cover the mystical outbreak do seem to be having a lot of computer problems lately.

I'm hoping to resume full coverage shortly; in the meantime, here's a contest for you all.

Mystical outbreak changes the weather?

A cold snap and storm in the Midwest may have been triggered by the largest clash to date between authorities and followers sheltering fugitive Sahara Knax.

The Alchemites, as they call themselves, were apparently ransacking the home of a Huron, South Dakota resident when representatives of a new anti-mystical task force arrived on scene to take Knax into custody.

Video shot by the homeowner shows Knax emerging from the house with an object in hand--from all appearances, a child's hobby horse--while reciting gibberish. Moments later, portions of the equipment carried by task force members, including their weapons and restraints, appears to fall apart in segments.

The video also shows fog pooling around Knax and her followers and moving outward from them at increasing speed before it ends abruptly.

Metal objects in a five mile radius around the scene have been sliced to pieces and freezing temperatures are being reported in the Huron area. A serious and unexpected windstorm is raging in the region.

Police injured in clash with Alchemites

(DENVER) Three police officers were rushed to hospital after an attempt to arrest eco-terrorist Sahara Knax at a local casino went awry late last night.

Sources at St. Anthony Central Hospital say that the officers were not shot and are not suffering from mystical contamination. Instead, their condition has been likened to a severe form of either clinical exhaustion or, perhaps, exposure.

The Denver Police Department has yet to make an official statement about the incident, or to respond to critics who state that too few officers were sent to investigate the sighting by a casino blackjack dealer. However, law enforcement officials have been saying for weeks that sightings of Knax have become so routine across both the United States and Canada that few police departments have resources available to respond in force to every sighting.

"Knax was thought to be in the Southern U.S., possibly Georgia, this week," said Mary Freiling. Freiling--along with other self-appointed 'mystic watchers'--decode blog entries and Twitter feeds posted by suspected followers of Knax. "Nobody knew the Alchemites were in Colorado. So many people have cried 'wolf' with regard to seeing her that the police couldn't have expected this call, of all the calls they've had, to be the real thing."

Freiling also pointed to anecdotal reports of other Alchemite enemies falling ill of exposure or exhaustion in the wake of magical events. "The general theory is that they are vamping the life energy out of their victims to power the magic that's destroying the property of these corporate targets."

The injured police officers' names have not been released to the public and their condition is unknown. The Denver Police Department is expected to make a statement about the alleged clash tomorrow morning.