As a writer whose primary focus has been San Diego it’s hard for me to ignore the Heaven’s Gate UFO religious cult that performed mass suicide in the late ’90s. Working on some local stories recently I was reminded of them. Damn, I love these guys. I’m always curious as to how someone can convince another person to get dressed up as the point guard of a prison-camp basketball team, tuck under a purple curtain in a bunkbed, and ziptie a plastic bag to his head with 37 other people. I finally found my answer. Here is Marshall Applewhite’s incredibly convincing initiation video. After watching this whackadoo ramble on about how he became the reincarnation of Jesus sometime “in the early ’70s,” and how someone named “Tiendo” (whoever the fuck that is) “returned to the heavens in 1985,” wouldn’t you just snap open a pen and say, “Where do I sign up?”