I love myself a good cult story,  I've talked about that before , and so I found myself watching a documentary series on the Jonestown Massacre. I've read and watched a lot of material on Jonestown over the years and I've come to a formal conclusion: Jim Jones was an unsavory character. As controversial an opinion as that may be, it's the truth. Like all good cult leaders, Jim Jones started out as a creepy kid. He held elaborate funerals for roadkill. I know that this was in like the 30s, but a red flag should have been raised right then and there. Sane people don't do anything with roadkill except scoop it up with a shovel and fling it into their neighbor's yard. Still, no one said anything and that lead to ol' Jonesy starting one of the first integrated churches in Indiana, before moving to California. I've heard California referred to as "The Land Of Fruit And Nuts" so maybe Jim Jones drank the Kool-Aid with which he has become synon...

I'm four episodes in to Netflix's docu-series Wild, Wild Country (two Netflix related blogs in a row. Can you tell that I just graduated college and need a job?) which tells the story of the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and his followers as they build a commune in Oregon and get into all sorts of wacky trouble. As I was watching, I was struck by how thousands of people were able to blindly follow one man. It's been seen countless times throughout history, a leader creates a following who will do anything for them, good or bad. That's when it dawned on me that I could never start a cult. Not because I don't think it would be kind of cool for a little bit, until the strong arm of the law comes down because my followers were stirring up trouble. It's because I'm missing something that all cult leaders have had in spades. What did the all have in common? Charisma. I can tell that some of you may have just thought, Aw, poor guy is too hard on himself. Nope....