By: Annna
[2001-04-09]
Two and a Half All-New Conspiracy Theories
as far as I know, these are original
Recycling.
A shadowy faction of the government (or maybe just the Masons) invented and/or encouraged paper recycling to make it more pleasant to dig through people's trash for evidence. It's much nicer to look through a bag of receipts and letters when you don't have to worry about running into rotten fruit or hairballs. Why didn't they make recycling
mandatory, then? Simple: they don't give a damn what the average, patriotic American writes down.
So now that recycling is established as a possibility, and what an earth-friendly person should do, they subtly make it harder and portray it in sit-coms as "out there." This ensures that only leftist hippie freaks, the ones the agency wants to keep an eye on, will separate their paper from the rest of their trash. A bag of paper to be recycled will thus be as rich with subversion as possible, saving our tax dollars and hours of spypower.
Soda pop.
Soda pop is caffeinated, not out of concern for taste but to make it addictive and popular. The government doesn't regulate this caffeine like it has all other recreational drugs. Most diet soda tastes awful, keeping people drinking the regular, sugary pop, but even diet soda still contains acid to rot drinkers' teeth.
Paranoid atheists, patriotic fundamentalist Christians, wild-eyed and wild-haired anarchists, nobody wants national identification tattoos. But what is even more permanent, and can be used to identify even a skinless skeleton (or perhaps an X-ray)? Dental work!
Hats.
The increasing popularity of baseball caps worn backwards can mean only one thing: the receiver in the dish-like brim is more effective in the back, aligned with the pineal gland, than in the front. By collecting cosmic rays and stimulating the pineal gland to grow, while keeping the head from expanding with its tight band, the cap drives the wearer slowly insane. Subtle variations in broadcast tones teach the victim to channel his mania into drinking beer and watching athletic competitions.
The flaw in this theory is that the regular gimmie caps, worn brim-forward, don't seem to have done much to the tractor-driving demographic.
The farmer hats, the one's that say "Redman," "John Deere," or "Caterpillar," and also the red or blue ones with white polka-dots
that are often worn by the Sweede farmers, have special farmer homing chips in them that cause the farmers to drive humongous $300,000 four-wheel drive air-conditioned tractors to Washington periodically and drive in circles around the White House for a couple of days,
then vote Republican.
Where I'm living (Guelph, ON) our garbage system is separated as Wet/Dry... practically anything that isn't food or household hazardous waste or sticky/slimy/gooey/whatever goes to the recycling centre to get sorted and a small bag of food waste goes to landfill.
For those who choose not to obey the sorting system, we are required to use translucent bags and the garbage peeps refuse any bag that has both 'wet' and 'dry' in it.
For living in a town that's kinda well known for having lots of environmental hippie types it seems kinda funny that the people who are the laziest with the system are the students, mind you... there are no hippes. There are only fake hippies. Fake hippies wear birkenstocks made out of indian leather and say they're vegetarian but eat chicken mcNugget.... wait stop!
sorry... I guess when I have a lot of work to do I like to rant mindlessly on random forums. thanks brain.
Using twice the amount of plastic garbage bags so they can recycle paper.
Well, they aren't made out of very thick material, so I imagine it'd work out to a gain anyway.
I had a dream once where it was the horrible horrible future, and people had to go to the landfill and paw through old garbage, doing the sorting that their ancestors had once disdained. On the positive side, we all got cool Devoiod jumpsuits, color-coded by rank and job. On the negative side, it smelled horrible.
Also there were bears.
Sometimes, the smaller plastic shopping bags will blow into the treetops where they will stay for a long time. Some guy even invented a lightweight long-handled thing with a kind of hand to remove the bags from the trees. So, bags escaping must really bother some people,
and probably involves some sort of conspiracy. I often see balloons escaping, too. Sometimes whole bunches of them in a a mad dash skyward
to freedom. Sometimes, it's a lone hi-o silver balloon. Once I found an expired balloon in a field with a message attached, evidently a school project, so water-logged it was hard to read.
sometimes, reading your comments reminds me of the works of Mark Leyner. there are others that have this effect moreso than the last one, but I'd been meaning to mention this for a while and you just now jogged my memory.
Yeah, thanks, I guess that I coulsd do worse! I've not read his stuff, but I will. Funny, his picture looks like my bud, Butch from Maple Shade!
"Three years ago in Hempstead, N.Y. where I was doing research in low-temperature physics, I had an experience with survey-takers. A couple appeared at my door one evening, with sheafs of questions.
The second I let them in, the gentleman flew to the metallic globe I kept on my coffee table. The young lady was sweet and self-effacing and beguiling. But it was ridiculously beautiful the way he brandished
the globe above his head as if to whack himself with a would-you-like-a-punch-in-the-nose attitude -- his cerebral hemispheres parting like red seas, like masses yearning to be free, revealing down the center of his head, a black-top shuffleboard court with miniature retired people on it."
?From I Smell Esther Williams
http://home1.gte.net/willum/leyner.htm
Oh, yeah! I found the car-bomb bit from, "My Cousin, the Gastroenterologist," yeah, I *have* read that before, where the guy wires the car, gets in, and blows himself up, several times. He's funny, in a salty/slapstick kind of way. I dunno where he's from, but I'm sure he'd feel at home at the Phily Diner.
or something along those lines. that used to be my litmus test for people in high school; I'd have them read it and if they went, "that's stupid. he died the first time the car exploded," I would still talk to them, but I wouldn't try to discuss art/lit/music anymore.
the thing most people know him for is the story "I Was an Infinitely Hot and Dense Dot," part of which was animated and featured on MTV's old Liquid Television.
The first time that I read that bit, it reminded me of "Cadillac Flambé," by Ralph Ellison, but I think that was just the exploding car part. I just noticed that my glasses and the computer screen are smudged in such a way that at one angle, everything is obscured and at another angle everything is perfectly clear. There was a local band giving an outdoor concert, they were playing normal music. A bunch of freaks with a petite Puerto Rican Borenquiña chick singing lead. They launched into Sonny Rollins' "St. Thomas," and everybody's jaws dropped. The melody has a very irregular rhythm, they played it tight.
It wasn't what people were used to, or what they were expecting, but...
that's the sort of thing I'm talking about. I can't tell if that's a non-sequitur of yours, a Leyner fragment I have forgotten or never read, or this Ralph Ellison fellow you mentioned.
then again, I can be pretty dense.
People look for the rhythms in life's tapestry, but often the back-weave is more interesting than the front through no intent.
It's got a back-beat, you can't lose it. Hah! I wish that I were entirely unpredictable, but it's pretty much knit one, pearl two,
this sweater has too many arms, and those too long.
I wanna hear more about those glasses of yours!
The smudgey glasses reminded me of a moonstone ring that I once had,
a cabachon set in silver filigre. It appeared to be cloudy, but at one specific angle, it was as clear as crystal. I'm sure that the Armenian jeweler had noticed it, and set the stone for that effect, but he did not mention it, leaving it for a later suprise. As far as non sequiturs, there are associational patterns and ideational chains that
are more like a montage unique to individual experience, some forming a ground/field gestalt with univeral common experience. They are only a cheap pair of Dollar Store reading magnifiers, but I have funny eyebrows that tend to sprout horns which stick up over the black plastic frames, and kind of Devo effect that I don't discourage.
HURR? WHAT?? do you even know any farmers, mr foreign name person? farmers vote democrat. they still think that the democrats are for the little people, something to do with the depression and unions and crap like that. I know tons of farmers, and despite their rampant racism and love for beer and nascar those fuckers wouldn't vote republican even if you were able to convince them that republicans are not robots wanting to eat their old people medicine.
I like that she didn't mention the tractor pilgrimage to Washington. that one must be true.
King... Anna... be careful with these conspiracy things. there's nothing so outlandish at least someone won't believe it, and as you see, not everyone gets subtlety.
actually, no, don't be careful. come up with more. they may serve as decoys for the Cult of the OctOrb's efforts to kill Bob Dole before he successfully gets Americans on Viagra, which gives them the ability to see the OctOrbian priests as they fly on their inviso-cycles through the night sky, and once they can, the priests will find it much more difficult to telepathically suggest that people go bowling more, which gives the OctOrb Orbgasms. if it does not have several OrbGasms per minute, it decreases notably in size and puissance.
but perhaps I've said too much...
cooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooolllllllllll Aaaaaaaaaaaaaassssssssssssss hhhhhhhheeeeeeeeeeeellllllllllllllllllllll!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
