Category: Funny Business

Conspiracy theories are just no fun anymore.

You hear about one today, and it involves some paramilitary cosplayer who believes the government has implanted a chip in his left nostril that tracks his Cheetos consumption. Not only that, the Deep State is plotting to take those Cheetos away.

He joins other paramilitary cosplayers, and the next thing you know you have people hoarding crunchy corn puff snacks and engaging in a violent uprising in the name of “freedom.”

It wasn’t always like this, though. There was a time when conspiracy theories were mostly harmless and, sometimes, even amusing.

The first one I remember vividly involved the moon landing, or rather the “faked” moon landing as the tin foil hat crowd would have you believe.

Yep … according to conspiracy theorists of the day, it was all just an elaborate ruse. There was no trip to the moon, just a trip to a movie studio in California where it was all staged.

It was one small step for man, one giant leap for Orion Pictures.

There was even a history teacher at my high school who was a moon landing denier.

Although it was fun to talk about and inspired a great movie, Capricorn One, I never believed the non-believers – not for a second. The fact that astronauts came back with rocks and not green cheese was proof enough for me. Plus, I watched Walter Cronkite cover the event. Uncle Walter would not lie to me.

And let’s face it – had the landing been faked, the production value would’ve been much better than that grainy, black-and-white stuff we had to look at. And James Arness would’ve played Neil Armstrong.

I guess since we had now traveled to another world it stood to reason that a conspiracy theory involving aliens would pop up. Thus, there were those who believed the government had already made contact with extraterrestrials.

Actually, this conspiracy theory is still very much alive and got a boost a few years back with the infamous “alien autopsy” footage. Supposedly shot at Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947, it was part of a TV special in 1995 hosted by Jonathan Frakes, who played Will Riker, or Number One, on Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Although I’m a Trekker and I want to believe (that’s a Fox Mulder/The X Files easter egg, by the way) this autopsy was basically just a big pile of Number Two. The filmmakers eventually admitted to “recreating” the actual footage, but I doubt seriously there was any actual footage to begin with.

Anybody with walking around sense knows that surgical instruments manufactured on earth cannot pierce the skin of alien life forms; only special alloys made by a race of robots hailing from the planet Vortek can do that.

And remember the discovery of mermaids? Not Daryl Hannah, who played a mermaid in Splash, or the Little Mermaid, who played a mermaid in, well, The Little Mermaid, but that weird looking thing shown in Mermaids: The Body Found. It was a mockumentary, but presented in such a way that it was easy to think the filmmakers were serious.

And let’s face it … millions of people are – how can I put this delicately – stupid, so it doesn’t take much to make imbeciles buy into nonsense.

Frankly, I was never one to believe mermaids roamed the sea. The bottom half of the body being fish-like and the top half being humanoid makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. A real mermaid would have a fish-like top half and humanoid bottom half. Otherwise, how could they breathe underwater?

Myth-makers need to do a better job of thinking these things through.

Of course, there have been all sorts of conspiracy theories over the years, ranging from Bigfoot to Elvis Presley faking his death to chemtrails to Batman and Robin being a good movie.

All enjoyable to talk about, but all completely absurd.

Regardless, I miss the days when we could yuk it up over silly speculation. After all, idiocy can be amusing – right up until people start believing the government is after their Cheetos.

This might come as a bit of a shock, but I was never what you’d call an “Adonis.” Short, bespectacled and built like a chimpanzee with truncated arms, I had to rely on my sense of humor and extensive knowledge of Batman mythology to get dates.

Still, I always tried to look my best.

For a time, I attempted to wear contact lenses, but even the soft ones irritated my eyes. I had trouble focusing and blinked like Joel Osteen watching the collection plates being passed around.

Then I settled on cool eyeglasses. Not Elton John cool, but specs that tended to highlight my big brown eyes and chipmunk cheeks and distract from my ape-like physique. I looked a bit like the dude who fronted the Buggles.

And of course, my hairstyles have been all over the map.

There was the Keith Partridge look, the butt-cut – even a modified mullet at one point in the 1980s. I didn’t adopt a short style until I went through a two decades-long Clark Kent phase.

But now that I’ve reached the age where the only dates I’m interested in getting are the ones high in fiber, vanity shouldn’t be that big a deal.

But it still kind of is.

For example, I went years without paying much attention to my eyebrows, and then one morning I woke up and looked like Mr. McBeevee. If you don’t know who Mr. McBeevee is, he was a character played by Karl Swenson on an episode of “The Andy Griffith Show.” Dude had some wild-ass brows that seemed to take off in several different directions. They were like tiny Medusa snakes.

Anyway, I now find myself having to trim my brows at least twice a week because if not, it looks like a pair of caterpillars are taking naps above my eyes.

And as for hair, I prefer wearing it kinda long but it’s thinning on my crown. I’m afraid if I don’t so something soon, I’ll look like the monks of old – or even the Monks of the 1960s (their song Monk Time is way ahead of it’s time, by the way).

A quick fix would be to shave my noggin, but that’s not a real option for me. A lot of people look really good bald, but you have to have the right head shape.

I do not have the right head shape.

If I opted to shear off my locks I’d look like Lex Luthor. Well, maybe not so much Lex Luthor as his less attractive brother, Lenny Luthor, who runs a small booth at the outlet mall where he sells cubic zirconia Kryptonite.

So, I’ve decided to try a topical hair growth treatment. It’s actually working because one of the early signs of regrowth is what appears to be peach fuzz, and it’s popping up on and around the crown.

If leaves appear I’ll probably discontinue use of the product, but I might see how they look first.

Finally, staying in shape is a chore when you get older.

I’m happy that my weight is basically where it’s supposed to be compared to my height, but under no circumstance would I go shirtless – even at the beach.

I never was one to show off my pecs (or even my bushels), but unless you have personal trainers and really good genes, time has a way of making your chest and torso look weird. I give myself the once-over in a mirror and just seem formless and uncooked.

And in my case, there’s that whole ape shape I have to deal with.

If I was running shirtless in a park, the first kid who saw me would shout, “Mama … look at the pink monkey. Can I feed it?”

Fortunately, my darling person loves me the way I am, which is a good thing because I can only do so much about the way I look. So even if I have bushy eyebrows, a bare crown and a chest and stomach that looks like it has just been poured out of a can, it really wouldn’t matter.

Besides, I think she truly enjoys watching me peel bananas and pick things off her head.

A while back we were doing some purging and downsizing, so it seemed like a good time to donate items to a local thrift store. This particular organization was in need of everything from clothes to working appliances to household furnishings, and among other things we had shirts, dresses and a decent toaster to pass along.

The big-ticket items, though, were a couple of area rugs we decided to part with.

Both were in good shape – although we’d had them for a few years – but in our current domicile they simply didn’t fit. So, we rolled them up and left them out for pickup along with the more traditional donations.

Well, the clothes and toaster were picked up immediately, but the rugs were left behind.

Not only that, there was a note attached to them: “We are unable to use these as there are signs of animal activity.”

I found this message rather cryptic. I mean, what kind of activities do they think my animals have been engaging in?

Are these activities specific to the rugs?

Should I be concerned?

As you might know we have two dogs (Charlie and Steve) and two cats (Bane and Thor), and more often than not they’re in the same room with us. But when we sleep, we don’t know with any degree of certainty what they might be doing, so this is probably when they were engaging in activities on the rug.

What were they doing, I wondered?

They enjoy playing 5 Card Stud, but that’s usually done at the dining room table. I can’t count the times I’ve had to get up in the middle of the night and tell Steve to put his cigar out.

Maybe they were using the Ouija Board. Both Bane and Thor have a fascination with the occult – it’s a cat thing – and there have been several times they’ve roped Charlie into playing with them.

Ever since they held a séance and scared him, though, he’s pretty much stayed away from the dark arts.

Twister? Yeah, a rug is probably a good place to put down the Twister mat, especially since it would probably slide around on the hardwood floors.

But we don’t have a Twister game in the house and the only animal that could’ve bought one is Steve. However, once we found out he’d subscribed to a pair of Chihuahua swinger sites, we took his credit card away. (He’s six now and old enough to make his own decisions, but not with our money).

Frankly, we were at a loss until we studied the note a bit closer. It did say there were “signs” of animal activity.

Did the signs come in the form of a vision?

Had they been foretold in quatrains written by Nostradamus … or in this case, Nostradogus?

A canine eats new food

Yet his stomach hits a snag

An ingredient causes stress

Now his itchy butt will drag

Perhaps one or more of our critters had left a coded message that the thrift shop workers could see but we could not. I suppose they might have one of those ultraviolet light instruments that are used during crime scene investigations. Although invisible to the naked eye, they shine it on the rug and reveal such phrases as, “This is where Bane peed,” “This is where Charlie pooped,” “This is where Thor barfed,” and “This is where Steve spilled his high gravity beer.”

Truth is, we might never really know what kind of activity was so egregious that our used (yet still quite functional) rugs were passed over.

However, there is a bright side.

I have since moved the rugs to the large storage area attached to our garage, where they now have new life decorating the floor. And considering our animals have never been to that area of our property, then the area rugs should be free from their activity going forward.

Unless, of course, Steve learns the code to the garage door opener.

Then all bets are off.