Whew! Made It!

In keeping with my New Year's resolution to update my blog every month, I'm posting this one for March just in time.  Since my goal was two posts a month, I'm pretty much half-assing this resolution so far.  However, I assure you that this entry will not be as half-assed; you can expect the same quality of work as you would from any talented and witty writer looking to beat a deadline.

The big news this month, of course, is the missing Malaysian passenger jet.  Though my blog has a comic slant, far be it from me to poke fun at such a tragedy.  Instead, I'll poke fun at something more deserving: conspiracy theories.

Ever since flight 370 disappeared there's been a flurry of half-baked speculation based on zero evidence that a twelve-year-old writing his own comic book would reject as being too dumb, and that's just the news media coverage.  Neither they nor the authorities really have any idea what they're talking about, which as you might imagine is like handing a conspiracy buff matches, gasoline, and directions to the nearest flammable object (in this case credibility).

Surprisingly, the people floating the conspiracy theories are our friends, family, coworkers, friendly neighbourhood barista, and a whole slew of others that are what is widely considered to be normal.  Even more surprisingly, the theories themselves are just as garden-variety; cyberterrorists, evil corporations, Russia…they sound more like the plot of the next James Bond movie than true conspiracies.  The few crazy theories that are out there are just the same old unoriginal stuff like aliens and time travel.  Where are the true kooks hiding?  Sure there's always reddit, but they can only do so much.  A large percentage of the truly crazy people are just not stepping up here.  Maybe they're all taking their annual vacation to LaLaLand or something.

But I guess when you think about it, conspiracy theories - from the CIA killing Kennedy to 9/11 being an inside job - have largely been about regular people arguing semi-plausible ideas over drinks or Christmas dinner.  Not quite the comedy gold one might expect from this topic.  It seems that all of the outlandish things we see on TV about guys in tinfoil hats rambling on about telepathic squirrels has been greatly exaggerated.  Hollywood has lied to us yet again.  Or is that exactly what they want us to think??