The Best Hraka Around
You just can’t get good testicles these days.
Fisher keeps a supply of frozen bull testicles on hand, to fry up for customers who drop by after the festival is over. They look like chicken nuggets but they do not taste like chicken nuggets. A deep-fried frozen bull testicle tastes like the Brooks leather bike saddle this reporter has been straddling for two weeks on a Seattle-to-Washington, D.C., ride for charity with 39 other cyclists.
“Told you so,” said Zeier.
Update: Pig testicles!
Whatever else happens in your life, just thank God that you don’t have to go to the beach in New Jersey.
There cannot be a grassy knoll if there is no grass.
It is no coincidence that people who smoke a lot of marijuana, or take other paranoia-inducing drugs tend to be big followers of conspiracy theories. These people are not clinically insane, or mentally ill, but they are showing symptoms.
People who smoke a lot of marijuana also tend to be big followers of Doritos, Squidbillies, or whatever else happens to occupy their attention for a moment. If they seem somewhat overly immersed in the subject at hand, that’s pretty typical, but whatever grand themes they happen upon during their voyage of discovery tend to be evanescent ones, vanishing in the bright light of the next day’s sobriety.
Conspiracy theories are popular because when you get right down to it, people love a good story. Conspiracy theories make for wonderful stories. Their very nature forces them to be. No one’s going to pay attention to an alternate version of events if it’s more boring that the original.
Quick, which is more interesting?
1.) “Maude, globalized businesses are subverting the government in order to hand it over to the U.N.!”
2.) “Maude, globalized businesses are petitioning the IRS in order to increase 4th quarter profits!”
Conspiracy theories depend upon the human predilection for discovering patterns where none exist, known as the Clustering Illusion.
Since according to a branch of mathematics known as Ramsey Theory complete mathematical disorder in any physical system is an impossibility, it may be more correct to state, however, that the clustering illusion refers to the natural human tendency to associate some meaning to certain types of patterns which must inevitably appear in any large enough data set.
Conspiracy theories first came into vogue during the 18th century–not coincidentally at the same time that the first truly mass media began to appear.
Whereas the older plots were usually localized (and often genuine), reflecting a face-to-face world in which public life was controlled by the actions of powerful individuals, the newer variants tended to be open-ended and elusive in their aims. Titillating, consoling, and disturbing all at once, these were accounts well-suited to the newly expanding print culture of the 18th century, which brought together formerly isolated groups into virtual communities of opinion now sharing the same newspapers, novels, placards, and pamphlets.
Not only were the newspapers and pamphlets of the time ideally suited when it came to spreading conspiracy theories, they were integral to the creation of new ones, in that thanks to the new media, there was a larger data set with which to work with. People were exposed to a greater and more varied set of information than ever before, and true to their nature, they detected new patterns, “patterns which must inevitably appear in any large enough data set.” Once a pattern was perceived, a meaning was ascribed to it, and a conspiracy theory–or other story, they need not all be a production of paranoia–was born.
Now, thanks to the Internet as well as other advances in communication, there’s once again a relatively new, incredibly large pool of information available for us to practice our pattern recognition skills on. Consequently, conspiracy theories should pop up more often than ever, on an ever greater variety of subjects.
Of course, that doesn’t mean that some of them won’t be ludicrous.
