“What do you mean, like a trained monkey that could do tricks?” Stevebob was a little taken aback by such an obviously humorous suggestion, although he didn’t understand the joke. There must definitely be a joke in there somewhere. Maybe George W. Bush was really airline food?

Alice continued her craziness. “No, like actually intelligent and capable of higher-level thought. Like a human being, with at least an average IQ.”

Stevebob sat there in stunned silence. His mouth was probably hanging wide open, but he wasn’t going to spend precious brain cycles dealing with all of those mouth muscles to correct that right now. There were more important things to think about.

How would any of this make sense? This didn’t seem possible. A secretly competent Dubya would mean that the entire eight year double term was some kind of gigantic practical joke on the American public. No, on the entire planet. Or did it go beyond practical joke, to the land of crazy conspiracy theories? Was this the smoking chemtrail gun of 2010? If George W. Bush was a competent president, what else could be true? Is Sarah Palin a shrewd political mastermind? Is KFC’s Double Down sandwich the healthiest meal in the entire culinary history of the United States of America? Is Greg Giraldo still alive and living in a bunker in South Dakota, ready to be unleashed on all of America’s enemies, both foreign and domestic, in vicious roast form?

Stevebob’s entire worldview was under attack. He responded the only way he knew how. He modified his brain’s internal wiring so that Alice no longer existed to him. Whenever he did this he was never sure if the victim actually disappeared in the real world, or if his brain simply refused to acknowledge their existence. The difference was academic to Stevebob, of course, because the end result was the same. But he always had that moment of existential uncertainty — was he a God, able to disappear anyone simply through his power of will?

He sat alone in the room and contemplated his powers.

After doing some research and reading many police reports concerning these incidents, it appears that the agnostic dilution most often occurs when people find mysterious lumps in their pillows and start attributing those to a God-like being that lives in their pantry and put miniature whales into their pillows while they’re asleep. Or, sometimes (approximately 17% of the time), miniature lithographs of whales rather than miniature actual whales.

From the pantry dwellers to a belief in a God-like being that lives in the sky is just a short mental leap that most of them are still able to make. At this point they are completely convinced and quoting Christian Rock lyrics in all of their e-mails.

What causes the whaleish lumps in their pillows? I wish I knew. All of the known lumpy pillows had been destroyed or removed from the victims’ houses before an objective assessment could be performed on them.

I hate to call this a God conspiracy, because I think conspiracy theories are the work of Communists and clowns, and I hate to get involved with either group. However, I can find no other reasonable explanation. Therefore, I’m going to have to go with the theory of a vast conspiracy involving God, whales, pillow manufacturers, and pillow cleaners.

That brings up another question, namely why these groups all want to change so many people in this way. That will have to be a topic for another investigation. If anyone has any theories, please leave them below. I just wanted to get this out there before they realize that I’m on to them and start coming after me.

The truth is out there people, at least it is now that I’ve put it out there. Do not squander such lovingly bestowed truth and return to an unexamined life of mullets and flugelhorns. That is exactly what the Gods would want you to do. No, I want you to question your pillow cleaners. Not obviously, of course, but subtly. Don’t let them realize that you know what they’re doing.

If you see a whale in the street where there shouldn’t be one, don’t immediately raise a ruckus and throw your keys at it. Just keep watching it out of the corner of your eye, and immediately report any suspicious whale behavior to a professional. If you don’t know a professional, you can report the behavior in the comment form below. I can’t guarantee that I’ll be able to give it all the attention that a legitimate suspicious whale spotting deserves, but I can certainly do what I can.

Be safe out there.

We even use the numbers in every day conversation:

“Hey, what channel is the Cartoon Network here?”

“Oh, that’s channel 49.”

See how that worked? 49. It’s a number that’s assigned to a channel on your television. Don’t you think that’s a little weird?

No? You’re not seeing it?

Check out the CIA. They use numbers to reach their employees. “Phone numbers” in this case, and they have more digits than television channel numbers, but they are still numbers.

I know that the “you guys are all conspiracy nuts” crowd will try to make it seem like it’s just a coincidence, like it doesn’t mean that the CIA is controlling our televisions just because they both use numbers. Well, to those people, all I can say is, “WAKE UP!”

Seriously. Wake up, people. Numbers. Used by both. What are the chances of that happening naturally if there wasn’t some vast CIA-controlled TV conspiracy? Oh, only about 5 billion to one, that’s all. Still think there’s nothing fishy going on? Yeah, that’s what they said about pennies back in the 80′s, and we all know howthat turned out.

I rest my case. Throw out your televisions, or find a way to remove the number part of the set. Until you do that, the CIA will be in your living room. Maybe even in your bedroom. Wherever there’s a TV, there they are. Scared yet? You should be. I know I am.

• Red: 10
• Green: 6
• Purple: 1!!
• Blue: 8
• Lilac: 0
• Burnt Sienna: 6

Does that seem fair and equitable? Does that seem like we got our money’s worth? No! Of course not!

Everyone I’ve complained about this to so far has attributed it to the general randomness of life, with a smattering of chaos theory thrown in here and there. But I don’t buy that. I think it’s all a conspiracy theory to keep us working class Skittles eaters down. The Skittles “Man” doesn’t want us to become brilliant by eating the lilac Skittles, because we’d be too much of a threat to their precious power structure.

Well, let’s see how you react to this information being put out here on this here electronic thingy for everyone to see! Huh? How do you like it now, Mr. Skittles Man? Bet it burns. Bet it stings. Bet it makes your teeth grow to an uncomfortable size while your toothbrush stays the same size. Yeah, know you know what it’s like for those of us who live our whole lives this way.

Please join me in painting all Skittles to be lilac-colored. That’s the only way we can show them, by hitting them where it hurts. No, not their hideously oversized teeth. I’m talking about their food coloring budget. Yeah, you heard me. I’m keeping it real, yo.

Say NO! Resist Big Brother! Burn your cell phone!

Do you really think there’s some way they can let you talk to somebody miles away, without any wires connecting you? Think about it for a second. There, did you think about it? Is there any possible way for that to actually work? No, of course not. It’s all done with pre-recorded messages, mild hypnosis, and mirrors. Penn and Teller would be proud.

No, wait. Penn and Teller would be pissed off. The right way to talk to someone hundreds of miles away is to get in a bus and drive there, in real-time, with the bus veering off to the side slightly so you really do have to pay attention and sit there. When you finally arrive, then you can have a real conversation with the other person. Mirrors and sleight-of-cellphone aren’t the way to do it.

And text messages? Come on! That’s as rediculous as talking to someone without wires. Let’s look at the acronym SMS. SMS stands for Simple Mind Simulation. It’s nothing more than an artificial intelligence program that simulates the other side of a conversation so that you think you’re talking to a real person. If you try to come up with a complicated question, you’ll undoubtedly get some gibberish back that’s just a random mix of letters and numbers.

Join me in abandoning your government-mandated personal tracking devices, and returning to the real world of talking through wires as Thor intended.

Please don’t let any dogs, cats, or iguanas see this post. Doing so may put your life in danger.

Here’s the way it works:

The cats have a vast underground network of tunnels that they constructed during the 1930′s. These are tiny tunnels that a cat-sized non-cat wouldn’t be able to fit through. Because of a cats natural squishability, the tunnels are useful only to them and smaller animals that are easy prey for them.

The main communications system between the tunnel-dwellers and the outside world is through messages encoded on microchips and embedded in standard bones. The dogs will bury these bones at precise drop locations. The cats retrieve the bones from the drop spot, read the encrypted message from the bone’s memory chip, and encode their own message onto the bone in response. When they have replaced the bone in the ground above their tunnel, the dog will casually dig it back up and receive the message.

Obviously this would all seem a little too suspicious if we thought dogs and cats had any chance of collaborating together towards planetary domination. Only by tricking the world into thinking that they are mortal enemies are they able to defeat us, their true mortal enemies.

I know many of you will find this hard to believe, but that’s the unfortunate nature of conspiracy theories. They show you the obvious truth in an unflinching manner that some of you simply aren’t ready to deal with.

I’d advise you not to confront your “pet” cat or dog with this. You might not survive the confrontation.

Be safe out there.

Some things deserve conspiracy theories. I hope to explain some of those to you in the future. But do they deserve the name “conspiracy theories?” Of course not. The name itself evokes a raving madman, an Internet loser with nothing better to do than to come up with rediculous notions that make no sense at all.

But that’s not always the case. Why do they assign such negative connotations to the phrase “conspiracy theory?” Only to downplay any notion of conspiracies.

Conspiracies are all around us. The media plays a huge role in most of them. It’s clearly in their best interest to make anyone who talks about them sound like an idiot.

It started back in 1962, when CBS planted subliminal messages in their television broadcasts that trained Americans to think of conspiracy theories as being tools of the Communists.

That continues to this day. Ask 100 random people on the street what they think of when they hear that cursed phrase, and 91 of them will say “those whacky Communists.”

I rest my case. The media has poisoned the phrase so they can try to get away with the biggest conspiracies of them all.

I will not be deterred. We will uncover the truth. Get your shovels, because there’s much digging to do!