Planet Poptart

I received a call out of the blue from an old friend who has been living 'off the grid' for many years now somewhere up in NE California. Color me dumb, but if he's calling me from a cellular phone, then is he really off the grid? Anyway, he called because he wanted to tell me (warn me?) of what's to come here in the San Francisco Bay Area and in other major urban centers across the country supposedly in a few years' time. 'When I tell you what I know, you're going to think I'm from the planet Poptart, but it's all true.' He then proceeded to tell me things that absolutely, truly and totally made very little sense. I won't clog your brains with them here, but, suffice to say, he believes that anarchy will reign in a handful of years and we'll all be resorting to cannibalism in order to survive. I did not laugh when he said this to me, mind you, but I did wonder how someone who seemed fairly together when we met some thirty years ago could now be so muddled in his thinking. I told my hubs about the call and he said that it sounded like QAnon stuff. QAnon? Weren't those the same kooks that brought us Pizzagate and the January 6th US Capitol attack?

There have been conspiracy theories lurking in the shadows for as long as there have been civilizations, I suppose, and a certain percentage of the population will always fall prey to them. It's not a stretch to think that with the advent of the internet those who are predisposed to believe things like the earth is flat and that there never was a moon landing in 1969 are easily brought together via the internet. What's that old saying? There's a lid for every pot? You believe that Paul McCartney was replaced by a fake Paul way back in the mid-1960s? Well, there are probably loads of others out there in the world who believe the same thing and they are just a mouse click away! 

For those of you who can't believe that 'Faul' exists, as the conspiracy nutters have named him, here you go: FAUL.

I actually grew up down the street from someone who believes that Macca was replaced by a look-a-like back in 1966. This deeply held belief of his that Paul isn't Paul pre-dates the internet. I can only imagine how thrilled his was to find his global cohort once he was able to cruise the 'information superhighway'. I bumped into this old neighbor the other day at the post office in our hometown. I asked after his mother and found that she is alive and well at age 90. We were talking about our respective families while waiting in line when he pointed out the window and blurted, 'Look at those chemtrails!' I know this to be a hot button issue among the conspiracy crowd, so I said that I didn't want to discuss chemtrails with him. Then he asked me how many times I'd been vaccinated. I said, 'a hundred and ten' and redirected to talk of his mother. (She was kind to me after the divorce of my parents when I was little; I have fond memories of her.) I asked him if I could have the spelling of her surname as it's either Kelly or Kelley and I couldn't remember which one was correct. He didn't know either. Um, WTF? I then asked if I could give his mom a ring and asked for her telephone no. He gave it and then said, 'You could take mine as well.' 

I didn't yell in his face: Are you fucking kidding?

However, I did say something like: No, I don't want to as I don't think we would have anything in common to talk about. He said, 'Oh, but I'm not a Trumper.' 'It's not that I think you're a Trumper, it's that I think you don't participate in the system at all. You don't vote.' 

'Well, it's all a sham anyway,' he said. 

I'll be sending his mom a holiday card including no mention of her son, mind you.