I haven’t written in a couple of months since undergoing eye surgery. I may never reach the promised outcome I was expecting, but the healing process deserves another 6 or 7 weeks. Astigmatism doesn’t go away overnight. My next blog will address that process and my mostly painless but somewhat depressing experience with it. The writing is being deferred because I want to reveal a joyously happy ending to the posting to be titled. Not every story has a happy ending but at the very least you deserve an honest story with something a bit hopeful, and I think we’ll get there.


Meanwhile the fog of right wing conspiracy theories has become so heavily populated, wildly variegated, and usually well beyond belief on the part of anyone with the common sense God gave geese. A few widely promoted ones include ‘Jewish space lasers starting fires out West’, ‘long dead South American dictators’ vote rigging software was used to hack 2020 voting machines to change votes cast in selected elections’, and the ‘long-lived myth of Stop the Steal which survives despite its 0 Win & 60 Loss record in Federal courts’. Too many people can be persuaded to believe highly improbable theories, and then spread them far and wide.


One of my favorite Sunday comics, Pearls Before Swine, by Stephan Pastis, worked this theme over in the May 15, 2022 edition of his syndicated strip. In it he invites readers to pick one choice from each of boxes A, B, C, and D. Then string them together in that order to whip up your own conspiracy theory. I no longer participate in Facebook, nor any other social medium, but if I did this would be my favorite. Mine is posted below the color cartoon. What is yours? I would love to see readers’ own choices of prime conspiracy du jour. Please post yours.





My favorite from above is A1, B3, C1, and D4’s first 8 words, period. “Members of a shadow US Government want nothing more than to destroy our way of life, and we’ll all be forced to read more.”