© Jeff Matthews entry
Sept 2015 Allegro ma non troppo
#27 (original pub. date, Lion Magazine, 1990-95)
The only words I have added to the above real live actual true swear-to-God newspaper clipping are “among paranoids”. I have done so because I feel it is high time that we give these people —and I include myself— the credit that they/we are due. Yes, we are enmeshed in a convoluted web of conspiracy that most other people, oblivious dullards that they are, don’t even notice. They continue to saunter—or, in this case, drive—blithely past such things as encoded highway signs. Now, I have never been in Indiana, but it is a source of comfort to me to know that at least a few alert individuals are making the place safe for fruit-cakes, and, as I say, I include myself in that group, but ho-ho if you think I am going to tell you where I live or anything like that just in case you are thinking of coming to “take care of me” or invade me or anything, which I know you have been planning for a long time.
I would remind
those of you who are naively convinced that the
world wanders randomly through the universe
totally unaffected by conspiracies of evil that
‘random’ is just a word, as are many other words
that you read, and that street-signs have often
been used by oppressors to find their victims.
Erasing or changing names of streets has often
been a way for the downtrodden to escape their
captors; it was a ploy used very effectively to
foil the Gestapo, for example, in their searches
for members of the resistance in Paris and
Copenhagen in WW II. Nescio quid hoc
demonstrat, as Roman logicians used to
say, and if that doesn’t prove to you just how
important street signs can be in this world,
then I leave you to your childish fantasies that
we are not mere puppets controlled by an
international cartel of evil puppeteers who own
all the banks in the world and who from their
headquarters high on a mountain —
the name of which I am not at liberty to
discuss — transmit
mind-controlling messages through the fillings
in our teeth.
Yet, there are those of us who refuse to have our strings pulled and who are having our fillings replaced by ceramic material that resists the rays! They’re all around us, you know —the rays. Sometimes they’re voices, but most of the time they’re rays. Where was I? Right, street signs. While my colleagues in Indiana carry on, I have been on the look-out for other obvious (at least to some of us) signs that we are being set-up for a take-over by forces loyal to the United Nations —which, I hope you children realize, is actually “snoitan detinu” spelled backwards. That’s right —Snoitan Detinu, and if that isn’t a code-word directing UN Secret Police to your house, then my name isn’t…hah, gotcha!…you thought I was going to tell you my secret identity! And would it surprise you to know that the real name of the former Secretary General of the United Nations was not Boutros Boutros Ghali, but, rather, Boutros Boutros Boutros, and that his mother stuttered?! Coincidence? Sure, uh-huh. Tap your skulls and see if anyone is home up there.
Where was I again? Right, other signs. For one thing, the street light near my house in Naples at the corner of (oops... almost let it slip) has been out of order for years! Oh, there’s a light, all right, but it doesn’t turn from red to green or even blink yellow in a regular pattern. It flickers irregularly —or what might seem ‘irregular’ to the eyes of innocents, those untrained to pick out subtle patterns. “Oh, those flickers and flashes are meaningless,” they say. Meaningless? Don’t you see? There is no such thing as ‘meaningless’! Take the word ‘meaningless’, for example. Doesn’t it mean something? Of course, it does. What more proof do you want, a One-World UN ID number tattooed on your forearm?
And bar-codes on super-market items? Are all those lines really a way to keep track of produce, or are they a code, perhaps? —a way to let THEM know what you eat? Then a way for THEM to control what you put into your bodies? And then to take over your bodies?! Didn’t any of you see The Invasion of the Body Snatchers?!
I’d Put a Title On
This, But That’s Just What They Want Me to Do!
One of the most prevalent conspiracy theories
among paranoids in the United States, the
impending takeover of America by foreign
forces loyal to the United Nations, has forced
the Indiana transportation department to
change its road signs. Self-styled defenders
of the American way complained that
maintenance codes on the backs of the signs
were actually secret messages for invading
troops, said a spokeswoman for the Indiana
transportation department. ‘People were
calling, saying that we were part of the UN
takeover plan, and then they were painting
over the signs. It got so we couldn't ignore
it,’ she said. The signs are now being
changed, a move she hopes will ‘reassure those
in the motoring public who had those
suspicions’.
The only words I have added to the above real live actual true swear-to-God newspaper clipping are “among paranoids”. I have done so because I feel it is high time that we give these people —and I include myself— the credit that they/we are due. Yes, we are enmeshed in a convoluted web of conspiracy that most other people, oblivious dullards that they are, don’t even notice. They continue to saunter—or, in this case, drive—blithely past such things as encoded highway signs. Now, I have never been in Indiana, but it is a source of comfort to me to know that at least a few alert individuals are making the place safe for fruit-cakes, and, as I say, I include myself in that group, but ho-ho if you think I am going to tell you where I live or anything like that just in case you are thinking of coming to “take care of me” or invade me or anything, which I know you have been planning for a long time.
Yet, there are those of us who refuse to have our strings pulled and who are having our fillings replaced by ceramic material that resists the rays! They’re all around us, you know —the rays. Sometimes they’re voices, but most of the time they’re rays. Where was I? Right, street signs. While my colleagues in Indiana carry on, I have been on the look-out for other obvious (at least to some of us) signs that we are being set-up for a take-over by forces loyal to the United Nations —which, I hope you children realize, is actually “snoitan detinu” spelled backwards. That’s right —Snoitan Detinu, and if that isn’t a code-word directing UN Secret Police to your house, then my name isn’t…hah, gotcha!…you thought I was going to tell you my secret identity! And would it surprise you to know that the real name of the former Secretary General of the United Nations was not Boutros Boutros Ghali, but, rather, Boutros Boutros Boutros, and that his mother stuttered?! Coincidence? Sure, uh-huh. Tap your skulls and see if anyone is home up there.
Where was I again? Right, other signs. For one thing, the street light near my house in Naples at the corner of (oops... almost let it slip) has been out of order for years! Oh, there’s a light, all right, but it doesn’t turn from red to green or even blink yellow in a regular pattern. It flickers irregularly —or what might seem ‘irregular’ to the eyes of innocents, those untrained to pick out subtle patterns. “Oh, those flickers and flashes are meaningless,” they say. Meaningless? Don’t you see? There is no such thing as ‘meaningless’! Take the word ‘meaningless’, for example. Doesn’t it mean something? Of course, it does. What more proof do you want, a One-World UN ID number tattooed on your forearm?
And bar-codes on super-market items? Are all those lines really a way to keep track of produce, or are they a code, perhaps? —a way to let THEM know what you eat? Then a way for THEM to control what you put into your bodies? And then to take over your bodies?! Didn’t any of you see The Invasion of the Body Snatchers?!
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