It's paranoia if they're really after you.

I was reading some kooky conspiracy web sites today as I am an academic and thus without real work to do. One explained the secret satanic message to be found in the Matrix--that was a good one because it got to the satanic roots of Hollywood itself, which was named after the druidic magic wand that Merlin (spawn of devil-raped mother that he was) used to subvert the teachings of Christ--all of which belies the true evil that lay at the heart of Hollywood's purpose. Which is interesting and informative since I was under the impression that it was named after the ranch of Harvey Henderson Wilcox, the city's founder which stood on the site in the 1880s. The ranch being named for an agricultural settlement in Ohio that his wife, Daeida had visited, itself named after a Dutch town. But that is just not as plausible as the Merlin-based theory. Indeed, I often find that Merlin-based etymologies are the explaination to many of lifes most wonderous conundrums.
A second site I perused explained the history of Lemuria, a country which sank beneath the Pacific 10,000 years ago. You might know it as Mu--yeah, me neither. It seemed like some harmless new agey stuff until, with feats of logical legerdemain that evaded my every attempt to tackle the words, we got to all this has to do with the Jews and how they planned 9/11. So that stopped being fun.

Conspiracies are fun to read (except when they get all anti-Semetic, which happens with depressing frequency) because they make these satisfyingly mysterious connections and are written out by impossibly earnest advocates for the sublimely silly. It's like seeing a commedian really commited to the material do a prat fall. Like when Chevy Chase was still funny. Only these people live in their basements looking for the code within the DaVinci Code (admit it, I just blew your mind).

But there are those conspiracies that I believe in. Like that the CIA is responsible for the crack epidmic of the 1980s, that the FBI had something to do with the assassination of MLK Jr., and that Enron with the knowledge of some in the govenrment created the California energy crisis for profit and political gain at the expense of a Democratic stronghold.
In this weird, satisfyingly gnostic way it helps to believe that you have a grapple-hold on a few bits of secret knowledge that keep you from being drowned in the stream. Knowledge is power and all that. Many people would laugh at my conspiracies, and I might change my mind if I knew more on the subject. That's the thing about secret knowledge, it's almost always the result not of deep information narrowly grasped, but widely available information shallowly sampled...like the DaVinci Code, it helps to know just enough to get it wrong, or to simply be willing to go along for the good and entertaining feeling it gives you.

But dude, the CIA really is responsible for rock-smoking.