It's a Conspiracy!!

Hiho Kermit the Frog here.

Well, somehow the in-laws-formerly-known-as-missing conned my wife into promising to go to an after-church cook-out. Not a good thing. I generally like my mother-in-law, however things have been strained since they returned. I think they realize I think the whole run off and be idiots for 3 months was stupid, childish and irresponsible.

Let me give you a quick cast of characters:

Mom-in-Law: generally a sweet and lovely woman, very religious in a weird end-of-the-world way, weird ideas, if you have a conspiracy theory to sell, she's buying.

Dad-in-Law: very enthusiastic, likes to be in charge, not a lot of follow through, not a long-term planner.

Sister-in-Law #1: Older than my wife, intelligent, slutty, self-centered, amoral, dishonest, manipulative. Wife calls her the Cow. Has conjured 3 demons that pose as children.

Sister-in-Law #2: Younger than my wife, intelligent, lazy, somewhat less slutty, self-centered, working on amoral, cute. Wife calls her Stuckup. Two sons, very young.

Sister-in-Law #3: Youngest child, spoiled, lazy, could be intelligent if she turned on her brain, wants to be slutty, too lazy to be amoral, whiny, self-centered. Wife calls her the Whiner.

Sister-in-Law #4: Not actually related, but adopted, a year older than the wife, sweet lady, hard worker, 4 well-behaved little girls as cute as buttons and 1 boy who isn't a pain to be around. (from a people hater like me, that is high praise.)

Brother-in-Law #1: Wife calls him Lazy Ass, he won't get a job. Married to Stuck Up. Drug dealer I suspect. I know his brothers are local thugs.

Annoying Asshole: Friend of family, I call him Fat Bastard. Annoys hell out of me, likes to stir stuff up and watch people fight. Tends to be sneaky. Probably a border-line pedafile. Has a thing for all the sisters.

I think that covers the whole crowd. I did not include the little ones, but stuck up had her 2 boys, cow had her three monsters who all ran around being disruptive with whiner's help, SIL4 had her 4 girls there, but they behaved themselves and were polite. Cow is sucking up to her parents for some reason and has been all summer. She has problems. Boyfriend number one just found out that she is seeing old boyfriend who just got out of prison and a guy who is friends with her ex-husband #1. Redneck love rectangle, how trailer-park is that? Anyway she is watching a 911 video stream on the computer and gets her mother started on how our government demolished the world trade center from inside and faked the plane crashes and blamed it on terrorist. Now, I am aware that some people believe this. I am also aware that some people will believe anything. My problem with conspiracies are that I don't believe our bloated, corrupt, and greedy government is capable of organizing the conspiracy, much less the coverup. And if they were good enough to do it, then why would we even suspect it? And what would they really gain. I mean if they wanted an excuse to invade Iraq, they could have come up with a thousand less expensive ways to stir up the public. Plus, there wasn't any buildup to it. There should have been a noticable increase in anti-Iraq propaganda in the media and public sement. I don't remember any of that. Of course, I tend to disbelieve a large amount of what is in the media, especially tv news. I consider it more entertaining than informative. I also try to realize that what I get is an interpretation of events rather than an impartial collect of facts. Anyway, my MIL suscribes to EVERY conspiracy theory. She is convinced that George W. is going to gather up the Christians and put them in concentration camps. I never understood this one, but she belongs to some prophecy group that feeds off the fears of people and I think it came from them.

Conspiracies can be a lot of fun. They make good movies anyway, but I have trouble buying into them. My take on human nature is that it is pretty much every man for himself and "I want it now!" I don't see anyone being able to put together a group that would stick together and work toward a long-range goal unrelentingly. And face it, any conspiracy has to be big, high level, well-organized, well-planned, nimble, able to think on its feet and react quickly, decisive, ect. Does that sound like our government? Hell, the state government here can't get me a working cell phone.

Anyway, I don't discuss politics or religion with people very much. I don't like either subject and have unpopular views. This is a very conservative area, although they tend to vote for liberals, which is just screwed up. This is also a very fundamentalist church area. We have a lot of Southern Baptist, Church of Christ, ect. I tend to veiw fundamentalism as another form of extremism and extremist are usually dangerous in any form. I don't belittle anyone's beliefs and I think you are free to believe anything you want as long as your beliefs don't interfere with my freedoms or present a danger to me or mine. I expect the same courtesy from you.

I try to be polite, listen to peoples views, and then decide whether or not to dismiss them. Sometimes I learn something, mostly I don't. I don't get into shouting matches with people over whether our goverment blew up the Trade Center. I don't think they did personally, but I can't know for sure. I haven't seen any evidence they did. I have heard of some evidience that perhaps our intelligence services had warning that shit was coming down, but did nothing. The only reason that people will give me for doing it, is that it gave the US an excuse to invade Iraq so we could take over the oil production. Well, that's gone well. Everytime I pull up to the pump to put in some of the cheap, cheap gas, I think, "Damn, I'm glad we invaded Iraq. " Shit, Iraq is a poor choice if you want oil.

I am probably more conservative than liberal, but my politics tends to vary according to the individual issue. I don't completely agree with any party. I believe that a lot of things are way more complicated than the average person can understand and that our information on things is incomplete. I also believe that there is a right and a wrong, and if you have to convince yourself something is right, then it is probably wrong.