Destroying America, One Traffic Jam at a Time

Young Brother George Sanchez called my attention to the website devoted to the notion that the destruction of the section of an Oakland traffic overpass caused by the crash of a gasoline tanker trunk was an international conspiracy.

I wrote:

Makes me think of my days back at Atlanta Magazine when I made the mistake of replying pleasantly to the man who wanted to explain to me some world conspiracy. A few days later he showed up at the magazine offices and gave me “the manuscript,” filled with numbers, coincidences, celestial signs, translations from the ancient Greek, a lot of it hand written and illustrated with drawings that looked like the insides of pond life….

Of course, I read some of the stuff and it was like a snake eating its tail. You couldn’t say it was wrong, only that it was probably – as in almost certainly/I’ll bet any amount of money at long odds against it/wake me for the Apocalypse – wrong. Then, he asked for help in overturning the terms of his recent divorce in which he lost the right to have any contact with his kid. It took me a few days of walking through the parking lot to figure out he was living in his car. So I quit answering his phone calls and letters and he went away. He never again came inside seeking me out. (I think I saw him in his car masturbating. I didn’t call the cops. Let the civilians call the cops.)

Now, that’s a good thing about the Internet. The nuts can imagine someone is listening to them, if only the other nuts. Unless this guy with the MacArthur Maze conspiracy website is just playing. If so, it’s a crazy game.