Two blocks from capital hill at the end of an unassuming street sat a neighborhood bar. In a sparsely lit corner of the bar a small table is occupied by a rather nondescript gentleman. A narrow shaft of light cuts across his chin, arcs across the table and exposes a weathered hand that has raised quite a few toasts over the years. A sparkle of light flashes from his ring finger as he raises a cold glass of freshly poured ale.

Behind the bar a young man is prepping garnishes for the happy hour rush. A twinkle in the corner of the bar catches his eye. He remembers the ring the man wore and figured that as the source of the flash. Nothing about the man was remarkable but the ring and its strange carousel symbol was interesting enough to lodge in his memory.

The man had mentioned that he was meeting up with someone and they should be here shortly. The young man wondered if his confidant would also be wearing a strange ring.

That would be cool, he thought. Maybe some kind of conspiracy is afoot

There seems to be an endless stream of conspiracy theorists these days. There is either a large number of paranoid people out there or there is just a small group of the same people endlessly churning out new theories in the hopes someone will notice them. Hmm, that smacks of a conspiracy right there.

There is a fine line between cynicism and paranoia.

I think that line is called common sense.

I would like to think that I have just enough smarts to prevent my cynicism from jumping the sanity rails and head towards conspiracy junction.

I have observed enough conspiracies to recognize some common elements. Let’s face it, it doesn’t really take years of research to come up with these little ditties.

I am in no way encouraging the creation of new theories. The world has enough of them. I am merely presenting them for humor’s sake.

If you are going to create a plausible conspiracy key words must be used when crafting the conspiracy statement. What, you don’t know what a conspiracy statement is? Ok, try to keep up folks.

The conspiracy statement is the goal of the organization put forth as a vision statement. It summarizes the conspiracies goals and how they plan on achieving them without giving away secrets, or preferably, any information whatsoever.

A conspiracy statement would be something like;

“We pledge to make sure the penny is coined as a part of the US monetary system no matter how cost ineffective it is. We plan on realizing this by holding true to our exaggerated self importance and by fostering paranoia through an orchestrated effort to disseminate false information, half truths and downright illogical conclusions. We will do this through a cabal made up of three organizations with a hidden agenda and whose identities are not know by any of the three.”

If that is not clear to you then it is an excellent conspiracy statement. If you have some inkling of what it is trying to say then it fails and we need to go back to the drawing board.

Coming up next, the key ingredients to a good conspiracy..