Well, what can I say?
Weird Al Yankovic has a new album out and, in case you’ve been living under a rock, you know that he’s releasing a video for a new song each day, for eight days.
So far, they’ve all been brilliant. How could they not be? It’s Al-Freakin’-Yankovic! One of them, though, has really stood out for me. That would be “Foil.” Check it out here. I’ll wait.
When it was released, I made the prediction that, within a week or less, Conspiracy Theorists would experience the paranoiacs’ equivalent of nuclear holocaust. I was wrong. It began less than 24 hours after ‘Foil’ graced screens everywhere. One person even suggested that Al is a high-ranking Illuminatus. I’m too astounded to laugh, even though I knew it was gonna happen.
I’m not saying Al Yankovic is or isn’t a member of the Illuminati. Either way, it wouldn’t matter to me, because I typically side with Robert Anton Wilson on the theory that we are all a part of the conspiracy, which means this Illuminatus is writing what you Illuminati are currently reading. Mindfuck Ahoy!
I started researching conspiracies and secret societies in 1988, when Timothy lent me his book,
Holy Blood, Holy Grail, and it fired my imagination when I first started forming the foundation of what would become The Vampire Relics. I’ve read tons of stuff over the years and, at times, wholeheartedly believed that
something was up. In 1990, my conspiracy research got seriously ramped up with the dinky (and I do mean dinky - the lettering is incredibly tiny) mention of “Illuminati” on the back of Shriekback’s Dancing Years CD, which I acquired just a few months after reading
The Illuminatus Trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson.
Things just seemed to fit together, so I joyously welcomed my overabundant paranoia. This was me for quite some time.
Of course, it didn’t help when
Sacred City came out on the World Domination label and the liner notes encouraged people to be a part of the Shriekback Global Conspiracy. Hey, I was a sheltered kid who read way too much into everything, so cut me some slack.
Over the years, though, I have grown a bit jaded about it all, not to mention aggressively cynical. I think my last true fit of paranoia came with the LOST numbers, and their specific inclusion of 23 (The 23 Enigma was always a favourite of mine). Even with those numbers, though, it’s your perception that drives your personal reality when addressing the lush symbology of that show. Douglas Adams’ fans, of whom I am one, got caught up in 42. I digress, though. This isn’t about LOST, it’s about a level of hilarity that could never have been imagined by even the most diehard Conspiracy Theorists two decades ago.
If a global conspiracy had never existed before the rise of The Internet, it certainly exists now, if only on a quantum level. I still believe that what you think and believe has a lot to do with the reality that you perceive, and it eventually defines you. Despite my apparent inability to break out of some of my personal mind traps, I don’t think I will ever find a better theory of “what IS” than that, at least not in this life.
Anyway, in the past twelve hours, some jack-ass has elevated Weird Al to the level of high-ranking Illuminatus. Yes, you read that correctly. The other side of this is that Weird Al is trying to
warn people about the Illuminati, and some of the things he mentions in the song could only be known by someone who has done a great deal of research. Both of these positions are utterly ridiculous. First, if Al were an Illuminatus, he would not expose his peeps on a global level, if the conspiracy is still being realised. Second, if Al is
not Illuminatus, it doesn’t take much deep research these days to reference supposedly obscure terms like “psychotronic scanning”, thanks to The Internet being a giant vibrating ball of reptilian-hating suspicion.
To my knowledge, Weird Al Yankovic has never publicly taken any sort of position on anything, not to mention that he is a
genuinely good person. This, in and of itself, is pure genius, because this makes him accessible to everyone, not just Jesus Freaks, Hipsters, Conspiracy Theorists, or Joe the Plumber. You can be a complete dickhead but, if you like Al, there’s got to be something good about you. That’s just my opinion, but I think it could very well be a great truth in this age of deception. When everyone else is trying to tear people apart, here comes Al Yankovic uniting a whole shit-ton of opposing crusaders under the blessed umbrella of hilarity.
Does “Foil” alarm me? No more than anything else, these days. My thinking is, there comes a time in a Conspiracy Theorist’s life when you just have to say “FUCK IT” and enjoy the ride. If there is a New World Order, it has been new for a pretty goddamn long time, because nothing ever really changes, except the names and dates, and there’s really nothing we can do about it. Years ago, I saw Bette Midler do this schtick called “Angst on a Rope.” She’d present all manner of horrible things in her life, then pretend she was in the shower with her Angst on a Rope, and say, in the most nasal Yiddish tone she could achieve (and that’s saying a lot), “WHY BOTHAAAAAH?” I’m pretty much right there. If “they” have all the power the theorists say “they” have, we’re already fucked, so the least we can do is immerse ourselves in the joy of another Weird Al Yankovic album. In a world as fucked as as the one in which we find ourselves, the very thing any of is need is a song like “Foil,” whether or not you believe the conspiracies are true. Personally, I think the one true act of rebellion any of us really have is laughter.
If any of us deserve anything, it is the gift of laughter, even if the hilarity is triggered by a Reptilian Agent of Doom like Weird Al Yankovic.
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