And there's more. Santa comes down a chimney. And the devil apparently lives in a pit of hell-fire. No one has ever been to and returned alive from either hell or Santa's workshop. The fact that Santa commands adoration from small children and the devil from certain heavy-metal listeners is beside the point, especially when one considers that Santa's reindeer have cloven feet.
And most disturbingly of all, Santa's name can be no mistake. It is not a well-disguised anagram of Satan, which surely is not mere coincidence. Who can tell which Christmas time Santa will choose to reveal his true identity?
These are just two well-known conspiracy theories. The archetypal conspiracy theory might go something like this; their is a clandestine secret society in our midst...they are alien to all we believe in and are about to seize control of the world...they are everywhere...they are ruthless and powerful...they are sexually corrupt...they perform the most heinous crimes known to mankind.
Belief in conspiracy theories is more than just the belief in an occasional underhand plot. It is a belief system that asserts that world events are being governed in secret by a group of ultra powerful puppeteers behind the scenes.
Maybe you have never noticed. Maybe you have patience of saintly proportions and maybe these things don't irritate you. But it has been pointed out that every time you buy something at the supermarket, the cashier will hand you your change, first with the notes, then the coins on top of them.
This means unless you can perform some superhuman feat, you either have to crumple it all up into a ball or else perform the singularly pointless task of bringing your other hand up to separate the notes from the coins. And don't let yourself be persuaded into thinking that this is just a mere logistical error. This is a conspiracy. They do it to annoy the hell out of you.
One of the greatest conspiracies of the modern world is the fact that hot dogs come in packets of ten and hog dog buns come only in packets of eight. This may sound trivial, but when one starts to consider the marketing strategy involved, the amount of money being dealt with is quite staggering. Here's how it works.
You buy a packet of hot dogs and then you buy a packet of buns. Now you have two spare hot dogs and must buy another packet of buns to make the difference. Now you have six loose buns...and so on and so forth. The two companies must have been in cooperation for some time now and have us all wrapped around their collective little fingers. Innocuous as it all may sound, when you consider the billions made by the two companies, it does make you wonder at what point they will strike and take over the world.