1) All You of Earth Are Idiots!

In spite of the touch-and-go situation on the ground, Israel's Security Cabinet recently voted to support - "In principle" - the expulsion of Yasser Arafat. This supposedly means that they're in agreement that they could push the PLO's impotent patriarch out of town with a punt to the posterior. No one's ever doubted this, but at least now it's been brought from an idea circulated amongst radicals into a radical possibility.

It also goes without saying that this vote was taken as a cautious step towards The Inevitable. It also goes without saying - though someone DID say it, anyway - that The Inevitable would be done whenever they want to, which may be tomorrow, or may be next year, or may be never.

But then, those of us with eyes jaundiced by ages of inevitability can only take this move as an act of ass insurance. This was just a public promise that the current government would not immediately turn on itself and blame its individual parts once the other side of The Inevitable rears its ugly head and strikes back. "All for all and all for one," at least until the next election. Or the one after that...

Thus goes yet another strange chapter in the ongoing saga of Israel and Palestine. It is a matter upon which enough hay has been made to feed the fabled Aegean Stables. It is also a matter which has created enough horseshit to fill them, too - especially regarding the current wall.

And what makes it worse is that no one in control of the situation is thinking clearly about what is being done, or what must be done, in order to secure peace. No one in control of the situation has ever said or done anything that led to hope without cynicism, clarity without jaundice or progress without backsliding.

In other words, no one is really IN CONTROL of the situation, at all. Everything that could go wrong IS going wrong, almost as if on cue. Which leads you to wonder if this really is the promised apocalypse, bang on schedule for 2012 (or sooner), or else some other weirdness.

It's almost as if it's being staged, somehow. And maybe it is...

2) I've Been Muzzled by Top Brass!

There are those who have said that the world's events are all scripted, somehow: strings pulled by some shadowy cabal lurking in secret chambers around the globe. Over time the identity, ethnicity and goals of this group has been changed to fit current ideologies and paranoias, but while the face of the fear has shifted, the fear itself has never quite gone away.

Others say that it's not the events, themselves, that are managed in seclusion, but the media's retelling of those events - which may actually be even more pernicious. And still others believe that the hand of their God is handling all events, great and small: frog-marching the world to its ultimate destiny, conveniently taking matters out of the hands of the flock...

But there are some people who will say ANYTHING in order to be thought of as witty or interesting, regardless of how outré their claims are later understood to be. The worldwide conspiracy chestnut is no exception to this rule, as it doesn't stand up to close inspection. Just ask that now-retired clown from Malaysia...

Given the complexities of just being able to run one, relatively minor conspiracy in total silence, the idea of a massive, worldwide one reaches the level of the absurd. After all, if a bunch of good, solid Republicans couldn't not bungle the Watergate job, what hope does a bunch of dogma-bound and pie-eyed Communists have in secretly running the world? And if the Jews can hardly agree amongst themselves about anything, how could they truly be some great and powerful ruling class, lording it over the world in secret?

And yet the Top Secret Ruler of the World chestnut continues to make the rounds. The rational side of the brain dismisses it, but the irrational side doesn't dare. Deep down, we all have the fear that invisible hands are moving leaders' mouths, sending us to war, stealing our cash, sleeping with our teenage daughters and rearranging the furniture.

But what if it were all more true than we could ever fathom...?

3) The Resurrection of the Dead

Anyone afflicted with an open mind must recognize that the notion of spiritual possession may be more real than most would like to admit. The Catholic Church certainly holds it in credence (though, given their recent scandals, it now seems as if they'd believe anything to perpetuate a myth). But tales of people being taken over by outside entities - both helpful and harmful - is a well-worn staple of spiritual belief the world over. Show me a people and I'll find you a ghost story, however nearly-unrecognizable as such.

Now go a step further beyond that. Some time ago, my good friend Tim Foil - conspiracy researcher extraordinare - posited that it might even be possible for an entire PEOPLE to be possessed by something else. He referred to it as a meme: a... If you've ever wondered why you're struck with sudden reverie upon hearing the words "America, the beautiful," "Coke is it" or "All your base are belong to us," that's memes at work for you.

Of course, the ever-ebullient Mr. Foil dovetailed this idea into his current theories involving sub-orbital mind-control lasers, the mysterious 5th Teletubby, the mythic conflict of Baal and Mot, and the latest resurgence of Zero Wing. (He also asked me to shill for his write-in candidacy run against Rep. Barney Frank in Boston, but I have my journalistic ethics to consider)

But we need not take the whole of his theory, just the important bit: the idea that an entire group of people might be gripped with a long-term chain of ideas, emotions and actions as a result of being infested by something outside of their own reality. It is this that gives rise to fears of unseen strings and invisible hands. It is something witnessed but never truly there - tangible but yet not. A spectral presence within the masses; A ghost in the political machine.

And sometimes this ghost has a name.

4) The Result Will Astound Those Watching

Not many people remember Edward D. Wood, Jr., but more people SHOULD. He could easily go down in history as one of the most successful failures in American cinematography.

Wood's films are considered to be amongst the absolute best of the worst. He was a man who had a vision, and was able to rise above almost every obstacle thrown in his path to see it realized. He cut every corner, bent every rule, and did everything possible in order to make his movies.

And they were utterly awful. Such classics as "Bride of the Atom," "Glen or Glenda" and his magnum opus "Plan 9 From Outer Space" feature shockingly inept acting, horrifyingly bad dialogue, super-cheap scenery, unbelievably silly "special effects," slumming had-been stars and some of the craziest plots imaginable. Even a fairly straightforward film about being a transvestite in the staid, unfriendly 50's - "Glen or Glenda" - was turned into a surreal and bewildering affair with the inclusion of totally unrelated stock footage, not to mention Bela Lugosi rediscovering his muse...

Even in that, Wood might not have been unique. The 1950's gave us some of the most insanely bad genre movies ever devised. A hundred metric tons of genuinely goofy flying saucer films, hokey monster movies, brain-numbing anti-Communist agit-prop, half-baked attempts at "film noir" and other forms of ocular fodder were dumped on innocent minds at drive-ins all over the country in those days. What was one more schlock auteur amongst so many?

But Wood's works somehow transcend the lot of his contemporaries'. His films are incredibly, mind-numbingly bad, and yet we find ourselves unable to NOT watch them. Somehow, in spite of all their badness, they are actually considered "cult classics" and still watched by people the world over.

Why? Who knows... There are those who say we need to balance good entertainment with bad in order to stay grounded. Psychologists will probably tell you something about the innate masochism inherent in the movie-going experience, but one wonders how they'd know. And a few, more visionary sorts insist that Ed Wood Jr. walked out of the plain of cheesiness, and deep into the vale of true Badfilm... but that's another tale for another day.

Suffice it to say that whatever "it" is, or was, Ed Wood Jr. had it, but not for long. Eventually, he lost sight of his genie, and spiraled down into a well of nudie movies, kinky novels and alcoholism. He died in 1978, a sad and broken man whose best years were far behind him.

But was this really the end of Ed Wood? Or did some accident of a universe too strange to truly understand ensure that his spirit lived on?

5) Can Your Heart Stand the Shocking Facts

Perhaps Ed Wood Jr. is not truly dead after all. Perhaps his spirit has transmigrated from what should be a peaceful rest, directly into the hearts and minds of a people whose story cries out to be writ large across the sky. And perhaps he has orchestrated events in such a way that the situation will just get worse and worse, culminating in an epic struggle worthy of the films that he could never have made while he was alive?!?!?

Some would call this crazy nonsense, but I challenge that assumption. The Jewish tradition recognizes that people may, from time to time, be possessed by an angry, unquiet spirit - what is referred to as a Dybbuk.

But what if one spirit could possess a dozen men, or dozenS? Hundreds, thousands, millions? What if its' being so spread out over the multitudes makes its victims largely unaware of their being tinkered with? The ghost's interference with their lives could be as gentle as an ocean breeze, rather than the raging storm of the usual possession.

And what has happened, since this spirit has taken over? Has this not been just like one of Ed Wood's movies?

Have we not been amazed by the shockingly inept acting?

Have we not been stupefied by the horrifyingly bad dialogue?

Has the land not been reduced to super-cheap scenery by the unbelievably silly "special effects?"

Are we not now experiencing a deluge of slumming has-been stars, all trying to make a name for themselves in what happens next?

Is not a nexus of some of the craziest plots imaginable?

And - perhaps most damning of all - are we not unable to NOT watch the goings-on???

Not many people would accredit any sane motive to wanting to destroy the Holy Land, or ensure that it was eternally wracked in struggle. But perhaps we are not dealing with sanity, nor insanity, but rather a strange set of affairs that sees real life becoming the new medium for a tortured soul deprived of his chance to make art.

Perhaps the face of the madness that has gripped an entire people is the sad face of a man whose genius was not recognized in his own lifetime. Perhaps he is not even aware of the harm he is doing.

Perhaps if we all watched Plan 9 from Outer Space at the same time, we would end all trouble in the area forever?

But I can only pose questions, not answers, my friends. Perhaps we shall learn more of these things in the future.

For it is, as Criswell reminded us, where we are going to spend the rest of our lives.