The Project for a New American Century for Dummies: How to Dominate the World and still receive Social Security!

I opened my inbox yesterday. Some guy had sent me a whole bunch of website links about world domination conspiracies. It really freaked me out! There were all these photos of jet bombers and missile weapons systems and underground bunkers in Idaho and top secret plots by evil madmen to conquer the world and...you get the picture. "James Bond tried to warn us!" My paranoia ran free.

Then some Congressman from Colorado came on some talk show and started chit-chatting about how if there was an attack on America, the Bush guys were gonna nuke Mecca -- and if THAT happened, someone (it wasn't clear exactly who -- maybe Russia allied with China or some teenagers from London with backpacks) would nuke Israel and Israel in turn would launch a giant Tsunami that would bury New York all the way to Ohio. Okay.

I was into this! "What REALLY goes on at the top secret level that we normal schmucks are not privy to?" I asked myself. At the Kremlin/Pentagon/Downing Street/caves of Afghanistan level, I bet there really ARE wheels within wheels. Even after just one DAY of reading the back pages of the Wall Street Journal or browsing through www.Janes.com, it all becomes obvious: Us Americans are just hapless dupes and set decorations -- happily shopping at the mall and voting on "for show" voting machines while being exploited by secretive mutants who live in some underground shadow government control center a la HG Well's book "The Time machine".

But if I am not just happily wallowing in cheap paranoia and this IS true, then who would be running these games?

Just exactly WHICH evil masterminds would be in control of the secret ultra-high-tech world domination operation that this website was talking about? Chinese, Arab, Russian? American? Okay, let's start searching for Doctor Doom.

Surely said evil masterminds would not be the idiots in the White House. Surely even Karl Rove is too bumbling to know how to come up with this stuff. And definitely not Georgie. Anyone who sees him stumble and stutter and listen to his earpiece on television knows it surely isn't he. Who then? Rumsfeld? Cheney? Bush senior? Putin? The aging Red Guard? Osama bin Ladin? Ariel Sharon?

The sinister masterminds in charge of world domination would have to be American. Nobody else could afford all those toys.

So. Who behind the scenes in American government (besides Dr. Strangelove) is weird enough to come up with all this Goldfinger/Doctor No/Doctor Evil global world order uber-overlord hyper-control stuff?

I put on my spy outfit and Googled "World Domination".

Just like that, up popped "The Project for a New American Century". Hummmm... And then, when I went to check out their website, my screen froze, my whole hard drive crashed and even my free cell computer solitaire game stopped working. Now I was REALLY getting paranoid!

Fortunately, when I re-booted, everything was fine. Except for that still, small voice inside my head that keeps saying, "Jane, they have spent trillions and trillions of (our tax) dollars on weapons. They have purchased over half of the Congress. They bought up the media. They own all the oil. They can't have done that for nothing." And all those weapons and bunkers and missiles and jet airplanes and tanks and...and all under the control of the PNAC.

But the PNAC boys are getting old now. It's not like it was back in the day of the Kennedy assassinations and the Bay of Pigs invasion when they were young lions with hopes. That was thirty or forty years ago! Maybe they started the War on Iraq at this point in time so that they would still be young enough to enjoy the fireworks without the use of Viagra -- and can still get it up when they stage the NEXT New Pearl Harbor, the one that will put the Middle East and even the whole world and Kansas under their control (and the Rapture comes in a red fireball too.... )

Forget it. All this paranoia stuff is getting to me. I'm going off to shop at the mall.

PS: When I was a kid, our teachers solemnly informed us that the world could blow up at any minute and that we had better be careful. I practiced ducking and covering faithfully -- totally convinced that when the Big One hit Millbrae, I alone would somehow survive. Maybe THAT'S why I'm still so paranoid about major weaponry. I'll have to ask Freud.

"Sigmund, I still have these dreams. I've had them since I was a kid. I'm sitting in the school cafeteria (chatting with my friend Terry Hughes, trying to flirt with that dreamboat John Palmer and eating creamed chipped beef and peas). Then I look out the window and the whole sky has lit up. Then I melt into ashes and am totally destroyed...."