…in case you missed out on one, here’s a list of things to be suspicious about.

If your pet conspiracy theory didn’t make this list, well, you know why, don’t you? Exactly.

Writing in the context of environmentalism, Michael Crichton noted:

I studied anthropology in college, and one of the things I learned was that certain human social structures always reappear. They can’t be eliminated from society. One of those structures is religion. Today it is said we live in a secular society in which many people—the best people, the most enlightened people—do not believe in any religion. But I think that you cannot eliminate religion from the psyche of mankind. If you suppress it in one form, it merely re-emerges in another form. You can not believe in God, but you still have to believe in something that gives meaning to your life, and shapes your sense of the world. Such a belief is religious. 

This came to mind watching the Obama phenomenom, where a messianic vibe seems to be rousing a (my guess) mostly secular audience.

Charles Krauthammer observes: 

Organized religion has been offering a similar commodity — salvation — for millennia. Which is why the Obama campaign has the feel of a religious revival with, as writer James Wolcott observed, a “salvational fervor” and “idealistic zeal divorced from any particular policy or cause and chariot-driven by pure euphoria.”

“We are the hope of the future,” sayeth Obama. We can “remake this world as it should be.” Believe in me and I shall redeem not just you but your country — nay, we can become “a hymn that will heal this nation, repair this world, and make this time different than all the rest.”

And believe they do. After eight straight victories — and two more (Hawaii and Wisconsin) almost certain to follow — Obama is near to rendering moot all the post-Super Tuesday fretting about a deadlocked convention with unelected superdelegates deciding the nominee. Unless Hillary Clinton can somehow do in Ohio and Texas on March 4 what Rudy Giuliani proved is almost impossible to do — maintain a big-state firewall after an unrelenting string of smaller defeats — the superdelegates will flock to Obama. Hope will have carried the day.

Interestingly, Obama has been able to win these electoral victories and dazzle crowds in one new jurisdiction after another, even as his mesmeric power has begun to arouse skepticism and misgivings among the mainstream media.

Get a load of Chris Matthews:

…who no longer has the excuse of youth, react to Obama’s Potomac primary victory speech with “My, I felt this thrill going up my leg.” When his MSNBC co-hosts tried to bail him out, he refused to recant. Not surprising for an acolyte who said that Obama “comes along, and he seems to have the answers. This is the New Testament.”

Shouldn’t that be the New New Testament? Back to Krauthammer:

Obama has an astonishingly empty paper trail. He’s going around issuing promissory notes on the future that he can’t possibly redeem. Promises to heal the world with negotiations with the likes of Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Promises to transcend the conundrums of entitlement reform that require real and painful trade-offs and that have eluded solution for a generation. Promises to fund his other promises by a rapid withdrawal from an unpopular war — with the hope, I suppose, that the (presumed) resulting increase in American prestige would compensate for the chaos to follow.

Democrats are worried that the Obama spell will break between the time of his nomination and the time of the election, and deny them the White House. My guess is that he can maintain the spell just past Inauguration Day. After which will come the awakening. It will be rude.

First, we have Hillary’s favorite donor, con man Norman Hsu, getting three years in the slammer. But not until his lawyers:

…asked Judge Stephen Hall to dismiss his 1992 no contest plea, arguing that Hsu’s right to a speedy trial was violated because authorities were not actively pursuing him during his years as a fugitive.

That almost beats the classic definition of chutzpah: a child murders both his parents then pleads for mercy because he’s an orphan.

In Texas, there’s the mom who helped her six year old win concert tickets by lying in an essay that her father had been killed in Iraq.

Priscilla Ceballos said she hadn’t intended to mislead the contest sponsor but got caught up in helping her daughter “realize her dream of seeing Hannah Montana.”

“I just wanted to help my daughter write a compelling story,” she said. “There is no more compelling story than the struggle and sacrifices of our military and their families.”

True, but it’s not your story, honey.

Here’s a sobering thought: Hundreds of bottles of Jack Daniel’s whiskey, some of it almost 100 years old, may be unceremoniously poured down a drain because authorities suspect it was being sold by someone without a license.

“Punish the person, not the whiskey,” said an outraged Kyle MacDonald, 28, a Jack Daniel’s drinker from British Columbia who promotes the whiskey on his blog. “Jack never did anything wrong, and the whiskey itself is innocent.

Hey, Kyle: call Willie Nelson and beg him to headline a BoozeAid concert.

A US mother-of-three has invented a sex toy that connects to a vacuum cleaner to give an orgasm in just ten seconds.

The gadget, called Vortex Vibrations, works by concentrating the air flow to create a rapid and gentle vibration, reports the Sun.

…At the time Joanne, from Utah, had not had sex for 15 years following her divorce.

She said: “In my attempts to alleviate frustration, I began to think what I could do. I noticed how the rubber moved in the top of the vacuum. After several hours, I came up with the prototype. The first time I tried it I reached an orgasm within 10 seconds.

“That was when I knew I was on to something that could potentially bring pleasure to all women.”

Especially those who haven’t been laid in 15 years.

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Jesus has made yet another strange appearance, this time in a tree. And it’s just up the road from where I live.

To Irma Lopez, the figure on the tree in her front yard in Moorpark is very clear.

It’s the face of Jesus.

“Last Friday I was watering the front yard when I noticed an area on the tree that resembles Jesus,” Lopez said. “I threw down the hose and told my daughter Lisa to come outside.”

Her daughter agreed.

“After watering the area the figure is clearly visible,” said Lopez, a resident of Baird Street for more than 40 years.

Lopez’s mother, Elisa Flores, was a Catholic and the backbone of the house. She cared for the yard for many years and died two years ago.

“This figure on the tree is a blessing for the house,” Lopez said.

Alex Meza, who lives across the street, was skeptical.

“At first I was like, are you sure you see something?” he said. “After Irma and Lisa had me come over, I am a true believer that there is a Jesus figure on the tree.”

Cheech Marin at one time had a movie in development called “Jesus of Oxnard” in which Jesus appears on a tortilla. What a shame that never got made.

A Navy man who got mad when someone mocked him as a “nerd” over the Internet climbed into his car and drove 1,300 miles from Virginia to Texas to teach the other guy a lesson.

When he finally arrived, Tavares burned the guy’s trailer down.

This week, Tavares, 27, was sentenced to seven years in prison after pleading no contest to arson and admitting he set the blaze.

He better not be so touchy in prison.

The pastor and members of a local church claim the face of God recently appeared on the ceiling of their sanctuary. Pastor Reginald Lowery of Miracle Crusade Bible Church Holiness said it all started one Friday night at his church, located near 6th and Looney.“I was preaching on ‘God Knows Where We Are,’ and all of a sudden a big bang hit the church,” he said.

With that, Lowery said, alarms all over the neighborhood started going off, including those at the church.  Then, according to the pastor, something else happened. 

“The lights on the inside went to solid gold,” he said.

It was then that Lowery’s daughter first saw it: The face of God on the church’s ceiling.  But, there was a catch…it can’t be seen with the naked eye.

But wait, there’s more!

Members of a Memphis church say they’ve seen a divine image in the trunk of a tree. If you look from far away you can somewhat make out eyes, the outline of a nose and a partial smile.

Decide for yourself…check out the pictures below!

Let’s say you’re suspicious of the “official story” about 9/11. And you’re convinced there must be more to it. What do you do? Build an inexact model of the twin towers and experiment away!