I love quasi-conspiracy theories. Things that are too silly to really get concerned about but still get your interest piqued. Which is why I enjoy stories by Philip K. Dick. He invented a character named Ferris F. Fremont, who was an ugly but very American presence, with echoes of Nixon that struck me all through the last eight years. And now we have Dick Cheney (aka Darth Penguin) installing moles in the Obama Administration to report back to him. I'm just waiting for Ann Coulter to be photographed speaking at a secret rally wearing a "Friends of the American People" armpatch.
I have been fascinated with Dick as an author, a person (and neuropsych case study), and a cultural phenomenon that transcends party affiliation. There's just something so American and yet so foreign about Dick. Hmm kind of like Arnold Schwarzenegger, who starred in one of his movies. (Total Recall).
And it's kind of creepy how PhilDick was such a marginal author in a marginal literary genre, who now seems to permeate so many corners of popular culture. Every couple years a new movie adaptation (acknowledged, like "Minority Report," or unacknowledged, like "Truman Show") comes out. Now I see that there's one in the works of "Radio Free Albemuth." Wonder how they'll do on that one. It looks pretty low budget.They have Alanis Morissette to star in it. Wonder who they could get to play Eric Lampton. Or was that character in Valis? I can never keep those two books straight, probably because they were really two drafts of the same book.
Anyway, I hope they can root out all the Cheney spies from the government now. He really creeped me out. Talk about a real life FFF. Bush was just his cowboy sock puppet. Well, everyone is too worried about the economy to fret over having lost a few freedoms, just like they were too worried about terrorist attacks to worry during the last administration.
By the way, Mc Donald's (which - along with Wal-Mart - is one of the few mega-corporations that is doing unabashely well these days) has a tag line in the radio commercial I heard to day that said you can get a meal for five bucks and still get change back - adding, "And that's change we can believe in." I just about dropped my teeth. Talk about being co-opted. Keeping the economy afloat - three trillion dollars. Trying to get honest government -- priceless.
Phil Dick created an alter ego in Valis named Horselover Fat, from the Greek Phillip and the German word for (ahem) "Dick." According to a website on family names, Cheney is from the French for "forested," like a grove of oaks. So. If Phillip K. Dick's alter ego was called Horselover Fat, then Dick Cheney's alter ego (when he's not Darth Penguin) would have to be Fat Woody. Right?
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