the Bergstrom-Wilbury Unified 9/11/1704 Theory

You ever have one of those moments where you're listening to a song you've heard a hundred times before, and for whatever reason (probably 'cause for once you weren't singing along like a schmuck, but were actually listening this time), you suddenly realize that there's a line or two that you'd been mishearing for years. Y'know, like one day figuring out it's NOT "he's got the whole world in his pants"?

Something like that happened to me yesterday. The song in question was "Handle With Care" by the Traveling Wilburys. I first bought that on cassette sometime back in junior high - what can I say, I've always been a hippy, and besides, their music is just good nonsensical fun...or so I thought.

Yesterday, I learned that one of the lines in Handle With Care is: "Been stuck in airports, terrorized". (We won't go into what I'd thought that line was. It was silly, and involved a syllable or two of tuneless mumbling everytime I sang along.) This means the whole stanza is as follows:

Been stuck in airports, terrorized
Sent to meetings, hypnotized
Overexposed, commercialized
Handle me with care

Since every patriotic American knows that terrorism didn't start until it magically sprung from the corpse of a dead horse on 9/11/01, there's no way a line that's really from 1988 could reference terrorism. Either America is wrong, or history is wrong - and in the immortal words of Richard B Cheney: "Dissenters should go f* themselves". I don't like being talked to that way, so I'm forced to conclude that History is a disgusting sham.

That means it's time for me to throw back the curtain on this crazy lie we've all been living. I'll name the theory at least partially after myself, because I am so freakin' great and you all love me.

I present to you the Bergstrom-Wilbury Unified 9/11/1704 Theory, in a nutshell: Terrorism doesn't exist, 9/11 didn't happen, and neither did the middle ages. You've all been musically hypnotized by the the commercial recording industry, which also doesn't exist, into believing everything does exist, so that they can control you.

Let's start with the groundwork. There are 4 conflicting theories as to how the Traveling Wilburys came to be. Two involve nomadic tribes lost to history, one involves MEDIEVAL locksmiths and faires, and the fourth involves some bizarre notion that 5 guitarist frontmen could somehow set aside their egos to form a band under equal assumed names. Obviously, that last one is poppycock, as everyone knows musicians can never circumvent their egos. As further evidence, I point out that two of the five are conveniently dead, and thus can neither confirm nor deny their involvement in said conspiracy. If that doesn't prove they're guilty, nothing will. In fact, the fact that they are dead actually proves conclusively that they are not only in fact conspirators, they are also in fact not dead and in fact living in fact upon the factual moon, which also in fact doesn't in fact exist. That much is obvious and undeniable.

That leaves us with 3 Wilbury origin theories, two of which involve prehistory, and one of which involves the middle ages. But since we know Traveling Wilburys Vol 1 released in 1988, that implies that all the years between the middle ages and 1988 are a fictional delusion of the masses.

It is currently September 10th, 1704, and the Traveling Wilburys are playing your town's hippest night club as we speak! Are you gonna let that happen? Get out there and start a riot! And when they arrest you for indecent exposure (after all, as the song says, you've been "overexposed"), tell them "It's not my fault, I was hypnotized by Roy Orbison's trilling voice. It haunts my every waking thought," like a good lone-nut panzy would.

Since you are an unbalanced lone nut, I offer my services as your very own CIA handler, just like I did for JWB, LHO, JER, MDC and that guy with the same name twice. And I promise, like them, I'll handle you with care.