Today is the day, ladies and gentlemen! Today is the day that we, as a nation, gather around our televisions, eat what can only be described as an irresponsible amount of dips and/or chips and watch in delight as we all bare witness to the true American endeavor that is the Super Bowl!

Or you can watch one of the limitless “counter programming” options for the Super Bowl like the Puppy Bowl on Animal Planet or the Made For TV Movies Starring Tori Spelling Bowl on Lifetime.

Or you can prepare yourself for the annihilation of civilization and the blighted wasteland to come. Both are good options.

What’s that? You hadn’t heard? Too busy keeping your eyes trained on the upcoming Super Bowl and not paying enough attention to the culmination of conspiracies around you? Oh, you sheeple never cease to amaze me.

You see, the Puppy Bowl is a program wherein various puppies from throughout the greater Silver Springs, Md. area play together, on camera. They put all the puppies in a large playpen that’s designed to look like a football field. Then they pretty much just film them frolicking and whatnot for a couple hours …

Oh, you KNEW about the Puppy Bowl? Then it’s the whole Armageddon thing that must be the sticking point.

See, unbeknownst to myself and other people that don’t frequent YouTube pages with view counts in the triple digits, the Super Bowl has moved away from its original function as a game between the champions of the AFC and NFC and has evolved to become a brainwashing tool for a vast, international group called “The Illuminati” who are bent on the destruction of mankind through fascist armies, dark magic, and Jay-Z.

And you thought Deflategate was the worst conspiracy of Super Bowl XLIX. Is Fox News still calling in Ball-Gazhi? Doesn’t matter.

Conspiracy theories surrounding the NFL are pretty common. In fact, during the Super Bowl two years ago, when the power went out for all of 30 minutes and we got to see the pure joy of one of the most well choreographed television broadcasts being reduced to the CBS sports crew trying to improv their way through a half an hour, a lot of theories about who turned off the power and why cropped up instantly.

Turns out the NFL can be felled by the same gremlin that bedeviled my 1981 Buick: bad wiring.

And Deflategate aside, the potential for cheating and score rigging/shaving is always going to generate some distrust in any sport where billions of dollars are to be won or lost in legal, illegal and semi-legal gambling establishments across the globe.

So, naturally, the dark wizards that secretly control the planet (seriously, pour yourself a drink and watch some of these videos. They all read like rejected “X-Files” scripts deemed “too dumb for TV”) have moved on from the game itself and instead have chosen to focus their mass hypnosis rays on the audience of the halftime show.

Now even the secret Illuminati isn’t even interested in watching the game? What happened to this country?

According to only the most reputable YouTube videos narrated by a text-to-voice program from the MS-DOS days, Katy Perry is going to use dark magick (when did they add a “k” to magic? Chris Angel did that, didn’t he?) by implementing secret Illuminati imagery like … birds … and, … wings … to create a ritual to do … something.

Seriously. This crackpot theory, held up by entirely too many people with entirely too much time on their hands, is predicting that the Super Bowl Halftime show will be used as an Illuminati ritual too do something, but they don’t know what it is … but I’m sure they’ll know it just as soon as they watch the halftime show and then make something up.

The leading theory is presented by the recently deceased conspiracy theorist Bill Cooper that the ritual will create the illusion of an alien invasion so that a fascist government will be created in a response, thereby enslaving all mankind.

Now THAT is how you double down on crazy! Not only does the theory involve aliens, but FAKE aliens controlled by a secret government run by wizards!

Now, Mr. Cooper has the luxury of being deceased, and therefore will not have to suffer the February 2nd’s deluge of YouTube comments pointing out that, once again, the world did not explode, nor were there any mass rituals happening on live television and that the only evil being present at the Super Bowl was Robert Kraft.

But I don’t feel sorry for the nameless weirdos of YouTube and the outskirts of the blogosphere; predicting total annihilation is something you always get wrong and by now they have to be used to dealing with rejection.

However, I do feel sorry for David Icke.

You see, back in the 90s, David Icke was a respected footballer (the English kind), TV sports broadcaster and spokesman for the Green Party in England.

In 1990 a psychic told Icke that he was a healer placed on Earth for a reason; by 1999 Icke was on national television explaining that the world is controlled by a secret group of lizard people that assume the form of humans to control mankind. Notable lizard people in hiding include George W. Bush, Queen Elizabeth II, singer/actor Kris Kristofferson and famed old-time hobo music performer Boxcar Willie.

But, like Barnes & Noble, cyber cafes, Kurt Loder and so many other defunct cultural artifacts of the 90s, David Icke and his lizard men are no longer in fashion among the tinfoil hat set.

Today’s conspiracy theorist is focused on secret messages in pop music, mass hypnosis and false flag alien attacks, no time for such outmoded claims as shape shifting lizard men.

Think about it: You’ve up every last ounce of credibility you’ve ever had to become the King of the Crazies and, in a few short years, you’re relegated to the secret history books like a Roswell flying saucer sighting?

All you whackjobs have is each other! You don’t have popular support, reason, or even facts; and you’re just going to turn your back on Icke?

Well, the world may have moved on Mr. Icke but I assure you, while the rest of the world is scouring Katy Perry’s performance frame by frame for clues to the secret Illuminati plans, I’ll cast my eyes upward, waiting patiently for a glimpse of the lizard men from beyond the moon.

By halftime the game is usually a blowout anyway. Go Seahawks.

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Copy Editor Wes Burns is a Sunday columnist. The views expressed in this column are personal views of the writer and don’t necessarily reflect the views of the T-R. Contact Wes Burns at 641-753-6611 or wburns@timesrepublican.com.