COLUMN: "I'm Not Paranoid, Am I?"

From Mike Ingenthron's "Cheesecake Truck," Fall '92 "Stuart" by the Dead Milkmen · The Dead Milkmen claim that "queers" are teaming up with aliens to build landing pads for gay Martians. As you might have guessed, "Stuart" is a song about paranoia. It is not a song about homophobia, but, being the paranoid person that you are, you probably assume that it is, and that the Dead Milkmen are evil, sinister fiends attempting to rid the world of homosexuality. And why -- in keeping with the Dead Milkmen's song -- should you be so paranoid? Because everyone else already is. Here at Penn, we all walk around campus, waiting for each other to make egregious and un-PC type errors. When someone does, we assume that the wrongdoer is threatening our personal freedom, we get paranoid and we attempt to drive him or her toward a gory, festering death. Let's take an example of this paranoia. I own a self-made T-Shirt which reads, "White Men Can't Loot." It's merely a play on words, derived from a recent movie title. And nothing more. However, some people see my shirt and say something like "That's funny" -- but they also say something like, "Do you wear that shirt out in public?" or "Do you feel safe wearing that shirt?" Of course not. Instead, I realize that my T-shirt has two really unpopular words on it: "white" and "men." As a result, I feel like every non-white person or non-male person -- some people call them females -- are out to get me. Why? Because I'm paranoid too. Consequentially, all those non-white persons and non-male persons are forming groups to come after me. I'm sure of it. In fact, I believe everyone is secretly out to get everyone else. But, thanks to paranoia, we have increased the public's awareness of each other's subversive plots, and hopefully we can stop them in time. But so far, we've only talked about a T-shirt. Meanwhile, as you read this column, the sinister elements in our society are carrying out more dastardly deeds against us. For instance, you probably haven't realized that our dear school's administration is not trying to give students like myself a top-dollar education. Instead, they're secretly brainwashing us students so they can round us up and slaughter us and sell us to fast food restaurants in place of beef. Of course, they don't slaughter everyone at once. It would be too difficult to cover up that scenario. Instead, the LCE -- Let's Control Everyone -- handpicks various DUDs -- Demonic Underage Drinkers -- from around campus. The University slaughters these unfortunate souls first. Then all the DUDs get transferred to the WISTAR -- World Institute of Slaughtering Troublemakers for Area Restaurants -- Institute, where lab technicians perform vicious experiments on the DUDs before they slaughter them. How do I know this? Well, maybe I'm paranoid, but I don't see any other possibility. But let's look at another example. I'm sure you all know that in the last decade or two, the AIDS epidemic has started spreading and that the number of drug-related deaths and gang-related murders is increasing rapidly each year. But did anyone stop to realize that, at the same time, Disneyland branched out into Disney World, and Disney World is growing at an alarming rate? Coincidence? I imagine not. It's obvious that Disney developed the HIV virus in their laboratories and sprung it on the world's population. At the same time, they started shipping huge amounts of drugs and guns into the country. As a final assurance, they somehow got an actor into the White House. Now they're watching the country kill itself! But they're not stopping with the United States. Oh no. As any person of average intelligence could figure out, they plan to rule the whole world. Why do you think they decided to call themselves "Disney World"? In accordance with their plan, they've expanded across the ocean with "EuroDisney", or whatever it's called, to seize control of Europe as well. Didn't anyone see the signs? After all, they knocked down the Soviet Union as if it were a house of cards. And they brought the European Community together under one currency. Why? So they can control a broader scope of Europe. It may not make a whole lot of sense to you, but your attempt to apply logic is just the weakness they've counted on all these years. And what have we been doing this whole time? We, the stupid Americans, keep funding Disney's behemoth research costs by paying exorbitant admission prices. We absorb the subliminal messages of Disney cartoons and films. When we were younger, we breathed the noxious, brainwashing fumes emitted from the Disney Pez containers. Something must be done about this madness. I hope it's not too late to change before Disney World becomes one big concentration camp and we're all forced to wear Mickey Mouse ears and sing the "It's a Small World" for eternity. So, if you're upset that homosexuals are in cahoots with the Martians, or that persons of other genders or cultural backgrounds are after you, you're in a lot of trouble, because you're becoming a slave to the Disneyland grind. And you thought it was just a theme park. Mike Ingenthron is a junior Accounting major from St. Louis, Missouri. "Cheesecake Truck" appears alternate Mondays.

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