Murder At the Conspiracy Convention ‘The history of civilization is the history of warfare between secret societies.” --/shmael Reed In the men’ s room at the airport, a man standing at the urinal a couple of urinals away from my urinal was urinating without aiming his penis. Both hands were flossing his teeth. A monument to multi-tasking. I’ Il admit that | occasionally brush my teeth while I’ m urinating—at least that leaves me with one hand free to steer—but this guy could possibly be the only human being on earth who pisses and flosses simultaneously. He must have practiced at home before he decided to go public. And of course he was proud of his manual dexterity. Maybe he even has a license plate that says PFLOSS, though other drivers might assume it’ s his name, not his avocation. In any case, that image immediately replaced my previous visual mantra: seeing one of the kids on a school bus holding up to the window a sign that read HELP US!--and laughing with his classmates. Now, on Memorial Day weekend, | was catching a flight to San Jose, California. | was headed for Conspiracy Con 2001, a convention featuring the prophets of the sinister. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015226