BadFish
Huge Member
- Oct 19, 2003
- 18,060
I've mentioned before that a friend loaned me this book https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/18617616 and that I hate-read it. I've never been so annoyed by an author's self satisfied tone. In summary, his big discovery is that a lot of West Coast rock stars of the late sixties had parents who were in the military, or who worked in weapons manufacture. From that he deduces not that this would be entirely unusual for any randomly selected group of people who's parents had been adults during WWII, but that the whole of the Laurel Canyon scene was a psy op. It's not at all clear what the intent of the operation was, but anybody who doesn't agree with him is a sheeple.
Another fun conspiracy theory hate-read was Bruce Robinson's huge tome about Jack the Ripper. Yes, that Bruce Robinson of 'Withnail & I' fame. I'd read his novel 'The Peculiar Memories of Thomas Penman' and really enjoyed it and also have a bit of a thing for reading Jack the Ripper books, so bought it as soon as it came out. I don't read Jack the Ripper books because I'm interested in the case, more because I'm interested in the psychology of the amateur sleuths who write them. They nearly all decide on a suspect early on and snap Ockham's razor in their attempts to highlight everything that supports their argument and belittle or ignore everything that doesn't. I thought Patricia Cornwall's mad ramblings couldn't be surpassed for this, but Bruce did it easily, also throwing in huge amounts of angry rudeness, arrogance, tunnel vision and conspiracy theory about how and why virtually every policeman and politician in the country conspired to cover up the truth that only he is aware of.
I got to that Laural Canyon stuff through looking into Richy Edwards from the Manic Street Preachers' disappearance. Can't remember how I got there but it was something to do with music stars being picked off by the powers that be.