Early last Sunday, the driver of a speeding tanker truck carrying gasoline lost control and crashed on the 580-to-80 ramp (that is, the connection between most of the East Bay going to and fron San Francisco and Berkeley). As a result, the gasoline ignited, creating a huge, intensely hot fireball which destroyed the overpass. Needless to say, it’s seriously affected Bay Area commuters.
To most people’s amusement, several 4/29 conspiracy sites have sprung up. The major one, and the inspiration for all others is 429truth.com, which appears to be a rousing mockery of all 9/11 conspiracy sites.While never dropping character, the blogger tirelessly throws out all sorts of hysterical assertions. He calls the 4/29 accident “Oakland’s Pearl Harbor,” and suggests all sorts of underhanded motives for it, including a conspiracy to force people into public transportation. He connects vaguely similar accidents all over the Bay Area to this one, and at one point, also points out that 4-2-9 spells G-A-Y on a telephone keypad. Homophobia, or a gay activist plot? He reports, you decide. It even includes outrageous comments, like the observation that there were no Jews on the overpass that night.
I was seriously tempted to throw in a comment of my own, like that some parent at school told me she knows the tanker truck driver’s neighbor is Kim Il Jong’s cousin’s brother-in-law’s high school girlfriend. But the blogger repeatedly asserts that he’s serious, and has even said so to at least one reporter. That just makes the site scary, like the 9/11 “Truthers” with their “USA Did 9/11” signs.
Another (similarly named) site, 429truth.org, is straight-on parody, both of the very notion of a 4/29 conspiracy and of the 9/11 conspiracies. Unfortunately, the blogger is laughing to hard to get up the right level of hysteria, but he did find my favorite 4/29 conspiracy theory picture: Vice President Cheney speeding away from the site:
And then there are the 4/29 conspiracy sites that just get downright silly, but then, there are 9/11 conspiracy sites like that too. IKEA is almost right next to the 580/80 overpass, and more than a few people have suspected something sinister about cheap minimalist Swedish furniture. IKEAdid429.com makes the connection! Among other evidence, they found a picture showing giant Swedish meatballs embedded in the wreakage:
Well, now that I’ve seen that, I know there’s some kind of coverup going on! After all, my cousin’s husband was an IKEA fanatic, and he’s a German banker! German bankers + Swedish furniture spells T’-R-U-B-B-L-E! (or is that T-R-Ø-Ü-B-I-L?!) Oh, I guess I’ve been reading these sites too much now: I’m getting into it.
They just prove that when people find their own personal “Satan,” they’ll find their own personal “Satan” in everything, and no one can convince them otherwise.