Here’s a fun piece of paranoid conspiracy from our Paynim friends far away across the seas. According to the fevered brains of some in the Arabic-speaking world, the Coca-Cola logo contains (deliberately, of course) a terrible and blasphemous slander against God and His Prophet (image courtesy of the horrible infidels of Jihad Watch).

This has apparently gained so much traction over time, that Coca-Cola has had to get Islamic scholars debunk it. There’s even a small portion of Coke’s website devoted to Mideast rumors. At first, I was going to rant about how small-minded and ridiculous this was, especially since the bit about Burger King was still in my head, as well as the recent story of the shock and disgust our tolerant and loving Saudi allies felt at discovering the grave Zionist threat presented by disposable cups.

Then I remembered that hysteria over asinine theories like this is certainly not confined to Islam. Remember the old Procter & Gamble logo? It used to appear on every tube of toothpaste, every box of soap they sold. It’s a superb art noveau sort of design, but some are convinced it’s some sort of Satanic seal, I guess because it has 13 stars on it. Does this mean that the United States, with its 13 colonies, is an entirely Satanic construction? That would explain things like Velveeta, Paris Hilton, and the RIAA, but it all just goes to show how much bunk all this stuff is.

Except for my own theory about the underground Armenian gerbil-smuggling trade and its sinister influence on global politics since 1969 when the real President Kennedy was secretly assassinated on the NASA movie set used to fake the moon landings… which was built by Nazi Freemasons. The implications are obvious.