I REALLY THINK I am beginning to get the hang of this Internet thingie. A few days ago, readers of this column may recall, I had a pleasant chat on the old Web with Elvis Presley, about blue suede shoes and grits and stuff. Now I've found a way to join the world's conspiracy theorists somewhere out there in cyberspace.

Truth be told, I've never been much for conspiracy theories. The grassy knoll in Dallas looks to me like just another little hill that needs mowing, no tentacled tree with an IQ of 5,964 has beamed me up to his flying frisbee for a poke around my innards, and I get a strong whiff not unlike that of a three-dollar bill about those Roswell aliens.

In fact, mine has been rather a normal sort of life, if you don't count the four marriages, the party where I served cat food pate to astronauts, or the time I got caught watching "Combat" on my portable TV in a rice paddy while the North Vietnamese battalion that was shooting at us took a break for nuoc mam and green tea.

So no conspiracy theories to enliven my otherwise humdrum existence, not even during the days when I was busily bankrolling the entire Scotch whisky industry. A lubricated brain I've often thought to be a prerequisite for the gestation of the outlandish, weird and downright wacky, but alas. . .

Actually, I was starting to feel somewhat deprived and rather left out of things. In Britain, if you haven't got a decent conspiracy theory, you are nobody, nothing, zilch. I mean, we have some classics here, like the jumped-up storekeeper from Egypt who insists his son with the silly name, Dodi, and Princess Diana were murdered by British intelligence at MI5 (or maybe it's 6), on orders from the Queen's husband, Prince Philip.

("Intelligence," as practiced by British agents and their counterparts in the CIA, is roughly akin to "skilled rat-catcher" as applied to my cat Currant Bun. No Colonel Khadafy, Fidel Castro or mouse has ever been harmed or even so much as had his/its hair mussed by any of the three.)

But I digress. Clearly, in the conspiracy sweepstakes I needed to get "with it," as they say, and get a horse to run. More in desperation than hope, I turned to the Internet. And lo and behold, I found it -a supply house for personalized conspiracy theories, made to order and delivered to your doorstep (well, your computer screen) in a trice, in an unmarked electronic envelope.

What the folks at Conspire (catchy name, that) were promising was a conspiracy theory all my own, straight off the assembly line, no poring over dusty tomes or newspapers or attending cell meetings of like-minded lunatics to find something worth being paranoid about.

All Conspire needed were a few bits of information ("intelligence," as it's called in the trade), such as a couple of victims and conspirators, a hero or two, the semblance of one or two threatening plots and some ideas as to where and in what corner of the known (or even unknown, for all I know) part of the universe all this was bubbling conspiratorially.

I duly typed in the necessary, clicked on "discover," and not for long did I wait. Within a few nanoseconds, my conspiracy was there, in almost comprehensible English:

"Nostradamus's works clearly indicate that Microsoft is trying to turn your brain into purple cat food. Also, where he says 'the mouse in the men's room at the Pentagon will shy away / the lion's roar is as dust, ' he meant that the telephone company is threatening you. The lion is Captain Birdseye, who is trying to protect your cat Flavius from Microsoft, with little success."

Well, let me tell you, that left me quite flabbergasted. Also pretty baffled. I had no idea what in hell they were talking about - besides which, Flavius has long since joined the ranks of ex-cats, pushing up catnip plants out at the Silvermere Pet Cemetery. I had another go:

"The UFO sightings over the Tower of London are actually mass hallucinations engineered by Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream to make you and other enemies of Sasquatch think they are not alone. In the ensuing paranoia, Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream plans to turn your grits into beanie-weenies."

Wait, there's more: "If you see UFOs, close your eyes - it's all a trick. Meanwhile, a special task force led by Roger the Rabbit is being set up to tackle the problem."

That's more like it.

Okay, so it's not exactly a masterpiece of the genre. In fact, Conspire's convenience conspiracies come with a caveat - and in something of an understatement - that its operatives "can't guarantee a coherent theory."

What comes out of the electronic stewpot "may even be self-contradictory," but on the positive side, as Conspire confides, "this hasn't mattered to generations of conspiracy theorists, so why should it matter to you?"

Good point. Anyway, all conspiracy theorists, in theory, had to start somewhere. I mean, it took a munitions factory full of gunshot tests, a vanload of tape measures, sextants, astrolabes and, for all I know, the Hubble space telescope and a dozen rectal thermometers, plus enough Oliver Stone film footage to document the daily doings of Methuselah to get the JFK assassination conspiracy factory into full production.

Now that I have my own conspiracy theory, I'm still not sure just what to do with it. Whether to go muttering it under my breath in bars, or scream it like a herniated banshee on a street corner, or get Congress to launch an investigation and keep 1,847 civil servants gainfully employed for the next 22 years - it's enough to drive you potty.

Anyway, while pondering the possibilities, I was about to check out a theory about the "atomic mule's mirror to heaven's gate" on the Internet when I stumbled across something that really grabbed my attention: "How To Be Abusive in the Swedish Language."

So I'm going to take a break, and find out more about javlar and forbannade and the K-word (k*******) and give Ben and Jerry and Sasquatch a rest. While it helps to have a goodly dose of paranoia once in a while, it does take it out of you. Particularly with a gray cat with one fang forever snapping at your heels.

Thought for the Week: What happens if you get scared half to death twice?

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