These are screenshots from that AMAZING video by MGMT for their song Kids.I made my papa watch it last night, because my Dad LOVES the movie The Wall -- so do I -- and so I thought he would dig it, with all the monsters walking about and whatnot.
(Dad was a little on the lukewarm side with the Kids video, but, you know, with your papa et al it is always good to get them to try new things.)
Onward: Usually the artwork I choose to go with posts has ZERO to nothing to do with what the post is about.
However, today the two photos have a marginal connection to the topic, which is about the CIA, NSA, FBI, etc., and government lists: getting on them, off them, whether they actually exist, what it takes to be noticed, on and on. I wrote a post about this first paragraph (below, covering last night's discussion with my Dad) before -- and really I've blabbed on a number of occasions (with keen insight, I might add ;) about stuff like intelligence technology and whether they really need your permission at this point to use it, on and on, but since I was hanging with my papa last night when it came up again, I decided to write a little refresher on my view.
At least about using your John Hancock in all cases to keep yourself off weird lists.
Basically I had sent my father to this blog to check out my latest video of my favorite person on earth, my ferret, Digger, PI, roaming the mean streets of my apartment building in Capitol Hill.
My Dad then sort of started checking out the rest of my blog -- he has seen it before but probably forgot -- and out of the blue he's like ...
"You want to get a job for the CIA?"
And I'm like: "Who's asking? What? Where are you looking?" Because, see, he had his laptop in front of him and we were sitting in his living room with my niece and nephew, who were totally absorbed in some dumb-ass Disney show designed for their demographic that was distracting me from my father's astute wonderings.
See, I did not know to what he was referring, so I had to move couches and have a look-see.
It turned out to be a rhetorical question, of course, his point being that if I ever wanted to get a job for the CIA -- say, working for the CIA Library, which I bet completely rocks and pays OK -- it is a safe bet that they might be irritated mildly by my flip statements on the blog profile about being a militant radical, professional subversive, etc.
And my answer to him was simple: If I were really a militant subversive -- and all the other things I listed as my occupation such as "infiltrator and overthrower" -- would I really advertise it? Would I put my John Hancock all over the place?
I don't think the government is concerned with people like me for a number of very simple reasons -- and NOT because I am one of those people who could care less re whether someone is listening because "I'm not doing anything wrong."
NOT. I AM SO NOT ONE OF THOSE "GO-AHEAD-AND-LISTEN-BECAUSE-I'M-NOT-DOING-ANYTHING-WRONG" TYPES. NO. NO. NO. NO. I AM NOT ONE OF THOSE FOLKS.
NO. NO. NO. NO.
NO. NO. NO. NO.
NO. NO. NO. NO.
SEE EXTENSIVE, EXTENSIVE THOUGHTS ON THIS ANGLE TO THIS CONVERSATION FAR BELOW -- TOWARD THE VERY, VERY END -- STARTING WITH ...
NO. NO. NO. NO.
NO. NO. NO. NO.
NO. NO. NO. NO.
Onward: The simplistic version of this blog post ...
First and foremost: I'm on the Grid. OH MY GOD I am so on the Grid. I've had the same land-line phone number for an eon to the power of 10.
No, I don't own a house, which I guess at age 40 makes me a little suspect, but I make up for it in a BIG way by collecting a paycheck -- the other way around, actually (by having it automatically deposited into a bank account).
The bank account. Social Security number. Credit card.
I am a cashless freak on most days.
I am just a freak, period, when it comes to plastic. Even I find it convenient, because I never have to find a receipt for anything. I never have to explain anything. My entire life is laid out there, month by month, on a single credit card. Imagine just how convenient all of us on the Grid are for the powers that would be. They don't need a list. We're it.
The Grid. Bottom line: That is a list. The perfect list.
The CIA doesn't need to worry too much about people who add themselves to a list just by living and breathing.
The folks they do worry about are not so much on the grid. Those are the folks for whom the lists are, mostly: People who entered the country on a student visa and then disappeared off the radar.
Folks who use disposable cell phones -- a lot of them -- like drug dealers from Honduras who have been deported and then turn around and reenter the United States with an ass full of, say, heroin.
Man gets deported. Reenters. Arrested. Jail time. Deported. Reenters. On and on. I'm sure more folks than just our friends at the CIA are worried about that.
*** BEGIN TRANSMISSION OF ONE OF JEANIE'S SIDE NOTES ***
A side note is that, I'm sorry but this is really obvious to me: You've got to ask yourself, about these guys who are dealing drugs in downtown Denver. What is so bad in Honduras that you would be willing to do that? To be deported and then reenter? Reenter after time in an American jail?
And to risk life and limb riding on trains through Mexico -- I guess Mexico unofficially HATES Hondurans slipping through Mexico on their way here -- to get back here to sell drugs to send the money back to mum and papa and the whole poverty stricken farming community.
You know?
Am I the only one who has seen "Maria Full of Grace"? Am I the only one who is like: Well, Honduras must be totally SHITTY for these folks.
Not that I appreciate them selling HEROIN downtown. And, believe me, I've seen firsthand what that SHIT can do to a person, and the person to whom I am referring, well, he did have an affinity for morphine sulfate before this bus-stop deal happened, but basically, and he swears this is true: He was at a bus stop downtown when someone asked him if he wanted to buy whatever amount of Heroin with which they start you off.
I do not know why he would lie about the bus stop. It just rings true to me. I can see it in my head.
He must have been having one hell of a day, because if one of these guys asked you, trust me, you'd be all like: "SECURITY!"
But ... who am I to judge, right?
(And, postscript: He's doing OK, my very, very close, inner-inner circle friend. Much, much later. Doing OK. It was a veritable trip through The Inferno for everybody involved, trust me. But he is on the climb skyward as of this month.)
*** END TRANSMISSION OF ONE OF JEANIE'S SIDE NOTES ***
Anyway, this has gone on quite longer than I intended, and I don't want to bore you anymore than usual, so I'll wrap up by saying that The Grid isn't the only compelling reason why you and I -- most of us, anyways -- are not on a government list. I might have said this before, but I knew a guy, a very, very, very smart guy, who believed he got on a government list because he surfed the wrong part of the CIA website or something like that. Lingered too long. You know.
I dunno. I do know that the government needs the lists to be manageable. Read: short. And that they try very hard to be nimble about the whole thing. They try to get you on there and off there as quickly as possible so they can focus on the real terrorists.
EEK. I cannot believe I just said that.
NO. NO. NO. NO.
NO. NO. NO. NO.
NO. NO. NO. NO.
This next part is so very, very important to me that I cannot believe I didn't start off with it ...
I AM NOT ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE WHO SAYS, AT A COCKTAIL PARTY OR WHEREVER: "I AM NOT TALKING ABOUT ANYTHING ILLEGAL OR DOING ANYTHING WRONG, SO THEY CAN GO AHEAD AND LISTEN TO MY CONVERSATIONS."
Oh, Honey, NO. No. We're not talking about the cliche of a slippery slope here.
Honey: We're talking about a dead drop. Straight down. Straight down to Iran. Straight to North Korea.
You do not want to be handing back freedoms.
You do not want to mess with your basic Civil Rights.
Trust me: Let's not even go there as a people.
Do not give up the cow just because they are selling the milk back to you in nice packaging.
No, Honey. No.
NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO.
I should have started off with this angle, and I apologize to you all that I did not and sounded like an idiot as a result. TRUST ME: I am not one of those.
I guess I was just blabbing on in response to my Dad's question. I was just saying that I am not so worried about a government so inept that they would keep me on a list for an unusual amount of time that I would hesitate to be flip about my occupation.
Say I was getting on a plane in Paris, going home, and -- just being my usual exhausted bipolar self -- called someone from an airport payphone to say that I was worried about something, say about the airport folks rounding up all the Americans and corralling them into a certain part of the airport.
In keeping with the I-don't-want-anyone-listening-to-my-phone-calls view of life on Earth, I would not want to be put on any weird list.
I guess I am saying I am not important enough. And that surely someone would see the flip-ness in the laundry list I have written after Occupation on my blogger profile:
militant radical / professional subversive / infiltrator and overthrower / agitator / resistance leader / commie / communist / democratic socialist / demonstrator / activist / protester -- on and on!
Surely the word "flip" would enter someone's mind by the time they got to those last three words.
And if the world were not safe like that, if you could not assume that the world were such that you could write that, then we would not be here. We'd be in Iran or North Korea.
And we would do something about it.
At least I and my recovering addict friend would.
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