Over the top paranoia is the new normal.
Most of the time I’m out here in the office and workshop and most of the time my wife is not, so in the course of a day we will email and text each other numerous times.
This morning I told her in email that everything is closing in and we need to possibly pull further into our bolthole. That word is bigger than you might know.
Over the past few months my job of designing buildings has become arduous and I’m not sure why. Normally my plans sail through the building dept’s with ease as my record is formidable. I do good work and my plans are a pleasure to work off of.
But not no more.
Lately my plans are being rejected from the building dept’s not just once but multiple times. Each pass through the system means the plans are reviewed by a different gov’t drone who finds more things that need to be done to the plans to meet that particular persons approval, which is for naught, because the next time through the system another person will do the reviewing. It almost seems to be an endless conveyor belt through gov’t red tape.
I don’t do gov’t well. Never have.
I have made it an artform avoiding all things gov’t as much as possible.
Gov’t is going out of it’s way to involve itself in my life.
I won’t have it.
I like to think of myself as a moral, decent person, and I try to not be a burden to anyone and a friend to all. I continue to believe this in spite of everything collapsing everywhere. It’s going to get worse. Maybe you haven’t been effected yet, but you will. When the ground beneath your feets turns to quicksand you will be drawn down unless you have an escape clause built into your life contract. This is where my wife and I are fast approaching. My work is collapsing, turning into a quicksand conveyor belt as so is my wifes.
My wife is self employed and does work for all the major publishing firms, firms that you have heard of, and she’s been dealing with them for more than 20 years. Over the past 3 years she’s had to cut a couple publishers loose because they were moving in a direction that she couldn’t abide with, I think you know what I mean. Her work is turning to quicksand.
Her latest email to me this morning:
Unfortunately, work is getting much more difficult for everyone.
You with the extra work on drawings & revisions.
Builders with new building regulations, etc.
I received one of the big jobs from H******e this morning.
They now have a 20-page pamphlet detailing “Inclusive Language and Terms” we have to follow.
Hundreds of terms to consult: Terms Not to Use and Terms to Use Instead!
There’s a Racial Slur Database, Ethnic Slurs to avoid, proper Gender and Sexuality terms, proper Mental Health terms, and more.
And it’s extremely detailed.
Here’s an example of terms or phrases we have to avoid:
• Anti-Black examples to avoid: uppity, ghetto, you people, sketchy, angry, aggressive, shady, nappy hair, sassy, and thug.
• Use enslaved person instead of slave, and enslaver instead of slave owner.
• Avoid casual use of the word slave and terms such as master bedroom (also a gender issue) and other terms rooted in slavery or anti-Blackness (e.g., nitty-gritty, sold down the river, peanut gallery, plantation, cakewalk, takes the cake, call a spade a spade, grandfathered in, fuzzy-wuzzy, mumbo-jumbo, and lynch mob).
• Avoid hard worker or unskilled worker Latinx stereotypes and language equating janitor or landscaper with Latinx men. Watch for descriptions of Latinx women as shrill or loud and any language that hypersexualizes Latinx women and men.
There’s pages and pages more of those types of examples.
Even things like:
• Use died by suicide instead of committed suicide.
• Avoid using the term arrested by itself, which can be potentially libelous. Instead, use arrested on a charge of, or allegedly.
• Avoid illegal immigrant and illegal alien; use undocumented immigrant or unauthorized immigrant.
And of course all the gender-related stuff:
• Don’t use these terms: homosexual, transsexual, transgendered.
• Reword “gendered terms” such as mankind, manpower, manning, manned flight, manmade, man-hours, layman, brotherhood, and man up.
• Don’t use the term sex change. Transitioning is preferred. When referring specifically to surgical modifications, use gender confirmation surgery (GCS), gender affirming surgery, or sex reassignment surgery (SRS).
And on and on and on….
—————————–
Architecture will have been a huge impact on my life for 50 years come 20Jan2022 and I imagine it will always occupy a large part of my brain but I foresee a time in the near future where I will not be doing like I have been if I am doing it at all. Fortunately I am skilled in several other things and interested in lots more things, and, we’re not starving, or in debt, or hurting for money. But if either or both of us are not producing an income we may become nervous in time. So now, everything is on the table, no possible ideas forward are off the table. We’re reeling everything in, becoming tighter, quicker, leaner, and maybe even meaner. Humans adapt to their environment and try to make it their own in all ways. That’s us. Peace, out.
I knew our lives would never return to the “real” normal when we were warned to never refer to that heavy steel lid in the middle of the street as the “manhole cover.” It’s “Person Hole”… got it? Don’t forget it.
Mike SeyleNovember 2, 2021, 4:14 PM
To your wife’s issue. I was a corporate writer, lately a proofreader using AP style. Large corporation, spanning the globe. Always had to cap “Black” and lowercase “white.” Caught those errors where the content person left the “l” out of “public,” and misspelled the CEO’s name in a PowerPoint pitch for new biz. Wonderful people, but for some reason the DE&I people started using me. I’d fight it. “You can’t say minorities bore the brunt of the COVID shutdowns when so many white owners lost their businesses.” They ignored the edit. And a ton of other nonsense. Quit when they required “implicit bias” training. I figured I can live on the money I have, and to hell with those folks. Never been happier.
The old soviet ‘joke’; 3 people together, one’s a KGB informant.
Today, here now, 3 electronic devices on your desk, in you car, in your bedroom, all three are recording and reporting.
It was interesting to see the uptick of widespread surveillance through history with a BIG leap forward after 9/11 and the Patriot Act. Don’t forget that this decree contains over 3,000 pages of evil that mysteriously appeared only a couple of days after 9/11 and I think only one Congressman refused to endorse it. Nobody read it and it was one of those conniving moments when the government said “we’ve got to adopt it to see what’s in it” which is now the way you are vaccinated, too.
The guy in the video might have his heart in the right place, but one indisputable fact of the universe is that privacy as we once understood it is long gone. No newfangled tech wizardry will do anything about that fact. No “secure” browser, no VPN, no dedicated server has any effect whatsoever except to make the user of those gadgets feel safer. Government nannies and Big Tech busybodies can access any damn thing they want to whenever they want so for whatever reason they can conjure up. Those who rely on the Law to stop this are being very foolish. Law in the US is as dead as Dillinger.
So what’s to be done? First: Understand that every thing you send by phone, by email or by computer is, for all intens and purposes, public knowlegede.
The guy in the video might have his heart in the right place, but one indisputable fact of the universe is that privacy as we once understood it is long gone. No newfangled tech wizardry will do anything about that fact. No “secure” browser, no VPN, no dedicated server has any effect whatsoever except to make the user of those gadgets feel safer. Government nannies and Big Tech busybodies can access any damn thing they want to whenever they want so for whatever reason they can conjure up. Those who rely on the Law to stop this are being very foolish. Law in the US is as dead as Dillinger.
So what’s to be done? Understand that every thing you send by phone, by email or by computer, everything you purchase using a credit card, all activity on Amazon is for all intents and purposes, public knowledge. Live with that awareness and take heed. You will be pleased to know that “smart” devices—including your fancy big screen tv and Amazon Echo and “Ok, Google”—record all that you do. Having little “afternoon delight” in your bedroom in front of your tv? Someone is listening. And recording. Got that new and improved robot vacuum that uses the web to map your floorplan? Anyone now can know exactly how your home is set up. Good info for burglars. And by the way, the Feds now have the ability to spy on you through the walls of your home.
Feel safer now? More secure? More private?
There is no going back to how things were. Something done cannot be undone. We are not luddites.
“Who’s watching?
Tell me, who’s watching?
Who’s watching me?
I’m just an average man with an average life
I work from nine to five, hey, hell, I pay the price
All I want is to be left alone in my average home
But why do I always feel like I’m in the twilight zone and?
I always feel like somebody’s watchin’ me
And I have no privacy (Oh-oh-oh)
I always feel like somebody’s watchin’ me
Tell me, is it just a dream?
When I come home at night
I bolt the door real tight
People call me on the phone, I’m trying to avoid
But can the people on TV see me or am I just paranoid?
When I’m in the shower, I’m afraid to wash my hair
‘Cause I might open my eyes and find someone standing there
People say I’m crazy, just a little touched
But maybe showers remind me of Psycho too much
That’s why
I always feel like somebody’s watchin’ me
And I have no privacy (Oh-oh-oh)
I always feel like somebody’s watchin’ me
Who’s playing tricks on me?
Who’s watching me?
I don’t know anymore
Are the neighbors watching me?
Who’s watching?
Well, is the mailman watching me?
Tell me who’s watching?
And I don’t feel safe anymore, oh, what a mess
I wonder who’s watching me now (Who?!) – the IRS?]
I always feel like somebody’s watchin’ me
And I have no privacy (Oh-oh-oh)
I always feel like somebody’s watchin’ me
Tell me, is it just a dream?
I always feel like somebody’s watchin’ me (Hee-hee-hee)
And I have no privacy (Oh-oh-oh)
I always feel like somebody’s watchin’ me
Who’s playing tricks on me?
Who’s watching?”
I keep a pretty low profile: No television. No smart phone. No wired devices in the home, or car.
Even so, when I got my first dial-up connection to the internet, I realized right away that every keystroke on that thing was recordable, and was probably recorded.
Privacy?
We have the privacy of a listing in the telephone book. Anyone who had the skills, and really wanted to “get” me could learn everything they need to know from looking up my isp address, and hacking a look at computer history, paypal, amazon and ebay. No doubt, the thought police could find me guilty of thinking many unapproved thoughts. They could find evidence of whatever ‘ist’, or ‘ism’ they need to accuse me of.
But I’m an old retired bastard. No one of interest. A target of little or no value to the enemy.
So JWM: You are “an old retired bastard.” Hey, me too! Literally, in fact, as my mother and my biological father were not married. Never did tie the knot—but that story is for some other time.
I have not watched tv in 43 years. But I do have an Android “smart” phone and a very nice and fast computer. No camera or microphone of course. And no car, so I can’t be tracked by that method. I hardly ever—almost never—take my phone with me, so anyone tracking me would think, “This guy’s boring. All he does is stay at home.” And if I do take the phone while bicycling locally or on a long bikepacking trip I keep the phone in a Faraday cage and turned off. I use DeLorme maps rather than Google maps, and never let the Luciferians at Google know where I’m heading. So when I do take the phone out any busybody would just have a few GPS markers to show where I have been, and no way to see where I’m going.
“No doubt, the thought police could find me guilty of thinking many unapproved thoughts.” True. Which proves Beria’s quip, “Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime.” You’re guilty if the Feds really, really want you. And you believe yourself to be “no one of interest. A target of little or no value to the enemy.” Not so. Small targets are rounded up all the time, not for any particular offence, but “pour encourager les autres.”
Almost 20 years ago I was informed that a part of the Federal Government was “on to me” for some damn reason. Something about the Feds “knowing what I did in South America.” Weird things began to happen, lots of threats and odd occurrences. And then there was that “chance” encounter in Paraguay with US Special Forces. When I asked them what they were doing there, I was told, “We ain’t here. And you didn’t see us.” Ok then. I can’t be more specific than this. But I was—so I had thought—a “small target”. So now I am a bit paranoid—for good reason.
“Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you’re always afraid
Step out of line, the man come and take you away.”
That is no longer just a song. It’s my life.
gwbnycNovember 3, 2021, 1:15 AM
“Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you’re always afraid
Step out of line, the man come and take you away.”
-written in response to a 10PM curfew enacted for sixteen year olds on the Sunset Strip mid-sixties.
-from “Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson”.
I figured early on that you’re a right bastard Mike (In the Aussie good sense).
I do turn the TV on once or thrice a year, pretty much just a channel surf the newest crazy, and then back off.
My cell phone is usually, almost always, off. When I carry it its so I can call out, if a need arises, not so somebody can call me.
My computer, attached to the world through my wood fired router is mikeless and cameraless too. I do use my android tablet to video phone converse with friends in other countries and if google or NSA wants to hear about sunsets over the Seto Inland Sea or past coal production in the Netherlands, mine are go to conversations.
Both my rigs, the Jeep and the truck, are too old to have digital bulls eyes built in.
Am I well obscured? No, just typing this here…
but I do try to be reasonably careful.
Real World Address for Donations, Mash Notes and Hate Mail
Gerard Van der Leun
1692 MANGROVE AVE
APT 379
Chico, Ca 95926
Green Pants Interior by Klahn
Who Am I? by Carl Sandburg
My head knocks against the stars.
My feet are on the hilltops.
My finger-tips are in the valleys and shores of universal life.
Down in the sounding foam of primal things I reach my hands and play with pebbles of destiny.
I have been to hell and back many times.
I know all about heaven, for I have talked with God.
I dabble in the blood and guts of the terrible.
I know the passionate seizure of beauty
And the marvelous rebellion of man at all signs reading “Keep Off.”
My name is Truth and I am the most elusive captive in the universe.
Duty, Beauty, Liberty, Country, Honor, Family, Faith — Plus a few simple easy to follow rules for guys
Men saw the stars at the edge of the sea
They thought great thoughts about liberty
Poets wrote down words that did fit
Writers wrote books
Thinkers thought about it
Take it where you find it
Can’t leave it alone
You will find a purpose
To carry it on
Mainly when you find it
Your heart will be strong
About it
Many’s the road I have walked upon
Many’s the hour between dusk and dawn
Many’s the time
Many’s the mile
I see it all now
Through the eyes of a child
Take it where you find it
Can’t leave it alone
You will find a purpose
To carry it on
Mainly when you find it
Your heart will be strong
About it
[Chorus]
Lost dreams and found dreams
In America
In America
In America
Lost dreams and found dreams
In America
In America
In America
And close your eyes
Leave it all for a while
Leave the world
And your worries behind
You will build on whatever is real
And wake up each day
To a new waking dream
Take it where you find it
Can’t leave it alone
You will find a purpose
To carry it on
Mainly when you find it
Your heart will be strong
About it
[Chorus]
Change, change come over
Change come over
Talkin’ about a change
Change, change
Change come over, now
Change, change, change come over
I’m gonna walk down the street
Until I see
My shining light
I’m gonna walk down the street
Until I see
My shining light
I’m gonna walk down the street
Until I see
My shining light
I’m gonna walk down the street
Until I see
My shining light
I see my light
See my light
See my shining light
I see my light
See my light
See my shining light
Gerard Van der Leun
Comments on this entry are closed.
Over the top paranoia is the new normal.
Most of the time I’m out here in the office and workshop and most of the time my wife is not, so in the course of a day we will email and text each other numerous times.
This morning I told her in email that everything is closing in and we need to possibly pull further into our bolthole. That word is bigger than you might know.
Over the past few months my job of designing buildings has become arduous and I’m not sure why. Normally my plans sail through the building dept’s with ease as my record is formidable. I do good work and my plans are a pleasure to work off of.
But not no more.
Lately my plans are being rejected from the building dept’s not just once but multiple times. Each pass through the system means the plans are reviewed by a different gov’t drone who finds more things that need to be done to the plans to meet that particular persons approval, which is for naught, because the next time through the system another person will do the reviewing. It almost seems to be an endless conveyor belt through gov’t red tape.
I don’t do gov’t well. Never have.
I have made it an artform avoiding all things gov’t as much as possible.
Gov’t is going out of it’s way to involve itself in my life.
I won’t have it.
I like to think of myself as a moral, decent person, and I try to not be a burden to anyone and a friend to all. I continue to believe this in spite of everything collapsing everywhere. It’s going to get worse. Maybe you haven’t been effected yet, but you will. When the ground beneath your feets turns to quicksand you will be drawn down unless you have an escape clause built into your life contract. This is where my wife and I are fast approaching. My work is collapsing, turning into a quicksand conveyor belt as so is my wifes.
My wife is self employed and does work for all the major publishing firms, firms that you have heard of, and she’s been dealing with them for more than 20 years. Over the past 3 years she’s had to cut a couple publishers loose because they were moving in a direction that she couldn’t abide with, I think you know what I mean. Her work is turning to quicksand.
Her latest email to me this morning:
Unfortunately, work is getting much more difficult for everyone.
You with the extra work on drawings & revisions.
Builders with new building regulations, etc.
I received one of the big jobs from H******e this morning.
They now have a 20-page pamphlet detailing “Inclusive Language and Terms” we have to follow.
Hundreds of terms to consult: Terms Not to Use and Terms to Use Instead!
There’s a Racial Slur Database, Ethnic Slurs to avoid, proper Gender and Sexuality terms, proper Mental Health terms, and more.
And it’s extremely detailed.
Here’s an example of terms or phrases we have to avoid:
• Anti-Black examples to avoid: uppity, ghetto, you people, sketchy, angry, aggressive, shady, nappy hair, sassy, and thug.
• Use enslaved person instead of slave, and enslaver instead of slave owner.
• Avoid casual use of the word slave and terms such as master bedroom (also a gender issue) and other terms rooted in slavery or anti-Blackness (e.g., nitty-gritty, sold down the river, peanut gallery, plantation, cakewalk, takes the cake, call a spade a spade, grandfathered in, fuzzy-wuzzy, mumbo-jumbo, and lynch mob).
• Avoid hard worker or unskilled worker Latinx stereotypes and language equating janitor or landscaper with Latinx men. Watch for descriptions of Latinx women as shrill or loud and any language that hypersexualizes Latinx women and men.
There’s pages and pages more of those types of examples.
Even things like:
• Use died by suicide instead of committed suicide.
• Avoid using the term arrested by itself, which can be potentially libelous. Instead, use arrested on a charge of, or allegedly.
• Avoid illegal immigrant and illegal alien; use undocumented immigrant or unauthorized immigrant.
And of course all the gender-related stuff:
• Don’t use these terms: homosexual, transsexual, transgendered.
• Reword “gendered terms” such as mankind, manpower, manning, manned flight, manmade, man-hours, layman, brotherhood, and man up.
• Don’t use the term sex change. Transitioning is preferred. When referring specifically to surgical modifications, use gender confirmation surgery (GCS), gender affirming surgery, or sex reassignment surgery (SRS).
And on and on and on….
—————————–
Architecture will have been a huge impact on my life for 50 years come 20Jan2022 and I imagine it will always occupy a large part of my brain but I foresee a time in the near future where I will not be doing like I have been if I am doing it at all. Fortunately I am skilled in several other things and interested in lots more things, and, we’re not starving, or in debt, or hurting for money. But if either or both of us are not producing an income we may become nervous in time. So now, everything is on the table, no possible ideas forward are off the table. We’re reeling everything in, becoming tighter, quicker, leaner, and maybe even meaner. Humans adapt to their environment and try to make it their own in all ways. That’s us. Peace, out.
I knew our lives would never return to the “real” normal when we were warned to never refer to that heavy steel lid in the middle of the street as the “manhole cover.” It’s “Person Hole”… got it? Don’t forget it.
To your wife’s issue. I was a corporate writer, lately a proofreader using AP style. Large corporation, spanning the globe. Always had to cap “Black” and lowercase “white.” Caught those errors where the content person left the “l” out of “public,” and misspelled the CEO’s name in a PowerPoint pitch for new biz. Wonderful people, but for some reason the DE&I people started using me. I’d fight it. “You can’t say minorities bore the brunt of the COVID shutdowns when so many white owners lost their businesses.” They ignored the edit. And a ton of other nonsense. Quit when they required “implicit bias” training. I figured I can live on the money I have, and to hell with those folks. Never been happier.
The old soviet ‘joke’; 3 people together, one’s a KGB informant.
Today, here now, 3 electronic devices on your desk, in you car, in your bedroom, all three are recording and reporting.
It was interesting to see the uptick of widespread surveillance through history with a BIG leap forward after 9/11 and the Patriot Act. Don’t forget that this decree contains over 3,000 pages of evil that mysteriously appeared only a couple of days after 9/11 and I think only one Congressman refused to endorse it. Nobody read it and it was one of those conniving moments when the government said “we’ve got to adopt it to see what’s in it” which is now the way you are vaccinated, too.
The guy in the video might have his heart in the right place, but one indisputable fact of the universe is that privacy as we once understood it is long gone. No newfangled tech wizardry will do anything about that fact. No “secure” browser, no VPN, no dedicated server has any effect whatsoever except to make the user of those gadgets feel safer. Government nannies and Big Tech busybodies can access any damn thing they want to whenever they want so for whatever reason they can conjure up. Those who rely on the Law to stop this are being very foolish. Law in the US is as dead as Dillinger.
So what’s to be done? First: Understand that every thing you send by phone, by email or by computer is, for all intens and purposes, public knowlegede.
The guy in the video might have his heart in the right place, but one indisputable fact of the universe is that privacy as we once understood it is long gone. No newfangled tech wizardry will do anything about that fact. No “secure” browser, no VPN, no dedicated server has any effect whatsoever except to make the user of those gadgets feel safer. Government nannies and Big Tech busybodies can access any damn thing they want to whenever they want so for whatever reason they can conjure up. Those who rely on the Law to stop this are being very foolish. Law in the US is as dead as Dillinger.
So what’s to be done? Understand that every thing you send by phone, by email or by computer, everything you purchase using a credit card, all activity on Amazon is for all intents and purposes, public knowledge. Live with that awareness and take heed. You will be pleased to know that “smart” devices—including your fancy big screen tv and Amazon Echo and “Ok, Google”—record all that you do. Having little “afternoon delight” in your bedroom in front of your tv? Someone is listening. And recording. Got that new and improved robot vacuum that uses the web to map your floorplan? Anyone now can know exactly how your home is set up. Good info for burglars. And by the way, the Feds now have the ability to spy on you through the walls of your home.
Feel safer now? More secure? More private?
There is no going back to how things were. Something done cannot be undone. We are not luddites.
“Who’s watching?
Tell me, who’s watching?
Who’s watching me?
I’m just an average man with an average life
I work from nine to five, hey, hell, I pay the price
All I want is to be left alone in my average home
But why do I always feel like I’m in the twilight zone and?
I always feel like somebody’s watchin’ me
And I have no privacy (Oh-oh-oh)
I always feel like somebody’s watchin’ me
Tell me, is it just a dream?
When I come home at night
I bolt the door real tight
People call me on the phone, I’m trying to avoid
But can the people on TV see me or am I just paranoid?
When I’m in the shower, I’m afraid to wash my hair
‘Cause I might open my eyes and find someone standing there
People say I’m crazy, just a little touched
But maybe showers remind me of Psycho too much
That’s why
I always feel like somebody’s watchin’ me
And I have no privacy (Oh-oh-oh)
I always feel like somebody’s watchin’ me
Who’s playing tricks on me?
Who’s watching me?
I don’t know anymore
Are the neighbors watching me?
Who’s watching?
Well, is the mailman watching me?
Tell me who’s watching?
And I don’t feel safe anymore, oh, what a mess
I wonder who’s watching me now (Who?!) – the IRS?]
I always feel like somebody’s watchin’ me
And I have no privacy (Oh-oh-oh)
I always feel like somebody’s watchin’ me
Tell me, is it just a dream?
I always feel like somebody’s watchin’ me (Hee-hee-hee)
And I have no privacy (Oh-oh-oh)
I always feel like somebody’s watchin’ me
Who’s playing tricks on me?
Who’s watching?”
Who’s watching? Everybody.
I keep a pretty low profile: No television. No smart phone. No wired devices in the home, or car.
Even so, when I got my first dial-up connection to the internet, I realized right away that every keystroke on that thing was recordable, and was probably recorded.
Privacy?
We have the privacy of a listing in the telephone book. Anyone who had the skills, and really wanted to “get” me could learn everything they need to know from looking up my isp address, and hacking a look at computer history, paypal, amazon and ebay. No doubt, the thought police could find me guilty of thinking many unapproved thoughts. They could find evidence of whatever ‘ist’, or ‘ism’ they need to accuse me of.
But I’m an old retired bastard. No one of interest. A target of little or no value to the enemy.
JWM
So JWM: You are “an old retired bastard.” Hey, me too! Literally, in fact, as my mother and my biological father were not married. Never did tie the knot—but that story is for some other time.
I have not watched tv in 43 years. But I do have an Android “smart” phone and a very nice and fast computer. No camera or microphone of course. And no car, so I can’t be tracked by that method. I hardly ever—almost never—take my phone with me, so anyone tracking me would think, “This guy’s boring. All he does is stay at home.” And if I do take the phone while bicycling locally or on a long bikepacking trip I keep the phone in a Faraday cage and turned off. I use DeLorme maps rather than Google maps, and never let the Luciferians at Google know where I’m heading. So when I do take the phone out any busybody would just have a few GPS markers to show where I have been, and no way to see where I’m going.
“No doubt, the thought police could find me guilty of thinking many unapproved thoughts.” True. Which proves Beria’s quip, “Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime.” You’re guilty if the Feds really, really want you. And you believe yourself to be “no one of interest. A target of little or no value to the enemy.” Not so. Small targets are rounded up all the time, not for any particular offence, but “pour encourager les autres.”
Almost 20 years ago I was informed that a part of the Federal Government was “on to me” for some damn reason. Something about the Feds “knowing what I did in South America.” Weird things began to happen, lots of threats and odd occurrences. And then there was that “chance” encounter in Paraguay with US Special Forces. When I asked them what they were doing there, I was told, “We ain’t here. And you didn’t see us.” Ok then. I can’t be more specific than this. But I was—so I had thought—a “small target”. So now I am a bit paranoid—for good reason.
“Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you’re always afraid
Step out of line, the man come and take you away.”
That is no longer just a song. It’s my life.
“Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you’re always afraid
Step out of line, the man come and take you away.”
-written in response to a 10PM curfew enacted for sixteen year olds on the Sunset Strip mid-sixties.
-from “Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson”.
I figured early on that you’re a right bastard Mike (In the Aussie good sense).
I do turn the TV on once or thrice a year, pretty much just a channel surf the newest crazy, and then back off.
My cell phone is usually, almost always, off. When I carry it its so I can call out, if a need arises, not so somebody can call me.
My computer, attached to the world through my wood fired router is mikeless and cameraless too. I do use my android tablet to video phone converse with friends in other countries and if google or NSA wants to hear about sunsets over the Seto Inland Sea or past coal production in the Netherlands, mine are go to conversations.
Both my rigs, the Jeep and the truck, are too old to have digital bulls eyes built in.
Am I well obscured? No, just typing this here…
but I do try to be reasonably careful.