This is not to say we get good marks for work habits. The club has never had room to store everything indoors and we’ve lost a lot in the Florida rains. And we already work around the fact M is very hard on equipment. He won’t wear safety gear or make a special trip back to the shed for the correct tool. But he does just as good a job in a third of the time. We voted to put up a tarp to protect his outdoor work area. I suspect he only agreed because he wound up having to throw out a bucket of parts that got wet, and there was a small fortune in there, a goldmine of goodies.
Time for the wakeup call to the Baby Boomers. October 16, 2013, a day that will live in idiocy. That’s the day when the government turns up the master database that ties together all the fragments of your life from the past. Most people with “nothing to hide” really mean it was so long ago they thought behaving themselves since then made it go away. Wrong. This database is a monster; it links everything by any one single piece of information on file anywhere. Did you report your son’s income from his paper route and your daughter’s cash from babysitting? If not, you are now a criminal. You claimed them as dependents, didn’t you? Even if they didn’t make over the limit, but you were required to report it. And there is no statute of limitations on tax fraud. On that level, everyone has something to hide. Now, they can find it.
This is a major leap forward in the government’s ability to dictate the daily behavior of the average citizen. Every phone call, every return address on every letter you mailed, every credit card purchase, even your grade one report card, it’s all on file. Does this matter? Yes, because you are used to thinking these bits of information are so unrelated that they are safe unless you give somebody a reason to look. Soon, the very existence of any file will be reason enough to look—as will the non-existence of a file. And you’ve been an active participant all along because you did not protest at the data gathering stage. Now it is too late.
Myself, I always resisted giving more information that was required by law. I was never afraid to ask what difference certain blank fields made and I’ve probably written n/a more times than the next 500 people put together. There are thousands of forms out there that have my middle initial as something other than it is and the phone number of the local dog pound. Except where required by law, I’ve never filled out a form merely because it was handed to me. Thus it is very difficult to get an accurate profile of me by snooping--they eventually have to ask me, which plays their hand. I've somehow always thought that was a superior way to conduct one's affairs.
For any conspiracy types out there, you are the true paranoids. There is no theory here, the actions of which I write are real events happening now. Some of you are thinking the citizen can’t fly under the radar, but do you understand that was never my goal? Am I writing this because it is controversial? Just like the idea is to make it easier for the thief to break into some other car, I make it easier for them to go after the other guy. I don’t have to outrun the bear, the saying goes.
Why do I know all this? Because I’ve lived and worked overseas in countries that have had abusive systems for years. Take Canada, where everything you do is either compulsory or forbidden. They have social vigilantism where the entire system is designed to be continually updating your file. When you fill out a government form, they don’t just want your current address, they want a list of every address you ever lived. Even a library card requires ID. These countries have chemical food and chemical ideas. (Of course you are free, didn’t we give you a document stating you are free? What? You lost the document!)
The effect of October 16 won’t happen everywhere instantly, they will pick the easy targets first. That’s people they know have been getting away with something. Now they will get pinned. Don’t worry, your turn is coming. And any tiny infraction on your part will trigger a complete review of your records by people looking for trouble. Get ready to explain everything you ever did to people whose job it is to entrap you into saying the wrong thing. I’ve dealt with police in foreign countries and they love computer files like you would not believe.
How do you survive such overwhelming bureaucracy? The answer is you can’t unless you started thirty years ago when the system was lax. You made sure there were several versions of everything. Countless forms with intentional mistakes, long stretches where every form was filled out identically wrong, and all back when it was not illegal to do so. When your enemy has complete access, you feed him disinformation. But this isn’t something you can start tomorrow. I’ve been questioned at border crossings for years without incident in situations that would haul others on the carpet, simply because sorting things out would take too long. Yes, I have a criminal record in Mexico. (Egging a squad car on Halloween, 1971.)
For all the criticism I get for non-cooperation from the system, my philosophy works like a hot damn. There are things you’ll never hear me complain about because they never happen to me. I can’t tell you how many times I was let through while others suffered every indignity, all because the man could not easily piece my files together into a single profile they wanted. There are 12 forged copies of my report cards out there, you can only tell the real one because it is all A’s in every class which is the one they assume is a fake. Gotta love it. To this day, I will often fill out a phony resume or two for some outfit I know is plugging your answers into a database. Like the AARP, who think I was raised in Vermont, was born in 1942, and know for a fact I have a grade 7 education.
In fact, one of the difficult tasks of today would be to determine if anything I just said was fact or fiction. Either way, the strategy is more important than the tactics.
It got too rainy to work last evening so I got to this computer to do the routine cleanups. First target, the Google stuff you didn’t ask for. Like Chrome, which sneaks its way into most computers by piggy-backing on something else you wanted to install. The Google programs that watch you are hidden in a folder on your C: drive. The final directories are called Google/Desktop/Install. And you cannot delete that Install folder, even in safe (F8) mode, but you can rename, which tricks Google for a while.
Google snooping software is very sophisticated. It is called ZeroAccess.@ and it is a rootkit, the type of virus that cannot be removed by mere mortals. There is a handy program called “
Want to be a Brit spy? Crack this code. It looks like an easy substitution code, so I’ll race you. Note the article gives the test as multiple choice, but that would be too easy. My guess is the letters have been rearranged to read down the columns left to right, but let’s keep it challenging. And no cheating.
Getting back to the problem of protecting the solar panels. I pondered that they are only approachable by someone carrying a heavy object when the trailer is parked and that would normally be at a road stop or at night when the motion sensors are active. I’d already planned a tarp to cover them in rain but maybe I’ll have to go further than that.
Trivia, since I’m reading a book about voyages in the north between 500 and 1600 A.D., concerns the term “starboard”. Most people know that comes from the days when ships lacked a centerline rudder and were directed by a long board hung over the right side because most men are right-handed. Hence, the “steerboard”. But how do you explain port? This was new to me. When in “port” that side of the ship faced the dock to prevent the steerboard from being damaged against the dock by rolling waves.
ADDENDUM
Around the 16th of next month, the government also runs out of money. You’ve heard that before, but by cooking the books, they were able to ward off the consequences. That is why the much-ballyhooed “sequestration” of January had few consequences. In reality, nothing got cut back and the crisis looms again. The problem this time is most of the financial tricks have been used up. Everything is gone. Your pension funds, the post office “forever” stamp money, social security. Poof! Gone-gone bye-bye. They now have little choice but to print more money.
And that, they have been doing. Printing excess money is a form of tax because the money gets worthless. I just spent $47 on a bag of nuts and volts for my camper, more than I’ve spent on such things in my entire life up till then. I won’t even mention groceries. Maybe I am wise to make the camper as comfy as possible. It would not keep me awake to see thousands of civil servants get their walking papers. Starting with the DMV.
Sorry if have your browser set to detect updates on this blog. I often make edit changes that will trigger your feed. If there are no apparent changes, it is because I uploaded a photo that I only want a link to. When I delete it from the blog, the link is still there. In other words, I use the blog's nasty habit of keeping everything on file to my own advantage, but hey, they started it.
