Your every phone call is being secretly logged and stored by an ultra-clandestine arm of the federal government. As part of a government partnership with billion-dollar global telecom companies, the federal government has paid large undisclosed sums in compensation for their work in the program. The billions of calls made by every American -- the contents ranging from highly confidential business discussions to news about a family death -- take their place in a massive repository of information. No one is supposed to know that this database exists, and it will comprise the largest database of any kind in the history of the world. The records will be maintained in perpetuity. One of the major telecoms refuses to go along with the arrangement, is threatened by the federal government with the loss of government contracts, and told that their refusal places national security in jeopardy.
While other businesses who don't support the president are bullied and excluded from receiving public contracts, a collection of child refugees from a catastrophic natural disaster attend a function at the White House, held to celebrate the highest holy day of your nation's predominant religion. Once there, the child refugees sing the praises of the head of state and members of his political party, celebrating the opportunity to join him hand in hand. The child refugees do not know that approximately two hundred members of the government have been accused with acts of theft and other types of fraud in relation to the federal government's efforts to rebuild their now-destroyed homes. Many of these crimes arose when government employees solicited bribes from contractors sympathetic to the dominant party.
To go home tonight, you walk to a Chambers Street subway station, knowing that your movements are recorded by government security cameras at all turns. You're carrying with you a knapsack containing your sweaty gym clothes. Met at the subway entrance by four polite and professional law enforcement officers, you have no choice but to submit to the search. Maybe you're an attractive 25-year-old-girl, and you notice one of the officers smirk as he inspects your belongings. You feel demeaned, but practically speaking, you're not going to make a spectacle of yourself by refusing, walk two blocks to another entrance, and miss the next train.
You return home that night and call your sister to wish her a happy birthday, using your carrier, Verizon. You have no way of knowing that your call instantly, secretly, and efficiently was placed into a database with the hundreds of millions of other calls placed that day.
Still, you're luckier than others. You haven't been forbidden from air travel and denied an explanation as to why, after writing a book that criticized the head of state. Or you're not Donnie Darko director Richard Kelly, who finds himself on a watch list and thinks that it's because his next movie negatively depicts the current political climate. Homeland Security hasn't seized your computer server for unexplained reasons. You've never been arrested and monitored for encouraging people to eat vegetables instead of ham. Cops didn't cause any nerve damage after they arrested you for acting as legal monitor to a group of protesters.
You did, however, attend a protest against the Iraq War in 2003. You read about California's head of anti-terrorism, who said, "You can make an easy kind of a link that, if you have a protest group protesting a war where the cause that's being fought against is international terrorism, you might have terrorism at that protest. You can almost argue that a protest against [the war] is a terrorist act."
So yes, it could be worse. You could have to live in California, where the state would label you a terrorist.
Thursday, May 11, 2006
Fake football and fake TV
Two great tastes that may or may not taste great together ...
In fake football news, I am in my third season as the coach of Tulane. The Green Wave have churned out 13 wins, 4,000 yards and a Heisman winner in each of my first two seasons. I'm only a couple games into season three, but thanks to a running back who transferred from Alabama after season No. 1, things are looking good for three-peats on all accounts.
It's just my small contribution to a hurricane-ravaged citizenry.
Of much greater importance is fake television. With Tuesday night's episode of Scrubs such a disappointment, I feel as if I need more fake TV, too. This is where Official Friend of Cole Slaw Blog Dr. Zenith comes in.
His blog has been on our list, under the coveted "Silliness" rubric, for a long time now. But we've never actively urged you to go there until now. It's a listing of (lamentably) lost episodes of television shows. The sort of stuff you wish you could read when you hit the "INFO" button on your remote.
Dr. Zenith would be the ideal tour guide to some tipsy late-night channel surfing. His listings include an epiosde of "227" involving hard lessons about Sandra and venereal disease, a showing of "Small Wonder" in which Vicki gets her batteries jacked so the Lawson kids can play Lazer Tag and a "Mama's Family" that includes the Devil and Mama herself doing pitched battle, and if you think Mama can't handle Satan himself, well, you clearly haven't been paying attention.
There's also multiple entries for "Perfect Strangers" and "Beverly Hills, 90210," and at least one for "Coach" (by mentioning that show, I have now tied this post together like an as-yet-unwhizzed-upon rug).
And if this weren't enough to encourage some procrastination right now, Dr. Zenith is coming up on his one-year blogiversary. Go. Read. Laugh.
In fake football news, I am in my third season as the coach of Tulane. The Green Wave have churned out 13 wins, 4,000 yards and a Heisman winner in each of my first two seasons. I'm only a couple games into season three, but thanks to a running back who transferred from Alabama after season No. 1, things are looking good for three-peats on all accounts.
It's just my small contribution to a hurricane-ravaged citizenry.
Of much greater importance is fake television. With Tuesday night's episode of Scrubs such a disappointment, I feel as if I need more fake TV, too. This is where Official Friend of Cole Slaw Blog Dr. Zenith comes in.
His blog has been on our list, under the coveted "Silliness" rubric, for a long time now. But we've never actively urged you to go there until now. It's a listing of (lamentably) lost episodes of television shows. The sort of stuff you wish you could read when you hit the "INFO" button on your remote.
Dr. Zenith would be the ideal tour guide to some tipsy late-night channel surfing. His listings include an epiosde of "227" involving hard lessons about Sandra and venereal disease, a showing of "Small Wonder" in which Vicki gets her batteries jacked so the Lawson kids can play Lazer Tag and a "Mama's Family" that includes the Devil and Mama herself doing pitched battle, and if you think Mama can't handle Satan himself, well, you clearly haven't been paying attention.
There's also multiple entries for "Perfect Strangers" and "Beverly Hills, 90210," and at least one for "Coach" (by mentioning that show, I have now tied this post together like an as-yet-unwhizzed-upon rug).
And if this weren't enough to encourage some procrastination right now, Dr. Zenith is coming up on his one-year blogiversary. Go. Read. Laugh.
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
When it comes to soccer, I am an Iranian mullah
My least-favorite quadrennial sports spectacle involves an activity that makes rhythmic gymnastics and synchronized swimming look exciting by comparison.
I speak of the World Cup, an event that drives some of my friends to think of themselves as enlightened internationalists, don skirts, and claim interest in a sport that they never once mentioned in the preceding 47 months. This time around, the Fancy Lads' Spectator Bowling League is sending my co-blogger abroad, while another friend sashays to Old Europe because he thinks he likes soccer.
I'm hanging back with Mohammad Ali-Abadi. Ali-Abadi, head of Iran's Vice President for Physical Education, summed up my feelings quite nicely:
I've watched little soccer, but I've seen enough to notice all of the haircuts and grooming that it requires.
Iran, you and I have more in common than I thought. We can all sit back and rip on A.J. Hawk, but at the end of the day, I want athletes to be unkempt and ugly. Sports should not incorporate glamour on the playing field. Soccer is about neat haircuts and preening, with some prissy, new-millenium European nationalism thrown in as seasoning. This is evidenced, among other things, by all the singing that goes on in the stands.
President Bush's waffling on this issue should make us all concerned. In his celebrated interview with Bild am Sonntag (the one where he lied about catching the biggest perch in world history) Bush simply does not go far enough toward labeling soccer un-American:
I speak of the World Cup, an event that drives some of my friends to think of themselves as enlightened internationalists, don skirts, and claim interest in a sport that they never once mentioned in the preceding 47 months. This time around, the Fancy Lads' Spectator Bowling League is sending my co-blogger abroad, while another friend sashays to Old Europe because he thinks he likes soccer.
I'm hanging back with Mohammad Ali-Abadi. Ali-Abadi, head of Iran's Vice President for Physical Education, summed up my feelings quite nicely:
"I will ban athletes with an effeminate look ... It is really disgraceful for Iran that young people step onto fields wearing make-up. When a man enters the field with dyed hair and groomed eyebrows he is disrespecting society."Amen to that, my brother.
I've watched little soccer, but I've seen enough to notice all of the haircuts and grooming that it requires.
Iran, you and I have more in common than I thought. We can all sit back and rip on A.J. Hawk, but at the end of the day, I want athletes to be unkempt and ugly. Sports should not incorporate glamour on the playing field. Soccer is about neat haircuts and preening, with some prissy, new-millenium European nationalism thrown in as seasoning. This is evidenced, among other things, by all the singing that goes on in the stands.
President Bush's waffling on this issue should make us all concerned. In his celebrated interview with Bild am Sonntag (the one where he lied about catching the biggest perch in world history) Bush simply does not go far enough toward labeling soccer un-American: