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A fable

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Crusty Paul sat in his apartment, water lapping at his feet, when there was an insistent knock at his door.  He sighed and got up to answer it, knowing full well it was Larry, his annoying neighbor from downstairs.  He opened the door, and sure enough, there was Loopy Larry, a look of stern admonition on his insipidly righteous face.

“There’s water dripping on my head again, Paul,” he said.

“Well, I’ve told you before, just get used to it.”

Loopy Larry sighed.  “Have you let the bath run over again?”

A flush rose to Paul’s face.  “So what?  It’s just your stupid theory that that’s what’s making water drip on your head.”

“It’s not just a theory.  Every time it happens, I come up here and you’ve let the bath water run over.  Look at your floor, for chrissake, it’s covered with water!”

Paul looked at him with an expression of someone explaining some simple fact to a rather dense child, for the hundredth time.

“If you look at the past, you’ll see there are lots of times when water just falls out of the sky, for no reason.  How can you say my bathwater causes your problem, when we know that happens naturally, all the time?”

Digital privacy

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At last, a perfectly secure method of communication!

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Carrier pigeons, used as secure communication during WWI. (Credit: http://bit.ly/145XegM)

Government loyalty

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We live in fascinating times.  We are outraged by government incursions into our corner of the Grand Database, while at the same time we cheerfully surrender any and all information about ourselves for a 10% discount at Best Buy.  In fact, we seem to be outraged by almost anything the government does these days, up to and including holding public trials to determine someone’s guilt or innocence, which we now seem to be convinced are contrived and predetermined whenever they fail to conform to our own conclusions.  These conclusions, of course, are based on what information we could glean from the news media, which we firmly believe are utterly untrustworthy, with notable exceptions, which I’ll discuss momentarily..

How has it come about that we offer up the most bizarrely intimate details of our lives daily on Facebook, yet man the barricades when it transpires that some government agency might have been reading them?  Or cough up our phone numbers and email addresses on demand when checking out at Home Depot for no apparent reason?

Well of course, you say, no point in getting a loyalty card, and then clamming up about it, is there?  There’s a sacred bond involved, similar to the bond that ties us to certain news outlets, those we are sworn to believe regardless of the absurdity of their dispatches.  Therein lies a glimmer of hope for resolving this crisis of confidence.

Government loyalty cards.  Get a loyalty card, and get a discount when you present it at tax time.  Pay more taxes, get a bigger discount.  We’d even get special offers in the mail, both snail and e, for holiday sales tax rebates, or jury duty aboard a luxury cruise ship, half price if you volunteer immediately.  All of this can be easily paid for by adjusting the “normal” tax rates for those who don’t have loyalty cards.

We might believe everything the government tells us, as we do with Fox News or The Guardian, if we thought of them as our tribe.  We might even believe government policies are based on the moral code of humanitarianism.

Snowden in purgatory

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Right now, the number one thing for which I am most grateful:  I am not Edward Snowden.

I know whereof I speak.  I only just returned from a trip which involved a nine-hour layover at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam.  Which, I’m betting, is rather nicer than Sheremetyevo in Moscow.  It is a very peculiar kind of torture.

Passenger Ricardo Schnibblevits, traveling to Tashkent, please report to Gate A9 for immediate boarding, or your baggage will be removed from the airplane, and your reservation cancelled.

The single most important thing that makes such an experience bearable is the knowledge that it is only temporary.  Snowden is utterly bereft of this consolation.  He may glance habitually at his watch, but it tells him nothing of interest.  How many times can he walk from one end of the transit area to the other before he has it memorized?  How many greasy shashliks can his stomach endure before he contemplates a hunger strike just for the novelty?

What is he using for money?  Will his Starbucks card be accepted at Double Coffee?  All the little irritants, horribly magnified.  Like the armrest on the chair where he’s trying to sleep becoming a permanent part of his anatomy, or (shudder) Russian toilet paper.

Sheremetyevo Airport reminds you not to leave your bags unattended.  Unattended bags will be immediately confiscated for security reasons.

What country in its right mind would grant asylum to Snowden, thereby holding him up as an example of sterling behavior to its citizens?  Does anyone really believe a place exists among the nations of Earth that is not at least as bad as, if not worse than, the United States, in terms of secrets, of spying on its citizens, or of any one of hundreds of infringements, large and small, on dignity, not to say liberty?  I’ll grant you, many are not as up to date technologically, but that would only make someone like Snowden all the more dangerous to them.

Hero or traitor, he’s in the land of the Undead for the foreseeable future.  We’re not necessarily talking about days, or even weeks, here.  The world record for this kind of thing is held by Mehran Karimi Nasseri, who endured the departure lounge at Charles de Gaulle for 18 years.  That’s right, 18 years.

Passenger Rickky Platz, please return to the security check-in zone to reclaim your passport.  Passenger Rickky Platz.

In the same clothes.  The same underpants that drove him nuts riding up on the flight from Hong Kong.  How many bags of stale peanuts can one man endure?  I believe I would be on the phone to the US consul sooner rather than later.  In prison, there is at least the exercise yard.

Passenger Edward Snowden, please make yourself as comfortable as you can.  It will be awhile.

The vampire’s confession

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Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.  Peccavi in extremis, I’m afraid.

It has been … ages since my last confession, a time beyond recall.  I must say I have been rather good, but for one irresistible indulgence.  How shall I say it?  Out with it, then.

Father, I am a vampire.

Yes, I heard that gasp, involuntary though it was, through this rather flimsy barrier.  Why bother, I wonder?  Is it to protect my delicate sensibility, or yours?

No matter.  The sins I have to confess surely blow through such refinements like a spring squall through a spider’s dewy web.

Where shall I begin?  The burgher’s rich, leathery Sangiovese, or the light Beaujolais of girls in the springtime?  Ah, the sublime innocence, with just a touch of peppery insouciance!  I confess to a weakness for the unpresumptuous, even coarse, at times.  A cheap Zinfandel, just this side of plonk, fills the bill more often than I’d like to admit.

There was a certain lawyer, officious, but charming in his utter unawareness, a Malbec, precisely sour, and his lovely Shiraz of a wife.  I dream of her still.

Don’t get me wrong.  I have a profound appreciation for the refined as well.  How can I neglect the rich Barolo of the bishop, or the tawny Port of the late monseigneur, aged to perfection?  Yes, that was me, I’m afraid.  But look at the bright side, we have you, as a result.  I saw you walking to the confessional, with your springy step, that optimistic, wide open demeanor that refuses to be daunted.

I believe I fancy a nice Grenache, on such a fine, sunny afternoon.