The spirit that once moved a pen to insure the citizens of "America" privacy from unreasonable search and seizure is dead. Maybe one day it will come back. Maybe one day men with power will desire to give some up, or give it back. Or maybe we move in increments in a direction and do not retreat until we are forced. As I see it, the land that claimed such honorable motives and deeds has been banished to the world of movies and books and yellowed documents and old notions. If you need to pretend that land still lives, I understand. I understand turning to the memory of a glowing hearth when the rain is filling up your sleeping bag. But I won't drown in a dream of the past. If I am to invest my mind and heart in the transparent equivocations spoonfed to the compliant media machine which then wags its little citizen News Suppositories at the end of the Information Stick, then I am to declare my own creation-given awareness a sham. I would not offer such a disservice to that Force which has created me and given me the beautiful network of awareness that I am lucky enough to possess.

They watch you as you move about the world. They watch you as you move about the cities. There are cameras in public places testing your face, there are cameras in space photographing your house. There are men on the wires, your wires, they siphon all your info and keep it and comb it forever. They talk of 40 years in this duckspeak of theirs. Six months, 40 years, 100 years then we flush your data, then we end the war, then we do it Right, then we tend the Earth—but keep your fake assurance, yo. Flush it. These lies, these assurances, these "years," these "reasons" they offer for wars, for exploiting us—these are symbols they use for your benefit, only to keep pinkies in the dams, only to stoop to talk to your ear just a widdle bit because really, time frames don't enter their picture at all, only end results. They tell us what they want to, and they do what they want to behind the scenes of the American Corporate Military Conglomerate. They move units. Other considerations are irrelevant.

All the surveillance programs that the public deemed too invasive when given a little knowledge are now back in action, prowling behind the Murkan scenes, stealing information, gathering it on you, lying and insuring power and a matrix of influence that we choose not to think about most of the time. It won't affect you, right? It sucks, but what are ya gonna do?

I know that when I was arrested as one of the RNC 1800 and they put us all through a very thorough booking where they collected our fingerprints and eye scans and interviewed us at 2 am or so—and we didn't even know why they were asking some of the weird questions they were but were way too exhausted and ill-fed to complain too vehemently—it was so that they could keep files on activists, protesters, potential Whatevers—just like in the days of my mother's youth when the FBI watched anti-war groups. What? You are against war? You actually desire Peace? Well, welcome to the watched list. America loves its wars and it doesn't want you getting in the fucking way. [note...in thinking about this, i doubt they could have had eye scanners in the Tombs. I think they had a red laser scanner of our fingerprints. I think that is what my mind is mixing up. If any other RNC'ers want to speak up with your experience/memoria, that's coo.]

I know that the roundup was threefold in purpose: 1) to show the public it could be done (next one will be easier and bigger yet, just you wait); 2) to gather information on those who are liable to be vocal, loud, involved in order to build a database for cross-referencing; and 3) to get us off the streets so that the Decider could come into town with all his republican friends and they could shell out their dollars on the streets of our city for a few nights without being hassled by any loony lefties.

But what were we to do? What am I to do? Cower from the hand of the growing Police State? Not gather with people who want to address the wrongs of the government? Surrender rights bestowed to us by the documents they told us actually mattered because now some say they are too scared to honor them anymore? What land is that? Keep your fat files full of fingerprints, your videos and Polaroids of passion in zip-cuffs; the signed papers and lost hours and spent pain that you gathered up like pez from a pinche piñata, your police-on-protester porn. Enjoy it all you freaks. Write me if you want any personalized notes or old guitar picks. Effin' Federal Fan Club.

So what am I to do? I know that certain agencies in VA and Washington DC are watching my site to keep an eye on border/immigration discussion and action—and they know I know it. [If I can tell from coordinating various stats, then they are not unaware. (Hey doodes.)] But what are ya gonna do? Shut down your computer because of some silly PRINCIPLE against being spied on? Well? Would you stop showering just because some pervert is leering in your window? Oh...you would?

Well, I probably would too. But...this is not something where I can shut the window and go on with my shower. This is having the window shut already and someone's now in the house. They are an insect in relation to the purpose of my path, so I shrug and say "FINE, watch me! I am not worried about it." Right?

Go ahead. Watch me through the tubes, horsefly. Watch me through the 'Net, suits. I am up to nothing but making my art and speaking my mind and speaking for what I believe in and helping in those places in every legal way possible. If the FFC (Federal Fan Club) wants to ogle my words or viddy my jpeg offerings, then get on witja badselves.

What are ya gonna do? Seriously? What?

I know that the ongoing "DATA THEFTS" that now occur with the regularity of a haunted amnesiac clock ringing midnight every hour are nothing but a slow and inexorable amassing of digital limestones for el gobierno's cybernetic pyramids. Who you kiddin'? Come on. What are we gonna do? Stop using our #SS numbers? Stop using banks? Stop using planes? Stop using state-approved and sanctioned knowledge centers and shift the trust and power away from entrenched systems of accreditation and trade? Is that even possible?

These overlords and fearmongers with their predictable agendas. Been squeezing the sour 9/11 tit since america had her shirt blown off. Thier terror tinhorn and its sad, sickened, scared imagination. Fat Cats hatching the same tired machinations. Their sleazy deals and shot-through consciences. I do not pity them, these liars, these sleepwalkers. The dark arts they practice on their fellow man insure a terrible karma that I cannot imagine. These painters of shadows, these rapists of a People's collective trust. "This ism, that ism, ism, ism, ism" [John dijo] and we all kneel under the heel. Paint me a new boogeyman, Uncle Sam. Paint me a new cell in which to crouch, another box in which I can hide, a cape behind which I can cower. Paint me another demon who casts such a sulphrous and grainy light that you appear benevolent in contrast. You sick fuckers, you rotted souls, you fool nobody except those who still want to be fooled. You have tossed your wormridden soul out atop these footlights and in this harsh glare all I see are stretching, gaping abscessed holes and the stink of desperation. Your influence wanes and that is, most probably, why you thrash so hard; that is why your arts of deception fail you. That is why, now, the bones poke through.

The Grid. They track everything, soon. Ven todo. Where you keep your money, how much, what you spend it on. What you buy, where you take it. How often you buy it. What you watch. When you watch it. What you write, what you tell others, what trips you take, to where. What you say at two am, what you said three years ago to the day...at two a.m. Your car will talk to your phone will talk to your home will talk to your bank loan will talk to your calender will talk to your insurance company will talk to your employer will talk to your doctor will talk to your judge. But this is the America we wanted, right? Super information Highway Robbery? The New Age, we said. And in this new Information Age, there was no greater coin, nor power, than Information itself.That comforted us because we imagined that ANYONE can have information, and that makes us all rich. Did we consider that it was then an asset that anyone could steal? If information flow/access—something we can all provide and aid or hinder—is so powerful, indeed, did we think the People would be in charge of it? Really? How many times are large systems and powerful institutions and militaries arranged in such a way that the People have held the power?

I remember when news that George W Bush had authorized illegal domestic wiretapping on the citizens of the United States of America first broke. Right away, my mind flashed back to a day in the not so distant past that had struck me as weird on an instinctive level. A day when all my phone stuff stopped working. I couldn't send pictures anymore, couldn't do text messaging. Things weren't getting through. I called. They told me "Oh, yeah, we're having to switch everyone over to åjf∞ƒçyui∂˙ay so just open up the back of your phone and do this....punch in these numbers...read this number to me...." and then it was all done, nothing like it ever again. I didn't know if that was a related incident...but it was the first of many to trouble my mind. "A glitch in the Matrix," they said in the film. A hiccup to show you that what you had been thinking was reality was nothing more than arranged façade, a Western Town storefront that would flap over if you were to charge it. What would be behind it? The truth. The terrible truth. The terrible truth is that they don't have to listen to us to ruin our peace of mind. They tell us they are, they spy, they suppress information exchange, they whisper, secrets and bloody photographs get leaked, they torture, citizens are blackholed, government threatens the papers that tell the PEOPLE about it, so our media blacks it out....They drive us mad by both necessity and consequence. We begin to doubt our safety and fear our boundaries are constantly being violated by those we trust. It is not we fear that we are personally targets of the government. But we doubt these people's very competency, their sanity, their ability to tell friend from foe from citizen from enemy. After years of blown coverups, artless deceit, mass-murder, lied-about/equivocated torture, lies, old old old old thinking (OOOO Kill the Unseen Dark-skinned Boogeyman Lurking Everywhere, does it really get any older?) and intractability and plain refusal to think with reason—we trust nobody less than our own government; than those who are supposedly in power to protect us. Is there any greater way to wreak instability in the world than to bring about such a psychological state in the minds of a nation? And that's just what America may be feeling and thinking in part. We haven't even mentioned some other countries which surely merit consideration....

So when we were so accidentally informed that we were being spied on by the corporations and government of America, I ranted and railed to mi ruca i said "this is it, i'm not paying people to listen in on my conversations, cancel the phone!" But she is more practical, she said no, we're almost out of our contract, let's wait a month and then do it and so i agreed because...why lose $200 or whatever when you can still make your point by not renewing your contract and telling them why? Something like that. When others are in your life, you have to make sure that your standing on a principal won't hurt them more than they are willing to accept. You are free to sacrifice any of your own comfort, but not others'. That's what I figured.

So we did. We killed our old contract, the one we had for years. I don't really care if I don't have a phone. I don't want one. I resent looking at the damn thing. It looks like a bug to me. Oh, I know. It doesn't bother you so much. Nobody's spying on you. And if they are, well...you have nothing to hide. Hey! You need a phone, right? What are ya gonna do? Just shut it off? Rely on what? Pay phones? Don't you know those are disappearing? Yeah. So....I understand.

For the time being, I share someone else's plan. I figured, okay...hell. I can accept tacking ten bucks on someone else's Plan and losing all my old numbers/contacts. I'm not so plugged in as many are. I figure if its about work or something, you have my email. I have mailed my new number to some, and if I've forgotten anyone, feel free to write me and I'll give it to you. My phone was for jazzing about the city. You needed one there. Here, well...I keep the thing around. It's not a reliable way to reach me as it once was. Sometimes I leave it in the laundry room. Sometimes the battery dies. Sometimes I turn it off. When I read the government could turn your phone on, theoretically, and listen through the mic, I began shutting it off and keeping it away from me. You see, the romance is gone. The wild dreams that once existed in that small space between my lips and Cingular's newest condenser mic have fluttered away like dawn mist. Because the day I found out about that wiretapping thing, it was like something had soured in our relationship, me and AT&T. It wasn't the same. I could only picture her with an NSA man, and it left me cold. All the old phrases of affection fell dead on my lips. All trust was gone. We were just acting, now. We were too used to the comfort of Cell Phone Life to admit the hard truth: It was over between us.

I remember when I was 19, I had my first car, a '73 Chevy Nova. [This one is not the chevy I owned, but is identical in that it is green while mine was blue.] The gears and workings were so simple and sapre, you could pop open the hood and sit right next to the damn engine. I did all kinds of junk to my car. Learned all sorts of things sitting there with a weekend and no wheels, a Chilton book and my Chevy. Bled the brakes, changed the oil, change the points and the plugs, washed her, dried her—Hell, how romantic. Next thing you know Bob Seger will invade my memory with Night Moves or something. I'll turn around to feel for the brake drum and I'll find John Couger and Bruce Springsteen trading in the back seat. Let's not get lost in this lovely vinyl interior. (Let's also not let the opportunity slip by to remind a reader that I cruised with a sport steering wheel, ese—a little wooden and chrome jobby that just made it all worthwhile in 1988.

ANYWAY if you'll stop distracting me I'll be able to tell this tale. My mother saw me working on my car and asked me to look at something on her Nissan. Well. Hopping from a '73 Chevy to an '88 Nissan was like jumping from an episode of 24 into the thick of a Visconte flick. Well, I mean without the fishermen. Actually, that might oughtta be put backward. Regardless, I sat there looking at my mother's engine block and I didn't even know what to make of it. It looked to me like someone had jogged into a family home and shouted, via intercom, 'OKAY LET'S LOAD UP ALL THE PLASTIC IN THE HOUSE AND MELT IT DOWN. I WANT TO MAKE A HUGE SQUARE THAT WILL SIT WHERE MY ENGINE USED TO GO!"

I was stumped. There was no extra space. Under the hood of my Chevy, I sould actually hang my legs in there, next to the straight-6 engine, as I worked on it. My mother's car used every square inch. It utilized the wondrous properties of PLASTIC and other light metals and molded rubber hosing to insure that the owner would not be able to slide so much as a ruler in that engine block. I had to apologize to my mother. I couldn't even find the carburetor.

I didn't like that Nissan very much. But more than that, I didn't like the intent behind the design. Oh, I'm not saying that easing the consumer out of the process by where they could fix their own vehicle was the first and most important factor motivating the design of the engines that have supplanted the old simple combustion and cooling and transmission systems of the past. PROGRESS is always the driving factor, right? Yet, and yet—It happens that way. PROGRESS demands that you and I are edged out of understanding all the things that make up the tools we depend upon. We are reduced to button-pushing fingers, to silly people clicking buttons and using magic that escapes our ability to understand it, or take part in fixing or modifying it. Do you know how the phone works? The car engine? The computer? How many things can you fix versus must you bring to a repairman? I know it's not always bad to rely on a specialist who has spent all his time learning one area. But must it careen to this end of a continuum? Where we are but soft-bellied consumers and end users? This complexity or our PROGRESS results in more and more trust that must be given to those who make and profit from the goods we rely upon. That is a bad formula in a land that prioritizes wealth over all other considerations.

Is it surprising that we cannot know all the ways why and how we are being spied on? No. We have less and less power as we grow more and more reliant upon this grid of technology and machines that do everything for us. What would we do stranded here for days? without.... I ask myself this in some situations. It is purposeful and regular. I ask, have you read anything lately on survival? I'm not advocating a Duct Tape approach to life. Just as in training for Martial Arts is very rewarding in how it can affect your own feelings about yourself, to know you are capable in the world (and not just in certain well-lit, well-heated, paved parts of it) will do a lot for your entire feelings about how dangerous it is to you, etc. Do you know the basics? Can you build a fire? A pulley system? Can you apply simple principles to build shelter? to store food? to find food? to cook it? to heal? to store water? to find water? Does our survival and existence mostly rely on all our current comforts being maintained?

The awareness, the questioning, reminds me to remain capable. Just as blackbelts will take maintenance exams to remain prepared and able. To some of these, I know the answer. I have met them on the outside. Out there in the netless world. Out there sometimes thrown to the winds, sometimes rescued by fate, sometimes by a friend, sometimes by nobody. But comfort and reliance upon machines and that which I cannot understand scares me more than cutting life down to the bone, than living in a car, or on the road, or spending the nights in strange woods with no light. It worries me, in a marrow-deep way, to go too long without being in touch with that part of myself, that part that always envied the tribes shown in National Geographic articles when I saw them as a child. The part that wants to interact directly with my environment, the part that wants to be outside to feel the sun, get my hands dirty and worn by the wood and the soil and stone; the part of me that does not want to be constantly catered to by a million cushions and softeners and filters and does not want to find the firmest part of the wall threaded through with a spaghetti of wires and myself becoming some sort of human cheese product, propped up and fumigated and well-buffed, and ultra-cooled and lotioned by machines.

It's not that I'm against technology. I love my video games and computer powers. LOVE them. I greatly prefer refrigeration. I love electricity for light. I mean, I love lanterns and candles, too. Probably more. But I admit they are dangerous and electricity is very nifty and easy (for me, not for the combines turning, or the wires hanging). I appreciate many modern Western medicine advances. Mostly dental! I am not someone preaching a Return to the Wild for the sake of not touching any Devilish Modern Science. It is not advancement I am against. That would be self-loathing. I seek more of a balance. I feel things are already far out of control in American mainstream life. And I am not here to lecture or convince or harangue someone else who chooses to see what they wish. I am speaking for my own experience. And I remain haunted by some sights in the Matrix; the rows of dark trees, fruits of human beings, sapped and deluded, powering the entire combine, reaping nothing but suffocating illusion-thick wine syrup and a weak, pallid, mushy, depilated, human husk. I do not like the idea of completely abdicating my ability to create and maintain and understand my environment...for comfort. That does not make me feel rich and powerful. It makes me feel out of touch and soft. I do not like the idea of being reduced to a button-pusher, and I will not trade my untamed, animal heart, or my rough hands for the CUSH. I also refuse to lay out my unmitigated, unrestrained, unqualified trust to companies and organizations that have proven time and time again that they do not care for me, my health, or my personal beliefs nor welfare. That is not how you take care of yourself in this life.

I'm not saying I'm shutting off everything today. It's a state of mind, and an inventory thing. A gradual thing, sometimes. A self-awareness, self-correcting, self-reliance, practice, and preparation thing. It's a piece-by-piece thing. It's not an instruction...it's a consideration of an orientation. It's an examination of that underlying map that helps me determine if a possession or way of living is Good, Bad, Useful, or Dangerous. It's an examination of the underlying map that not only helps me decide whether or not it is wise to trust those who tell me they are trustworthy, but whether or not I look for others to build up and maintain the levees for me, or sense the coming storms and passages of free egress with my own lungs, face, and hands.

The danger of living too long in virtual reality is that of hoping to sense the wind with numb fingers.