Paranoia

Thursday, sweet Thursday.

Stumbled across a memory from the past (as opposed to those pesky memories from the future) yesterday: The Conet Project. For the uninitiated, the project is a collection of "numbers stations" recordings made in the UK by a shortwave radio enthusiast. It's basically like the recording John Travolta's character in Phenomenon decodes, getting his farmer buddy in deep, deep trouble. I heard a NPR report on the release of a four-disc set of the recordings, and was fascinated.

The individual who recorded the transmissions is obviously a paranoiac. Now, I work as a subcontractor to a contractor doing work for the federal government, so the idea that the government is up to shady shenanigans isn't a mystery to me. They shouldn't be sneaking about, planting evidence of transvestisism into the governments of other nations. But what ya gonna do? Listen to The Conet Project, get jumpy when you get caught in the beam of those traffic cams and look over your shoulder a lot. Because The Man* is going to do what he wants to do, whether or not a helpless rabble of citizens is up in arms about it or not. I may start up my own numbers station just to make everybody go completely bonkers.

So what else is going on in my life? It is Thursday, sweet Thursday. We had a late blizzard this morning that closed roads and schools, but it only happened in the valley; out here in the Lost River Desert, we've got the wind and the cold, but the moisture stayed away from us.

What I enjoy about these kinds of things (including aliens, bigfoot, the Kennedy assasination, et cetera) is how ordinary people like myself pore over the evidence -- and by that I mean we limit our research to Wikipedia, quotes from Dale from King of the Hill and videos from YouTube -- and, poof, transform ourselves into Instant Experts (TM). We've got it covered. We know what happened at Dealey Plaza, what exactly is tromping around in the Cascades, who really shot J.R. and we know, for a fact, despite we've only seen a tiny, tiny picture of the parachute those kids in Oregon dug up last week that it HAS to be the one used by D.B. Cooper because it looks exactly like the period parachute they used in that episode of the X Files. I guess what I'm saying is that 99.99999999 percent of these so-called Internet experts ought to stick to pounding sand. (I'm not comparing The Conet Project to this; as those guys have obviously worked hard to uncover what little bit they have uncovered, by which I mean they haven't uncovered enough.)

Ahh, how I wish Dick Cheney would shoot some other hunting partner, just so I could have something to chuckle about.

Speaking of chuckling: WHo does Hillary Rodham Clinton think she is? Oh yeah. She thinks she's Hillary Rodham Clinton. Since I live in one of the "unimportant" states that Barack Obama won, I'm a little leery at her attitude of wanting to win the Democratic nomination at all costs. She seems determined that it's the delegate count, rather than the voice of the people, which ought to decide elections. Those who side with her on this ought to remember that's the argument (cue lugubrious organ music) George W. Bush used in 2000 when he lost the popular vote to Al Gore but won the electoral college. (Claim apples and oranges on me if you will, but I believe there are enough parallels between the delegate/superdelegate nomination system and the Electoral College system, neither of which makes much sense to me.)

I now descend from my soapbox.

*If you don't know who/what "The Man" is, I'm truly sorry for the limits of your knowledge.