Sondahl's Fiction blog

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39 Just another paranoid fantasy

    Probably because of things like World War II, the Cold War, the Watergate breakin, and J. Edgar Hoover, I woke up dreaming about how hard it is to escape government surveillance, in a less than perfect world. I don't need to escape government surveillance (for the most part) but what if... What if, after another series of terrorist attacks, everyone was required to carry identity chips that get scanned at regular places around the town? What if cell phones or credit cards already have those kind of chips? What if the cameras monitoring red lights are also scanning license plates or chips and feeding them into real time data bases? We probably don't have that now, but how far away might that be? What way can you travel without the government knowing where you started and stopped? --Not planes, trains, or buses, which all require identification. That leaves walking and bicycles, since the license plates on motor vehicles at least identify the owners. As traffic and other surveillance cameras become more pervasive, even walking and bicycling are traceable activities.
    In the last two days I rewatched Star Wars III, where Plan 66 involved  killing all the Jedi. I also saw Tea with Mussolini, where the Jews get gathered up in Italy. So in my dream, I saw the ACLU lawyers getting arrested first, and the rest of us too busy watching entertainment to notice. After all it's only bad people who get arrested... Like the McCarthy hearings, you could get off if you named names. Mothballed Army and Air Force bases became the new internment camps, with residents' laptops and cell phones only allowing incoming communications, which were all monitored.
    My dream didn't bother to explain what it was the people purportedly did to deserve this... Clearly we don't deserve this in a free nation, but the bureaucratic response to pain is to spread it around... When our post office got vandalized, they cut back hours severely, affecting all the patrons... Random acts of violence are easy to respond to (inappropriately), and impossible to prevent.

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Week 41	Week 42	Week 43	Week 44	Week 45	Week 46	Week 47 (cartoon ends)	1. A River Too Far	2.The Reunion	3.The Daily Grind
4 The New Car and Treasure	5. The Big Bambootees	6. The old Switcheroo	7. The Ravine Runner	8. The Fabulous Folk Festival	9. Druid Fluid	10. Goats of Christmas Past	11. The Secret Six	12. The Great White Hunters	13. The Old School
14 Lost in the City	15 Schlemiel Possession	16 What's in a name?	17 The Curse of Bently Manor	18 Shortbottom Possessed	19 The Lost Treasure of Iraq	20 Phil Steen for President!	21 Phil Steen for Rehab	22 The Adventures of Handiman and Fiberwoman	23 Quantum Uncertainty revealed
24 Pirates of the Puget Sound	25 Building a platform, plank by plank	26 The Quest for meaning	27 Larry and Phil to The Rescue	28 Hurrah for the Reds, Whites, and Blues	29 Phil loses his mind	30 Earth Strikes Back	31 Harry the Potter	32 How I spent my summer vacation	33 Help I am trapped in the Present!
34 Help I am trapped in the future	35 The Nose of Death	36 Infectious Laughter	37 Election Update