Welcoming the SS into the paranoia club

From the files of the New Paranoid: Dan Tilli, a 81 year old man living in Easton, Pa., was "visited" by suspicious SS (Secret Service) men, after he wrote a letter to the editor of the local paper expressing that "they hung the wrong man", referring to the execution of Saddam Hussein (or his body double). Nothing in the letter inferred that Mr. Tilli made a threat to the life of our prez'dent.
So, if I you find yourself discussing landscaping plans with your neighbor, avoid such phrases as "we need to kill that bush" or "cut the bush down to size", especially if you are a elderly, defenceless person.
Just trying to be helpfull and explain the new rules vis-a-vie your free speech rights.

1984

Somebody moved the clock on me and it is 1982. What was I doing in 1982? I don't remember. Two years to go. Of course, fellow sleepers, you know what I am talking about and you are just as dumb(founded)as I am.
Perhaps it is my keen sense of paranoia, but here are some tidbits. No caviar on supremely thin and crunchy wafers. Just dry facts. Go down best with copious gulps of vodka.
Recently something unprescedented has happened. Scores of Federal Prosecutors have been asked to resign. Many were involved in cases having to do with Government corruption. Most long before their terms of office was to end.
I dont know how many web pages there are, but a Google search can return 2,800,000 hits in less than a tenth of a second. Google is a big company, but it is small potatoes compared to the NSA. Those guys have quick machines, not creeping server farms like Google. Do you know what a server farm is? Picture a corn field. A big corn field. Each plant represents a powerfull processor diligently sifting through mountains of data. Ants on an anthill. Billions of ants. Data like account balances and financial transactions, internet logs and library loans. Credit card purchases and underwear choices. If you say that there is too much information, you are badly misinformed. Todays' computers are blazingly fast and there are a lot of them. Complex programs for voice and face recognition. Stress analizers, de-encryption software, traffic tracking, back doors, etc.
A high quality digital photograph of an anti-war demonstration will reveal the faces, and therefore the identities, of hundreds of thousand demonstrators. Our Government is very curious about what goes on with these subversive anti-war-ites. No? They go after the Quakers--and you know how threatening those guys are!
Yes, I remember a time when it was inconceivable that all communication could be monitored and sifted. Not any more. Remember that ultimately, a Government out of control will seek to gain more and more control of every aspect of society. Big Brother is watching over us. Now go back to sleep.

What!? No far-fetched conspiracies?

Dang. Nobody has offered any wacky conspiracy theorems for me to disect in the light of my twisted little brain. Nothing better than some nutjob inference with coffee and a croisant in the morning. So, it is up to me to, once again, charge into the fray and offer some ridiculous presumtion. Who better than I, who have nothingto lose, since my research methods are ambiguous and my self-respect long lost in a gutter outside a grimy ginmill.
Let me start by sacrificing common sense and economic truth and offer this far-fethed one. Gas prices are manipulated to favor the bottom line of the energy companies! Good one, huh. Goes right against those that say that in a capitalistic system the price of commodities is set by supply and demand! There is no conspiracy as, any child should know. Hah, I say, and offer one word. Enron.
You be getting enroned every time you fill your gas tank. How does it feel?

Cultivating Uselessness

If you don't know about it, one book that I highly recommend is the Tao De Ching, written by some trippy dude, Oh, about 3000 years ago. It is said that the guy, named Lao Tzu, got sick of Chinese society and decided to get away from it all. At the border, a guard recognized him and appealed to him to write down what Mr. Tzu knew for the sake of posterity. From this came a very short book. At least that is the ledgend.
Now if you enjoy conundrums and puzzles, this book is for you. Just about nothing in it makes any sense. Nor should it make sense, as Mr. Sneezy (Tzu-Gesundheit), points out. If it makes sense to the ordinary T.V. watching, money grubbing, stabyouinthebackforabuck guy, it is dellusion.
Most of it goes against the grain for me, but I am staring to get some of it. One of the concepts I just recently figured out. Lao Tzu (bless you) urges us to make ourselves useless to the world. By inference, we are somehow usefull to the world (culture) by living an ordinary life. Lao urges that we become usefull to ourselves instead. That we don't buy into the common belief system and avoid getting hooked by the "fluff" of our society. For me the implication is enormous. I feed something by acting and thinking in a certain way. By going along with the hoopla, I add to it and lose something of myself. It is better to pay attention to something else. Mr. Tzu goes on to enigmatically hint at what that might be.

the all-new paranoid

Once upon a time, entrance into the paranoid club was a fairly simple matter. Not much was expected, I mean one did not have to create fantastic scenarios to qualify. Things have changed; gone are the days of simple conspiracies and vague suspicions.
Now, I resent that. I am some people's favorite paranoid (natch, can't give names nor even think about who they might be)and I take this status seriously. I have always disliked keeping up with the Jones's, it is a waste of time. However, this new situation is just abhorrent. It has to become a race to the bottom, best I can see.
For those of you who don't even have one paranoid bone in your bodies, let me try to illustrate the seachange in the field of pop-paranoia. Used to be all that was required was to intimate that we are being "watched" would get you into the club. You didn't even need to go hollerin' about it or have a wild-eyed look about you. Not any more. Now, if you say that the Gov'ment is listening to your phone conversations and reading your mail, you are not paranoid, YOU ARE JUST WELL-INFORMED. That wild-eyed look, well, you can get that at Starbucks and it is called a double-quad latte, hold the milk. Damn. What is a former Paranoid to do?
Now that I am no longer a Paranoid, rather a Realist, I am fine-combing the dark recesses of my cerebrum for some outlandish shit to take to the secret meetings. It is exhausting and I am resentfull that I can't even think of weird enough crap to impress my fellow skulkers. I have searched and searched and the old littany of stolen elections; lied into war; false flag operations; enroning and swiftboating; the old standbys just make 'em yawn.
So, help me out. I need to come up with really impossible stuff so that I can recover my status. So help me out, please. A lot is at stake here.

Torture by guitar

I have been teaching myself to play the guitar; going on four weeks now. It is a painfull process and it is going ever so s-l-o-w-l-y. The guitar is an instrument of torture to the fingertips of the left hand. There is no way that you can play for very long, unless you have metal digits. The guitar I have has a narrow neck, so the precise placement of the fingers is important. I have little room for error.
By the time I tune the guitar, I am already in pain and there are guitarstring channels pressed into my fingertips. It is then a matter of just building caluses. Guitar string caluses are tough and shiney. They look alien like somebody got sloppy with the fingernail polish. I inspected the fingertips of a guitar-playing friend of mine. His fingertips are hard, shiney and pointy.
Intellectually I know three chords, but I can't switch from one to the other yet. I have to memorize the precise hand and finger placement to get all the strings to sound good. Buzzing sounds come from touching a string in the wrong place and a flat sound from not pressing down on the strings hard enough. I get alot of buzzing and thumpy sounding notes.
I have a C.D. of Spanish Guitar music and I have come to respect the rythm and precision of the guitarist. It has become awesome to me, how well that guy plays. This would never have come about unless I started this course of torture for my fingertips. Meanwhile I continue to whince and dream of playing "Amazing Grace". Maybe I should learn to play "Amazing Calluses" instead.