I wrote the ACLU a message on their website recently. I had received another mailing from them asking me for money. Like all the others I’ve received, it didn’t list even one victory ACLU has had against the ever-increasing security paranoia in this country. I expected some hard answers as to just what the ACLU was doing nowadays, other than soaking up money. After four days, I finally got a response from them. No one even bothered to personally reply: it was a form email.

A form letter. After four days. Way to make your case, guys.

On the other hand, I wrote to Earthlink’s Unlimited Voice to inquire as to when they would be offering service in the area. Unlimited Voice, if you aren’t familiar, is a voice-over-IP service that’s available nearly nationwide, but not yet available here in the Triangle. Not only did I receive a personal email reply from a real, live person, it arrived less than an hour after I contacted them!

Needless to say, the contrast is eye-opening. I’m not sure Unlimited Voice is making any money yet, while the ACLU is enjoying record donations now that everyone’s scared silly. You’d think they could take the time to send me an actual hand-crafted email. I mean, it doesn’t take long.

When I joined the Navy I found myself at odds with my membership to Greenpeace. I felt I couldn’t fund an organization that was harrassing the Navy ships on which I was a crewmember. I wrote them a three-page letter telling them my reasons for quitting. Rather than insult me with a form letter response, the head of Greenpeace himself sent me a passionate, well-written rebuttal. He didn’t change my mind, but he did make a positive impression on me. He showed me they actually cared about their customers.

They listened to them.

I was reminded today that the Raleigh International Spy Conference is coming to town in August. It is a few days of conferences featuring spy luminaries from both sides of the Iron Curtain.

For a former Cryptologic Technician, this kind of stuff really appeals to me. It also makes me uncomfortable. Having once held a security clearance, I wonder what I’ll actually hear in this public forum that will be worth hearing. But what really concerns me is … what if I do hear something I know to be classified? It was never easy tap-dancing around those types of situations. The line “I can neither confirm nor deny … ” was drilled into our heads as the only response to nuclear weapons questions, even though any id10t with a geiger counter would know instantly if the weapons we had were hot. Sometimes open technology makes official doublespeak moot.

My job in the Navy was not a cloak-and-dagger one by any stretch, though it had its interesting moments. My ship’s battlegroup was constantly shadowed by a Soviet intelligence gathering (AGI) ships, soaking up all our electronic emissions. But they stayed miles away from us.

There was also this incident that occured during my second deployment, at a hotel bar while we were in port in Oman. A drunk man and woman were striking up conversations with my buddies, openly admitting they were KGB agents. Whether or not they knew my shipmates and I held clearances or not, I don’t know. I could never figure out what they had to gain by blatantly telling us they were spies. Perhaps they were looking for work or had nothing to lose, since the Soviet Union was crumbling at the time. Or maybe the KGB determined the direct approach worked better. Either way, we reported the contact to the government of Oman, which promptly kicked them out of the country.

I’ve heard before that the Triangle area is a favorite retirement spot of members of the “foreign service.” The former State Department minion and suspected spy Felix Bloch, who was allegedly photographed handing a suitcase to a known KGB agent in Paris, has seen his lifestyle change considerably since he retired. Once he lived the good life in Zurich, wining and dining with diplomats. Now drives a bus in Chapel Hill (I am not making this up). Allegedly, Robert Hanssen, the FBI agent turned double-agent, helped get Bloch the bus-driving gig. Hanssen reportedly tipped Bloch off about his investigation before the FBI could nail him.

There are others in the area, too. A friend of mine who has become a Linux luminary is rumored to have retired from the CIA. I wonder if he’ll be at the conference.

The price of the conference is steep, but it is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to rub elbows with the movers and shakers who’ve lived life in a shadowy world. The spook in me can’t pass it up.

I bought my new Sanyo SCP-4900 Sprint PCS phone yesterday and called Sprint today on my new phone to activate it.

When the Sprint rep began asking me for my “vitals” (SSN, birthdate, address), I was a little unnerved. It wasn’t that she needed them, but the way she asked for them.

“Your address, sir?”

(I read her my address. There is a long pause.)

“Can you spell your street for me, please?”

(I spell it and its on to the next question.)

“Your name, sir?”

“Mark Turner.”

(silence)

“Uh, sir, can you please spell that for me?”

At this point, I’m thinking. . . I am now signing up for what is allegedly the latest and greatest in cell phone technology: the “Free and Clear” plan or whatnot. The “so-clear-you-can-hear-a-dadgum-pin-drop-on-frickin-Mars” plan, right? So, uh, why isn’t the rep understanding what I’m telling her?

I’m hoping the problem is in her headset and not my shiny new cellphone service, or its going to be a long year, indeed.

…but its hard to tell which is which, isn’t it?

A British soldier has been arrested for developing pictures apparently showing the torture of Iraqi prisoners of war.

One picture is reported to show a PoW, gagged and bound in netting, dangling from a forklift truck driven by a soldier. Other photographs taken in southern Iraq apparently show soldiers performing sex acts close to Iraqi prisoners.

Kind of tough to win over the respect of the Iraqi people with behavior like this occuring. Expect some severe courts-marshall for these idiots.

Should also be interesting to see how the liberal media handles this story.

And in the morning
He dress and go to hell.
All activated by
A little timer bell.
-Spin Doctors Forty or Fifty

While putting Hallie to bed a little while back, I began to muse about what life milestone really marks the death knell of the fun of childhood. Two ideas came to mind (and one promptly turned around and left. Maybe I should muse on what marks old age, eh?)

Hallie’s world is so different from mine because she is not yet a slave to the clock. Infants don’t schedule their lives around what time it is. They don’t wake up to the sound of a jarring alarm clock: they wake up when they wake up. They don’t eat at a regular time: they eat when they’re hungry. What we experience as 30 minutes of playtime, she experiences as a virtual hour of fun.

While I was unemployed I had the chance to relive life unbound from the artificial stresses of time. At least to some degree, anyway; everyone has their committments. It was a refreshing break to say the least.

We are so rigid with the parceling out of minutes and days. You must work at least 40 hours a week. We must be at work by nine o’clock. Dinner will start promptly at 6 PM.

The third millennium is so much different than the second one.

Sorry, don’t have time for the gym tonight.

Just don’t have the time.

Where does the time go? Does it ever really get here?

I came across a serendipitous article today in the local Business Leader magazine. It sums up my thoughts very well:

For almost all of human existence, time was measured by the calender, not the clock. We charted our lives by the moon, the sun, the seasons, and the migration of the animals. Almost all of the noises and sounds to which we are accustomed did not exist for our great-grandparents. And almost all have to do with transportation, communication and time – getting you and/or your information to someone else on time.

Just think, quietly for a moment, about the stress in your life. How much of it is caused by time? Bedtime, alarm clock, rush hour, appointments, meetings, time clocks, etc. You’re scheduling, or worse, someone else is scheduling, your life around time.

Well, in our little world which we have created for ourselves, we certainly can’t do without accurate time, but it might do you some good to remember it doesn’t really exist. We made it all up. So, some quiet peaceful morning, say to yourself, “Does anybody really know what time it is? Does anybody really care?” Then, for a while, just be. You’ll find it refreshing.

Next week, the little girl who’s world knows no time will turn one year old. We’ll throw her a big party, cheering her on as her first birthday becomes her initiation into the world of time, one from which she may never escape. Soon she’ll be scurrying from one place to another, beckoned by the hands of the clock.

I hope she’ll be smart enough to take her eyes off her watch once in a while and simply enjoy life.

I got my first paycheck from my new job at Oculan today. It covers four days, and was totally unexpected. I never get on anyone’s payroll this quickly, but since Monday was Memorial Day, the payroll processing company Paychex had a later deadline for payroll this time around.

Though the check is lightweight, it is nonetheless money. It also means that I only missed one paycheck during my time spent unemployed. I could also say I never went a month without a paycheck.

I am well aware of how incredibly fortunate I am. My thoughts are with my friends and relatives who are still out looking.

After posting about the Stones and the music industry, I remembered one of the many quotes from Keith Richards. Keith knows where its at:

Nobody starts off to play an instrument with the idea off making money. You learn the guitar because you have this burning desire.

Even as a senior citizen, Keith Richards kicks ass!

I found myself searching through my music collection tonight for just the right song to fit my mood. I had to reach back to find it in the Rolling Stones’ Waiting On A Friend. The odds of my turning on the radio and finding a DJ in the same mood as I am are about as likely as Britney Spears being a virgin. Some guy programming a music computer in San Antonio days in advance can’t possibly know what I’d like to hear right now. That sucks.

As much as I bitch about the music industry (and as much as they damn well deserve it), I can’t deny that I just can’t do without their product. I’m hooked – a music junkie – and I’m having the hardest time quitting.

I own a ridiculous number of compact discs: three-hundred-plus shiny metal discs. They span the musical spectrum, from rock to, uh… rock. But different kinds of rock. Most of them are from bands you’ve probably never heard of. Many get played once or twice and then go into retirement.

I used to buy a CD about every other week, my musical cravings driven by the Music Choice cable radio service I used to subscribe to. Music Choice does what the local stations could never do: they play new, wild, unproven music. It was gloriously raw and unpredictable, and I didn’t take my headphones off for three years.

But one day the spell was broken. I’m not sure what made it happen really. Maybe the music just wasn’t as interesting, or I got tired of braving billowing cigarette smoke just to see a band play live. No matter what the cause, I hung up my headphones and turned my attention to other things.

My CD collection has largely stayed the same as that day I kicked my music habit. Oh sure, I still dutifully grab one or two for the road, but it’s really been a while since music really moved me. And I really miss that.

The day the music died was Thursday, February 8th, 1996: the day President Clinton signed the Telecommunications Act of 1996. According to some, the law was designed to spur competition in telecommunications. At least that’s what we were sold. What we got instead was massive consolidation:

The law as it existed prior to passage of the new Act contained certain restrictions on the ownership of broadcast stations in order to protect localism and the diversity of voices reaching people through the media. The new Act contains provisions that loosen those restrictions. The Act eliminates a national ownership cap for radio stations that the FCC had established and modifies local radio ownership limits.

In other words, the act essentially killed local radio. The big chains gobbled up stations with the higher profits brought forth through slash-and-burn practices and remote programming — the ultimate cause of local radio death. It’s like the Super Wal-Mart moving in and killing the funky little local shops downtown. Yeah, its shiny and all, but its mighty damn boring, too.

The libertarian in me cringes at government control, but what’s more painful is the loss of freedom of speech that the reduced ownership brought. The only voices you’ll hear are only the ones a very small handful of people want you to hear. And that includes music, too. Goodbye to any chance that promising local artist had to get her record heard.

I miss radio. I miss finding good music. If it wasn’t for the kindness of friends sharing their MP3 collections, I would never hear any music worth buying. The music industry died in the same manner of many of its stars: it overindulged itself to death. In spite of this, my ears are holding out hope that something new will take its place.

I want to be moved again.

I couldn’t end the night without commenting on a interesting event that occured Saturday night. Kelly, Hallie, and I were winding down after an exhausting day spent walking around downtown Asheville and hiking Mount Pisgah. Hallie was not falling asleep like she normally does, only settling after about 15 minutes of holding her (and 45 minutes of her crying before that). I walked into the den of our cabin and plopped myself into a chair, picking up a copy of Mountain Express to read while Kelly read her book on the couch.

I was deep into the newspaper when I noticed something move across the room right above my line of sight. A faint white blur about the size of a baseball made a tight loop on the wall above the window.

Um, okaaaay, I thought, as I checked the level of wine still in my glass. I knew I was dog tired. It must have been my imagination.

I continued reading the paper. A few seconds later it happend again, this time a few feet to the right of the last place. Once again it was a swirling motion, like someone waving their hand. All right, I thought. I did not imagine THAT! I folded the newspaper and stood up.

Being of a relatively open mind, I am not averse to the idea of the existence of things yet unknown. That said, I was stumped to simply explain it away. Twice I saw it. As the saying goes, “fool me once…”

Kelly didn’t look up from her book when I began to pace the floor, trying to justify what I saw and debating whether to tell her. Gosh, what if my wife thought I was, well, weird?

“Uh, honey,” I finally said. “I think someone is trying to get my attention.” Kelly looked up but didn’t really buy into what I was saying. She was way too sleepy at this point for a deep metaphysical talk. I proceeded to start one, anyway, but gave up when I saw I was losing my audience. We went to bed soon afterward.

I have never claimed to see ghosts. I wouldn’t know what one looked like if it shook my hand. And I’m not sure what it actually was that I saw. Still, I could find few possible logical causes. Darkness had long since fallen on the cabin. Nestled in the woods, there was no chance that the light was caused by a stray headlight. Though Kelly was reading behind me, she had already removed her jewelry. Even if she hadn’t, she was reading by a floor lamp reflecting light on the ceiling. No chance for a glint of light to be cast from her ring or necklace. I could blame the light on nothing other than my imagination or an actual event. I was willing to chalk the first one up to imagination, but not the second one.

As we packed up this morning, the owner of the place stopped by and asked us about our stay. “How was the cabin?” he started off. I listed a few mechanical things we had noticed – like the tub not draining properly. You know, nothing major. After every item, he said “Thanks a lot. I wouldn’t otherwise know these things since I don’t live here anymore.” Though all I wanted to do then was get going on our trip to Linville Falls, it occured to me later that his statement had to be a lie. How can you own a house for 10+ years, rent it out, clean it after every rental and then plead ignorance to its problems? It didn’t wash with me. Just one of those things that made me wonder if he had a secret.

Later in our drive, I began to suspect the owner may have been “fishing” for information. After every minor annoyance I would report, he would say “and anything else? Did you notice anything else?” His odd questioning only made me more convinced I had not imagined what I saw. It made me wonder if I wasn’t the first guest to notice something unusual in the cabin.

So, was I imaging things? Or is it time I checked myself in to Dorothea Dix? Or long past time? What do you think?