Sandy boon or bust

Without doubt, both major-party political candidates will try to use the devastation and damage caused by erstwhile hurricane Sandy to their advantage. The incumbent Barack Obama will likely point to the rapid response time and widespread preparedness of thousands of emergency personnel as proof of his competency, as an indication of the methods by which he will tackle the nation's less immediate issues such as high unemployment, growing national debt, and our crumbling infrastructure. The challenger Mitt Romney will likely point to the sluggish federal response and lack of adequate leadership by the current administration as proof that our sitting president must be replaced, that he has a tendency to sit around lackadaisically while America drifts rudderless through the shoals of catastrophe, that his policies have failed, and that he is the greatest threat to the Safety of the People since redcoat placed boot on our soil.

I listened to NPR and checked the news regularly in the days and hours before Sandy made landfall, and, to my knowledge, Mr. Obama analyzed and calculated and fact-checked the storm as much and as thoroughly as he did his primary opponent in their third debate together. (Glaringly omitted from this debate were a couple of the other persons contending for the presidency, among them Dr. Jill Stein and former governor Gary Johnson, who were barred from attending the event and from sparring with their super-slick counterparts by the sinister and undemocratic machinations of the Commission on Electoral Debates a freedom-hating organization controlled jointly by the Democrat and Republican parties.) In all likelihood, Mr. Romney will blame his foe for failing to have prevented every tree from falling and every transistor from shorting out, for not acting quickly enough in his efforts to warn us sodden souls hardest hit by this frankenstorm of its exact path and true destructiveness, for worrying more about controlling the narrative and looking good on camera than visiting shelters and keeping hope alive. Hopefully, however, this time around, Mitt won't blame the few score deaths on the president (as he did following the tragic events in Benghazi) or insinuate that they would not have occurred under his watch, although if were to make such claims, he might alienate a few more swing voters and put himself out of the race altogether, which, in the long run, would work out just fine for liberty and equality here in America.

There is a chance that while he is out smiling condescendingly and surveying the shattered hovels of commoners the Republican challenger will fall into a ditch filled with sewage-mixed seawater and catch such a nasty cold that he will be bedridden for these last few days before the election, sparing us the torture of listening to his pitying smarm and of having to puzzle through the mounting mysteries of his constantly-shifting viewpoints. We shall see how things shake out once the storm of the century has passed. If you are interested in avoiding such disasters in the future, vote Green Party! Mahalo.

© mentiri factorem fecit (場黑麥)

laws to obey

Roughly a hundred and forty years ago, the persons who founded this American republic staked their Lives, their Fortunes, and their sacred Honor on a simple yet profound document. Calling it the Declaration of Independence, these people wrote a text that is as powerful today as it was then, shaping our minds, our hearts, our common desires and destinies. The Declaration defines not just the rights of the entirety of humankind to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, but also the expectations we have for government, in clear and unequivocal language, cementing in the minds of millions of downtrodden persons across the globe the notion that they have the right to be ruled as they see best fit by an entity whose sole purpose it is to make them Safe and Happy.

And, yet, the federal government of the United States of America considers the Declaration to be a dead and useless document, one that We the people of this land cannot use to correct our systems' failures or to turn to for protection from our leaders' overreaches. The federal government justifies this position by claiming that the Declaration only applied to the thirteen original signatory States, and, since we have more than thirteen States today, it no longer grants us the right to shake off the stifling grip of corrupt rule or to free ourselves from the smothering grasp of tyranny. Such an opinion is indeed estimable to tyrants only, not to the democratically-elected leadership of a free and honest people. Not only would such a stance – if applied equally to all legislation passed to date by our houses of Congress – negate all laws but those issuing anew from our legislature each and every year, it would require lawmakers to continuously redefine, on a regular basis, this nation's entire legal framework. Let us take the feds at their word, though, and look at the world for a moment through their cruel and twisted eyes.

The Declaration was ratified unanimously by the Congress of the United States of America; it has been passed down from mother to son and from father to daughter, inspiring countless acts of courageous defiance and helping to lift entire generations out of the stifling sewer of poverty and oppression. In line with federal contempt for the Declaration of Independence, however, let us commonly ignore the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 – which was passed by a Congress other than the one sitting currently – and take any drugs we wish to take. Let us also ignore the provisions of the Patriot Act – which was passed by a Congress other than the one sitting currently – and regain the rights and freedoms that it took from us. Let us ignore the cruel and unusual provisions of the Defense of Marriage Act – which was passed by a Congress other than the one sitting currently – and marry whom we please, be that person man, woman, or something in-between. Is it lunacy to assume that laws only apply while the legislature that passed them is in session, and that they fall by the wayside once it convenes? If this were so, our police forces might actually serve and protect the citizenry rather than abuse us and seek to revoke our personal, human freedoms; if this were so, persons among us – such as Mitt Romney – who exploit loopholes in the tax code for personal financial gain and to the detriment of our nation's treasuries, damaging the welfare of those of us who cannot afford to hire the best tax attorneys money can buy, such persons would be punished for their evil and un-American ways and forced to play nice like everyone else. Even trying to think in such a way chaps my buns to no end; even trying to rewire my brain to see the Declaration of Independence as anything but mankind's ultimate living document drives me to the brink of tears. But, dear friend, this is the land in which we live; our federal and state overlords treat us how we allow them to treat us, in the manner of docile livestock. Perhaps we deserve not Life nor Liberty nor to Pursue our Happiness, only to live as corporate wage-slaves desperately clinging to dim memories of justice and equality for all. There is another way, however, a way for us to live in complete Liberty while looking out for each others' Lives and Fortunes, but we shall never live such a life unless we stand as one, right now, and create for ourselves the type of country that the Declaration of Independence once envisioned, wresting freedom from the corrupt individuals who make up our tyrannical and oppressive government. So stand up, speak out, and demand the right to Pursue your Happiness as you decide is best. Mahalo.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit

on free time

Today, devices exist in homes across the world that work so that humans do not have to. Among these are dish-washers, vacuum-cleaners, lawnmowers, well-water pumps, washing-machines for clothes, and televisions. Rather than having to wash one's dishes by hand, to sweep furiously at one's carpet, to cut one's grass using muscle power, to maintain water-pressure by hand, to clean one's clothes, or to entertain oneself, these machines – which run either on gasoline burning in their innards or on electricity (that is generated by the burning of coal before it is piped via an enormous network of skeletal electrical towers across vast distances to emerge finally from wall-mounted sockets) – do nearly all of the work that people used to do for themselves. In order to buy these devices, to pay to have them repaired, maintained, and upgraded, ​and to pay for the gasoline and for the electricity required to make them run, their owners must work – depending on their level of skill, influence, luck, and education – at one or more jobs, labor for which they receive financial compensation.

Advertisers market the aforementioned devices as things that will increase the amount of free time available to consumers and as things that are supposed to make life better. In reality, however, these devices do not make life easier for the majority of people who grow accustomed to their use; these devices rob the people of the good, hearty workouts associated with cutting grass using the body's own power, with washing clothes using the body's own power, with washing dishes using the body's own power, and with hauling water using the body's own power; these devices rob the people of the need to maintain the art of storytelling, and of the need to maintain the art of making art. But, aha! I have just had a thought, namely that because these machines exist, and because they reduce the amount of time that people would otherwise have to set aside to take care of their household and garden chores or to come up with clever ways to keep themselves entertained, because of these supposed time-savers, people are able to work longer hours and to work at more than one job in order to maintain their supposedly time-saving devices and to keep buying new ones as the old ones wear out. Therefore, these devices and the oft-repeated lie that they “save time” not only create but also perpetuate the type of wage-slave, consumption-oriented capitalism that, as I type, is being waged against the American people.

I have nothing really against free time, only the way that free time is used. Americans and persons living in industrialized nations similar to ours use their free time to sit around eating highly processed and chemical-laden foodstuffs, watching television, playing video games, and generally getting fatter and unhealthier by the day; if, however these free-time-rich people were to work in community gardens, paint pictures, tell each other stories, go on hikes, or exercise their bodies and minds and make themselves into better and more interesting people instead of poking at touch-screen-equipped tablet computers while turning up the volume on the TV in order to drown out the sound pollution generated by the dishwasher and the washing-machine running at the same time, if these people were to be active and creative and all chip in to make this nation and this planet a greener and quieter place for all then we might slowly redeem ourselves in the opinions and estimations of a candid world. As it stands however, with our federal government owned and operated by the very persons who gain the most – financially – from our brand of wage-slave style capitalism, there is a greater incentive to keep the people fat, stupid, and sold on the idea that there are devices for sale that will make their lives easier or better rather than to encourage them to be self-sufficient, self-reliant, and self-respecting. How much farther down this stinking rabbit-hole of convenience-driven consumerism can we possibly allow ourselves to fall? America delenda est.

agitate – challenge – debunk – restore

場黑麥 mentiri manufactorem fecit

on the society for securing the blessings of Liberty

In the wake of all federal, state, and local government's recent refusal to follow such guidelines as are clearly worded in the Constitution of the United States of America stating that one of the few roles of government is to secure the blessings of Liberty to us, the founding persons' Posterity, by granting us, the American People, full and unconditional rights to do with our bodies and our minds as we see best fit (be it by smoking, drinking, gaining or losing weight, or cutting our hair in strange and unusual ways), the most upstanding and forward-thinking citizens of this economically-ailing and morally-oppressive nation have banded together to form the American Society for Securing the Blessings of Liberty (ASSBL).

Open to any person who swears that he or she has actually studied the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution with a sober and open mind and who can prove that he or she is dedicated fully to the cause of keeping the People Safe and Happy (by staying out of everyone else's business until such time as intervention is requested by them in writing), the ASSBL seeks to guide our once-fine nation back onto the course from which it long ago strayed. Said Ebenezer Higgins IX (a direct descendant of one of the original Sons of Liberty), who was himself instrumental in the founding of ASSBL, “For too long have we granted our various governmental bodies the power to control our lives and to punish us for doing with our bodies things that do not directly infringe upon the Life, Liberty, or Property of any other person, or persons. Our brave ancestors fought and died to secure for us total freedom, which we sacrificed in 1970 with the Controlled Substances Act and then again shortly after the 9-11 attacks in order to gain a simulacrum of security against the chaotic and shifting winds of Fortune, against which there is no security that has ever or can ever be devised by humankind.”

The ASSBL was inspired by the short-lived Department for Securing the Blessings of Liberty, a government body founded by President Barack Obama that flourished for, oh, about five whole minutes before the prison, district attorney, and police lobbies had its funding revoked and arranged to have its appointed members lose their lands, to have their mouths sewn shut, and to live in constant fear of being physically and politically disappeared. Dedicated to the idea that the role of government is to protect the People from external and internal threats rather than to nitpick their every action or to put them in jail for consuming drugs other than the drug alcohol, the drug nicotine, or the drug caffeine, the Society requires of its members merely that they risk their Lives, their Fortunes, and their sacred Honor to protect the Life, Liberty, and Property of their fellow homo sapiens. To sign up for ASSBL, or to donate funds to help ensure its continued existence, please call 1.877.555.GFYS, or go to www.theblessingsoflibertydonotexist.com.

場黑麥 menterefecterem fecit

on America's central problem

For nearly a century now Americans have remained universally addicted to one thing: the constant availability of alternating-current (AC) electrical power (as well as, of course, mankind's damnable propensity to take the path of least resistance). This addiction is responsible for nearly each of our nation's woes, among them our backslide into a convenience-oriented culture and our over-reliance on mechanical and electrical devices to do all of our work for us which in turn makes us lazy and prone to lie around all day watching television and being worthless pieces of shit. In order to fuel the dynamos that make this power, good, honest Americans risk their lives to drag coal out of deep tunnels, whereupon it is dumped into trains, moved vast distances, and burned by the ton, releasing large amounts of harmful by-products every step of the way. Then, instead of just using the direct current (DC) coming from the high-tension lines that zigzag across our abused and once-pristine land, power companies transform the direct current into alternating current, losing a large portion of the initial electrical charge in the process. Anyone who has ever charged a cellphone or laptop computer battery uses DC: most batteries used today employ the DC system – which is an effective and efficient method for storing and using electricity – but this means that the juice that keeps our handheld devices running is first transformed into AC before being piped back into the home, whereupon it is transformed (via the little box on one's electrical-charging-cable) back into DC so that it can charge said battery. Furthermore, in order for said battery to be charged in the first place, the various power companies must run their power-generating stations at certain levels all of the time, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and 365 days a year, even when no one is using that power, such as at night when most people are sleeping. And what is at the root of all of this wastefulness? Why do we still adhere to standards that have been proven over and over again to be inferior to other designs? One reason is Mr. Edison's (and his sinister cabal's) early 20th century efforts to replace the alternating current championed by Mr. Nikola Tesla with their system of direct current – a more complicated and more costly but no safer alternative to the Tesla design – so that he could sell the inventions he himself had designed and built; his short-sighted avarice, along with the acquiescence of the U.S. federal government, have put us – and kept us – in this mess.

Since the federal government of this country has kept us in this mess for so long, it is only fitting that it should get us back out of it. Please, release Mr. Tesla's documents, which became the property of you our tyrannical federal overlords immediately upon his death. We must start building and using the Wardenclyffe tower designs to provide no-cost-to-the-consumer wireless communications and no-cost-to-the-consumer wireless electrical power; anything less shall be seen as neglecting the general Welfare by keeping the People addicted to such power as seems to spring effortlessly from the nation's wall-sockets but that in reality wastes so many of our precious resources. Please, dear g-men down in Whorshanktin, rewrite the standards to allow us to conserve as much of the energy we generate as possible so that we might use the product of our nation's labor most efficiently, conserve our dwindling stock of natural resources, guide the People back along a path of intelligent sustainability, and reduce our fantastically high levels of pollution. Anything less, dear Senators, Congresspersons, and President, anything less shall be construed as spineless obedience to the pressures of lobbyists and to the power companies that pay for them (to whom you, in turn, routinely sell your souls).

場黑麥 menterefecterem fecit

on luxury & comfort

This morning, while waiting for father sun to awaken, I heard on the radio an advertisement for a new motor-vehicle made by Lincoln. In this commercial, the company touted the vehicle's salient features, among them “organically tanned leather from Scotland, French stitching, and Moroccan (or Algerian) wood accents.” Beyond my abject loathing for a supposedly American company that pays non-Americans to make pretty, expensive cars for gullible Americans to buy, I find myself seething with rage at the notion in this country that we deserve things such as finery, luxury, and comfort.

If while growing up the the writers of the Declaration of Independence had been told that they deserved luxury, that comfort were their ultimate goal, that it were acceptable for them to let their guards down and to relax in a plush and reclining chair, they would not likely have had the stones to rise up and to spit in the faces of their foreign slave-masters. If the frontiersmen had grown up convinced that luxury and comfort were things they deserved, they probably would never have withstood the privations and hardships associated with crossing continents. If Abraham Lincoln or Martin Luther King Jr. had become accustomed to soft and easy lives, they would likely have changed neither history nor the fate of millions of otherwise down-trodden and wretched souls.

Attention, citizens of America: life is not comfortable, easy, or luxurious. There is no reason you cannot be Happy in your life, or Safe (these being the primary purposes of government, according to the Declaration), but please do not allow yourself to become addicted to the notion that it will be convenient, plush, or pillow-topped. The more one's supposed luxury, the more one has to lose when one's house burns or floods or gets crushed by falling trees; the more one relies on comfort, the greater will be the fall when hardship returns; the more one believes in the lies spewing from the twisted suck-holes of advertisers, the less likely one is to be able to make do with less; and the more one denigrates oneself by driving a car, the longer one is trapped inside a glass-walled, cash-guzzling, burning metal box.

Today, our nation faces trying times: our people lack above-poverty-level employment, our corporations maximize profits at any and all cost to the worker and to the environment, our politicians have been corrupted by Special Interest, half of our “representatives” in the legislature are millionaires, and our government is a tyrannical juggernaut that wages war upon the Liberty of its own citizens. This is not the time to seek comfort, or luxury – this is the time to batten down the hatches and to prepare for the worst (while still keeping a song in one's heart). The underlying reason for the focus on luxury and comfort of late is that these foul conditions trick the person into thinking that she can rest, that she has done her duty to herself and to humanity, that she deserves certain things that only money can buy. Money cannot buy Happiness, nor can it buy Safety, but it can be used as a tool for self-enslavement to supposedly necessary external conditions. Therefore, the patriot relies on nothing but her bright and bursting spirit; she needs nothing but the calluses growing on her strong, slender hands. Rise up, my fellow Americans: shake off the cruel yoke of luxury, and discard the rusty chains of comfort, because your nation, and Honest Abe, need you strong, sane, and self-reliant.

場黑麥 ioanni elymucampus fecit

a federal browbeating, et al.

The following story is true.

Thai Airways flight 794 from Bangkok banks away from the approach vector that planes coming from the west usually take when landing at LAX. It passes over Hollywood and around Downtown to approach the airport from the east. The stewardesses are tense, and the mood is hostile within the plane. It lands well, all gears touching smoothly, nary a flutter along its long axis. It is nine fifteen in the evening. We taxi for an unusual amount of time as police cars escort us with lights blazing to a secluded section of asphalt.

For nearly an hour we sit. About half of the passengers are from south-east Asia. Elderly Indian women make frequent sorties to the restrooms, but any time a man threatens even to rise from his seat, the stewardesses – thin, elegant Thai women – scream at him to sit back down. People begin to ask questions, demanding to know what is going on, requesting an explanation for our unexpected and unexplained delay. I am near the rear of the aircraft; I have not used the restroom in more than seven hours. I am in considerable need of making water since I purposefully dehydrate myself during flights to cut down on disturbances to my neighbor, a strange older man whose English sounds non-native. I find myself digging around in my right cargo pocket (where I always keep a pen and at least one permanent marker), but not knowing what is going on, I pull out and switch on a portable gaming device.

Finally we begin to deplane. I bow to the stewardesses on the way out, thanking them in their native tongue like a good boy who has learned his manners. Dozens of U.S. federal agents line the mobile staircase asking each man as he passes to see his passport. "Are you Russian?" one agent asks me as he scans my documents rapidly. I say no. A helicopter flares its rotors low over our heads. We pass through a phalanx of airport police, TSA agents, and people wearing FBI counter-terrorism jackets, to board buses that we hope will take us to the distant terminals.

I am in the back of the third and last bus to depart. My hair is poorly kept and bleached nearly blond from three weeks of Thai sun and surf. My clothes, of which I only brought one pair, are ripped and stained with sweat. The tattoos on my arms and chest are clearly visible. My bag, a cheap Nike knockoff purchased in Chiang Mai, is also ripped. We are packed tightly in the bus with TSA agents sewn heavily among us. The men are hyper-aware, scanning faces with wide and greedy eyes, looking frantically from person to person as if they were trying to puzzle out who is looking at whom, changing location at times to get a better view of whomever they are trying to find. A man behind me asks when we will have the chance to use the bathrooms, as we were not allowed to on the plane, and as there are none on the bus. The TSA agents answer sporadically, sometimes not at all. Having no knowledge of what is going on, and knowing that speaking unsolicited to law enforcement is a bad, bad idea (because it is the job of law enforcement officers to punish citizens, not to help them), I stand quietly between a short man with bad breath and the window, and enter a semi-trance so as to pass the time and to control the pressing need to void my bowels.

After nearly another hour we are allowed to leave the bus for a terminal building. Agents shout angrily as they direct us toward a bank of metal detectors, through which we pass, jostling with other passengers who are eager to board their departing flights. More agents direct us through a maze of narrow hallways into a seemingly long-abandoned waiting area. As one of the last to enter, I have no seat, but I find a space against a wall where I stand at parade rest (legs shoulder-width apart and arms clasped above the buttocks). My torn bag is at my feet. I reenter the semi-trance, eyes fixated on the far wall. I do my own time, as they say in prison, minding my own business as would a good boy who has learned his manners. FBI agents rush back and forth clutching clip-boards and generally stirring the mood into a lather. They are normal looking, often unattractive people you would never be able to pick out of a crowd.

A tall man with a concave chest approaches me, sweating under his counter-terrorism wind-breaker. "Did you notice anyone acting strange on board? Was anyone visibly upset?" he asks me. "I can't say I did, sir," I respond. "Someone wrote a threat against the airline in one of the bathrooms," he says. "So I need to know if you saw anything suspicious." I tell him I was asleep most of the flight, and that I cannot say I saw anything. He nods and walks away. At that moment I piece together that I am suspected primarily for having done whatever was done on the plane. The realization churns my innards but the semi-trance holds, and I resume to wait patiently for whatever is going on to end. I ramp up my peripheral vision and enter Type 81, that state in which I see everything but appear to look at nothing.

A graceful, lithe female approaches from my right. I allow her to pass before I glance at her perfectly-shaped rear end. She talks with the concave-chested agent who had approached me initially and glances over as I am staring inappropriately at her buttocks through the fabric of her immaculately tailored gray suit. "Would you come with me?" Concave Chest says. "We need to ask you some additional questions." I am led to a secluded area piled high with rows upon rows of discarded airport seating. The TSA agent, whose name I shall not here mention, introduces himself politely. He asks me about my life, about my travels in Thailand, about my primary source of income, about my activities on the flight, about any past military training, and about where and how often I went to the bathroom on the plane. I answer his questions. We chat amicably. After nearly twenty minutes, the lithe female with the perfect ass walks over, waiting until we have concluded our pleasantries.

"Where did you get those tattoos. Were you in the military?" she says in a condescending tone. I tell her that I wasn't, but I do not explain why I have an American eagle and a Shield of the Union inked boldly into my left forearm. (It is because I love my country, because I am a Son of the American Revolution, and because I consider myself a patriot.) "Why are you so calm, and why were you standing against the wall like that," she asks. I explain that my father was a Navy man who taught me how to stand correctly. I explain that I strive always to act like a gentleman. I also mention that, as an unofficial American ambassador to the Thai nation, I had been on my best behavior throughout the trip. "Oh, well, sweet tatts," she says before turning on a heel and storming off.

"Do you have any writing instruments on your person?" my TSA guardian asks. I remove me permanent marker and pens from my pocket. "Oh," he says upon seeing the marker. A wide and joyous smile threaten to fill his features. "You had better sit down and get comfortable – this is going to take a while." The bathrooms are quite close to where I am sitting, but I decide against asking to use them. The agent asks if I have had any trauma in my life recently, and I tell him that my father died not long ago. "You must still be pretty upset about that," he says. I tell him No, but he does not seem convinced. Soon thereafter, Concave Chest and a uniformed airport policeman walk over and ask me to follow them.

I round the partition to a sea of staring faces. Every single person who was on the plane, flight crew included, is staring at me. Some are staring with the after-affects of shock, but most are looking at me as I were wearing a necklace strung with severed baby's feet. Flanked by federal agents, I fix my gaze on a point at the far end of the long hallway and walk calmly and steadily toward it. A unmarked door opens, and I am led into a large room. Two burly and armed men sit along a far wall with their elbows on their knees looking at me with poorly-veiled bloodlust. "This way," someone says, leading me into a smaller, glass-walled room that sits within the larger room. Seven FBI counter-terrorism agents are waiting for me, including Lithe Female. I sit in a cheap folding chair at a cheap folding table.

“This is federal property," Concave Chest says, gesturing at the four walls. "This room is wired for recording, and we can search anything we want, here." "Fine by me," I say, shrugging. Since I have not yet passed through customs, I know that I am in international waters where I have few, if any, rights. I stay calm and control my breathing with the remnants of the semi-trance. My mind is utterly still and focused to a razor sharpness. Every passing second bears tremendous weight, and as the agents lean toward me with pens poised above notepads, I relax in the knowledge that I have done nothing wrong.

Concave Chest says his name and the name of another agent, a short, ugly man whose face looks like that of a Tolkien troll. I force myself not to laugh at the absurdity of the situation, since my mind is constantly comparing what is going on to every beautiful, dashing agent I have ever seen grill a suspect in a spy movie. "Do you have a camera?" Concave Chest asks. I give him my camera, and as he is rifling through it, the Tolkien-Troll-looking man asks me which cities I visited in Thailand, with whom I associated, where I stayed, if I met any shady or unsavory characters, and if I participated in any sort of military training. I answer truthfully while forcing myself not to look over at the three agents who are emptying my torn Nike bag and carefully fingering its seams.

"You have a lot of pictures of graffiti and tagging in this camera," Concave Chest says. "Thailand is chock full of amazing street art," I say. "I never would have thought that there would be so much beautiful graffiti there." My zeal has little impact on their stony demeanors. "Have you ever done any tagging yourself?" he asks. I say that I have not. "Are you willing to answer that under polygraph?" I say that I am ready take a lie detector test at any time. "Well, the thing is,” he says, “we have your customs declaration here, and, while we're not handwriting experts (those guys will be here in the morning), we do see a fair bit of this sort of thing, and, again, we're going to have to run this past the handwriting guys, but the way you wrote the letters O and P on your customs form is very similar to the Os and the Ps used to write the note. Again, we're not experts, but when the Os and Ps are similar, it pretty much indicates a match."

"OK," I say, nodding and waiting for them to proceed. "Did he have any writing implements on him?" Concave Chest says. Before I can answer, my cordial TSA guardian pulls my marker from his pocket and places it on the table. Concave Chest's face lights up with excitement. "So," he says, "we have the pictures of graffiti in your camera, and we have your marker, and we have the handwriting match on your customs declaration. It would be best for you to just get this over with now. If you admit to anything later on, before a judge, things will go far worse for you. So, you should probably just get it over with now."

Variables flash through my mind and I think, 'Shit, if I mess this up, I am looking at three to five years in a maximum security federal prison. Just. Stay. Calm.' I nod and look around at the assembled agents leaning forward expectantly. Concave Chest repeats himself, again telling me that I should just get it over with now before I reach a judge. "Look," I say, pointing at the items on the table, the camera and the marker and the form. "I realize that all these things probably indicate to you that I am somehow involved with..." (here I pause, for the agents have all perked up and leaned forward and strained their ears to hear exactly what I am about to say, thereby indicating just how important my next words are) "… that I am somehow involved in Whatever Happened On The Plane, but I refuse to confess to a crime I did not commit."

"That is your right, here in America," Concave Chest says, thus enveloping me in the awesome and comforting blanket of the Constitutional protections. "Will you repeat your preceding statements under polygraph?" "Absolutely. I've been on a plane for sixteen hours, and my internal clock is way off sync,” I say, “but if you need me to polygraph tomorrow morning, at eight a.m., I shall be there. I went to the bathroom once, just once, on the right-hand side of the plane forward of my seat." "So you didn't go to the bathroom on the left-hand side of the plane?" he says. "No, I did not. I did not even set foot on the left-hand side of the plane. I was in seat number ###C. Compare the fingerprints on that seat to the fingerprints in the bathroom. You will find none of my prints in the bathroom where whatever happened occurred. You will find my prints in the bathroom nearest to my seat, on the right-hand side of the plane, and in the vicinity of that seat."

"Will you repeat these statements under polygraph?" he says. I again assert that I am ready to polygraph at any time. Again he tells me to, "Just get it over with now because it will be better for you in the long run." Again I tell him that I refuse to confess to a crime I did not commit. "As a matter of fact," I say, "take my permanent marker. Run a chemical analysis on the ink in my marker against the ink used to write the note. You will find they are not a match." I sit heavily into the chair and stare at the assembled feds while I force my breathing back to normal and the anger within me to abate.

"Well, we have your phone number, and we know where and for how long you'll be in Los Angeles, so, we'll be in touch," Concave Chest says, rising to his feet. "Do you have a criminal record?" he says, offhand. I shake my head and say No. His eyebrows rise incredulously. "Thank you all very much for your time," I say politely as I turn to follow an agent back out into the waiting area. I sit next to an elderly Japanese gentleman. He looks at me and says, "What is going on?" "They think I am a terrorist," I say, smiling. He laughs until he shakes in his seat.

I take a bottled water from a passing pushcart and, after a few minutes, walk with the rest of the passengers through a warren of forgotten passageways to the customs area. While I am waiting in line (and getting stared at constantly by hovering federal agents), my unpleasant neighbor during the flight keeps giving me strange looks from his line a few lines down. But before I can make anything of his glances I am called to the customs desk, where a stone-faced agent dutifully stamps my passport. Having no checked luggage, I walk calmly through the baggage retrieval area toward the exit, but, halfway there, my former TSA guardian, he whose name I shall not mention, stops me short. "You don't have any checked baggage? You traveled alone, to Thailand, without checked baggage?" "I like to travel light," I say, "it cuts down on time and all but eliminates the likelihood of airline error." He attempts to engage me in conversation, but I have had enough; I keep my answers short and my eyes fixed on the ground. It is nearly one in the morning. He bids be farewell and I exit into the main arrivals hall without further delay. After urinating for what seems like an eternity, I call my lawyer to let him know what just transpired. Forced to remove cash from a highly priced ATM (because both my prearranged ride and the cheap bus have stopped running), and sick of being shadowed by uniformed officers, I count my twenties, hail a taxi-cab, and speed off into the night, a free man.

p.s. If a law enforcement agent tells you to confess, claiming that it would be better for you to "Get it over with now rather than later," he or she is more than likely bluffing, he or she wants you to sacrifice your rights, he or she is your enemy and an enemy of Liberty, and he or she wants only to send you to prison. Please do not ever – EVER – forfeit your rights and protections. Thousands of good Americans have died to guarantee those rights. Educate yourself, and fight tyranny and oppression wherever they might raise their ugly heads.

p.p.s. I never received a call, and I have been not questioned nor approached subsequently.

Spes Mea In Ratio Est

場黑麥 ioanni elymucampus fecit