One Year Older; One Day Sober

Tales Of Big Brother

I did that thing, where I admitted that I was "powerless" over alcoholism, and surrendered myself to a higher power, as I understood it.

That was yesterday (Wednesday) evening, as I was riding my bike back from the Shell, riding with one hand on the handlebars, a 24 ounce can of Heineken in the other...

I wound up being awake all night, and into the morning, and then deciding to stay up longer, to watch Jeopardy, hosted by Ken Jennings. And then "25 Words or Less," a show that I used to turn off when it came on after Jeopardy, but which I wound up seeing just enough of, in small doses, when I was too lazy to fetch the TV remote to shut it off; to eventually become hooked on it.

Orwell From Goodwill

And, in the meantime, my attention was drawn to the Orwell book that was on my shelf, which means I probably bought it for $1 at the Goodwill, and then had selective amnesia (because I wasn't "ready" to read it) until a couple days ago, when I was pondering some deep question and my eyes just drifted over to the shelves and I noticed it.

It is brand new, published in 2003 (which fittingly was about the time the whole Patriot Act thing was being instituted) and I believe I am the first person to ever read this particular copy of it. It's very easy reading and I seem to be getting a lot more "out of it" than I did when I was 15 years old, reading it as part of the requirements of the "college prep" high school I attended.

The next day after I started reading the thing was my birthday. I got a few well wishes on that day on Facebook, but only a few, out of my 89 or so friends on that platform.

I determined that, because of the shadow banning of the Google algorithm, only my friends who are over the age of 50 were even notified that it was my birthday, and only the ones who identify as "Christian" in their profiles.

My childhood friend, David Veautour, said he only was reminded that it was my birthday when he had noticed that another of my friends, who is my age within a year, had sent me a birthday well-wish.

This prompted me to return a message to David, out of which the last sentence was removed, by the time it got to him. It was a joke about the hot topic that begins with the letter "v" that only about 60% of the nation has gotten at this pooint. That joke just disappeared from my message to Dave...wow...am I reading a couple appropriate works of fiction now, or what?

David worked an entire career for IBM as a software developer and, after I personal messaged him about how my last sentence disappeared he sent back a message of his own.

It was something like: "A quick Big Brother story."

He said that he knew a guy who worked at like an old folks home. One of the patients was complaining about having lost something, or had it stolen.

The guy had sarcastically said something like: "OK, I'm going to call 911 and see if we can locate your stapler, (or something)."

10 minutes later, the cops showed up..

Then, David was sitting at some bar with a friend, when they found out that a lady a couple stools down had the name of Ethel.

David had his phone on the bar, attached to headphones that had a built in microphone. "Don't look, Ethel!" he joked to the lady, referring to the song "The Streak," which cam out around 1973.

A couple days later he, who always listened to classic rock, but never "novelty" songs, had "The Streak," coming out his car speakers, through whatever streaming service he used.

Dave is also the guy who warned me about e-mail and all the "gateways" that can allow spying on messages, back in 1998, when I was in Utah, on the run, ostensibly for murder. "Don't send another word about this through e-mail!" he had warned, before giving me his personal phone number as an alternative method of communication.

So, it is kind of funny that I found the copy of "1984" a day before Big Brother was to cancel a part of a message I was sending to the guy who told me about Big Brother all these years ago.

I'm really dragging my feet on getting a burner phone, so I can be born again and once again interact with the world at large. It is going to mean opening new accounts with everyone from Musician's Friend, to Youtube, but it will allow me to skirt the shadow-banning which has squelched even the mention of my birthday from going out onto the web...