This afternoon I got an email to set up an interview for next week. That was the good part. A few minutes after receiving an email about my interview next week, I received another email that requested some additional information in order to keep my application on track. I guess I was still thinking about the email I got minutes earlier, so I thought the two were connected. I briefly looked over the email and quickly skipped down to the additional information that was being requested. It asked a lot of questions about where I lived over the last ten years, if people could verify my exact location, even questions about my father’s past business involvements. I knew that some of the folks I was looking to work for were sensitive about security, but damn! The depth of the questions made me go back and re-read the entire email in-detail from start to finish.

After reading the message a few more times, I found that the message had nothing to do with the email I previously received, but was something entirely different. When I found out who was actually requesting this information, my heart started beating rapidly. I wandered around my apartment frantically trying to get a grip on myself. After about an hour, I returned to my computer to contemplate why I was getting the third degree via email from a major U.S. intelligence agency for a job that for which I was certain that I never applied. The specific agency will remain nameless, but it’s one of the one’s that conspiracy theorists and civil libertarians frequently mention as being the cause of their problems. Being both a conspiracy theorist and a civil libertarian, I was more than irked as an overwhelming sense of paranoia came over me.

After regaining control and checking into it further, I figured out that they were looking to send this inquiry to someone else at the university that I attend. I won’t go into how I figured this out, but I’m 100% sure that this message was not meant to go to me.

There are a number of possible takeaways from this incident. Maybe I should be on guard about folks I go to class with since their biggest aspirations may to become super spies and code breakers. Moreover though, I have realized that there’s no reason to even be afraid. People make mistakes, some more than others. Systems, even those that are part of the surveillance-industrial complex, are built of people and their ability to make mistakes. While I’m not perfect, this is as screwed up as I’ll ever get. I even have the potential to be much less error-prone  by making a concerted effort to gain better concentration, motivation and perceptual capabilities. The spy agencies have a cumulative effect of gaining more possible error with every new recruit they get (no matter how leet). This is great if I ever wanted to drop out of society, fake my death, hide from the law, etc. Luckily I suspect terrorist organizations have such problems as well and are sending emails to everybody except the people they intend to recruit. Putting it that way, I wonder why I was ever afraid.

I almost felt compelled to watch Obama’s big Tuesday night speech and live blog it. Other than hating dog-and-pony shows masqueraded as serious policy presentations, I would have done that. Since I already know the formula for these things, I didn’t even watch. Some people were calling it Obama’s State of the Union. Constitutionally-speaking, it wasn’t. I mean, if I were to gather people together to hear a speech and called it a State of the Union when it’s not… Anyway, Obama is cuckoo! One day he will take a crap and, in exuberance over its importance, the media will call it his State of the Union.

I wanted to wait a few days for the best commentary to come about from people who actually watched the whatever-it-was-called speech. Among these, I would recommend the old stand-by alternative commentary from the Libertarian Party, crappy laptop camera footage from Peter Schiff and another classic set of rants from Karl Denninger. But the best commentary comes from the policy experts over at Cato (h/t: Below the Beltway):

I go through this every year. I’m walking around town or work and see someone with some dirt smudged on their forehead. Being a compulsive cleaner, my first instinct is to say something like, “You’ve got a little dirt on your forehead,” pull a bandana out of my pocket and move forward to wipe off the dirt. Luckily, this year I was unemployed and didn’t have any pressing reason to leave the house, so I avoided the possibility of this happening. So, I turned on the TV and wondered why all the guests on news shows had dirt smudges on their forehead. Was there a building collapse or some sort of natural disaster that I wasn’t aware of? They seemed too calm for that. I don’t know why it takes me so long to figure out that folks are just celebrating Ash Wednesday, but it does. And worst of all, it happens every year. I’m just scared that one year I won’t catch on quick enough and make a complete ass out of myself before realizing what’s going on. How bad would that be to wipe someone’s smudge off?

The fact that I’ve spent about thirty years of my life not having a clue that Ash Wednesday or little cross smudgies existed baffles me. During my formative years, I lived down the street from a Catholic Church. Geez! And to top it off, lots of denominations celebrate Ash Wednesday in this way. Maybe I’ve only lived in neighborhoods filled with “bad” Catholics. Or maybe its just me. I’ve never had any previous religious affiliation that actively promoted this ceremony, but Ash Wednesday’s on the liturgical calendar of at least some Gnostic denominations, such as the celebrations and holy days of the Ecclesia Gnostica. Since the gist of the remembrances associated with Ash Wednesday seems to be repentance, and I have a lot to repent for, I may give it a try. Or maybe not. I’ll start by reading Reverend Steven Marshall’s homily for Ash Wednesday and then maybe consider it for next year. And if I don’t decide that I’ll get much from Ash Wednesday, at least I’ll remember it and not be weirded out too much when Ash Wednesday comes around next year.