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March 15, 2005

Urban Hacking, Effete Republicans & The Spirit of Mega

In the coming weeks and months, it is my intention to get back in shape and do a bit of urban hacking and amateur spyjinks. I think it's an excellent idea for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that, well, every once in a while I get my fill of bourgie bloviation.

I came across this notion in three or four stages. The first was the realization that Glenn Close is going to play a detective in this season of 'The Shield'. Make sure to get a season pass on that. She researched the project by spending some time with an actual real woman cop in NYC. The second was the idea of 'Blame the Enemy', which I will post in the future - stay tuned for that. The third has to do with my continuing security focus, and the fourth with my discovery of yet another blog I wrote several years ago in the months leading up to September 11th.

That blog was called 'Obscura' and I'm republishing it here. The archives may or may not work as of this publishing. Speaking of which, Blogger has gotten its act together since I last checked. I'm liking it a lot more and will probably do some serial hit-and-run blogging.

One of the Obscura posts led me back to Jinx Magazine. A very little known fact was that I used to be a tagger back in highschool. That's right, I belonged to a prep-school cholo-wannabee gang, and we tagged various joints in the very old school style of pre-wildstyle graffiti. Anyway my name was Jinx, so the site appealed to me immediately. Then I discovered what they were all about and was immedately transfixed by stories that took me way back. So I predisposed a portion of myself to GPS hacking, dumpster diving and like activities. Intellectually and culturally these fit nicely into part of the 'new tactical', and 'blackneck' themes. [Un]fortunately as the case may be, I have not pressed any compatriots into this manner of sport.

In reading up on the highlighted hacker of the day, Citizen Chris, it occurred to me that there's a bit of an anarchist component in this cohort. Chris writes with a bit of snarky irony:

There is this vast Republican conspiracy to underfund the entire infrastructure of the nation. Few repairs are made to highway systems so that more Americans are stuck in gridlock and thus have more time to be brainwashed by the Limbaughs, O'Reilly's, and Hannity's of hate radio as they sit and stew in traffic. The anger of the horrible commute creates a Pavlovian conditioning situation in which hatred of the gridlocked commute is transferred to Democrats, liberals and the their vast evil communist plots.

Tsk.

Be that delusion as it may, there is an element of truth in it, which is that they are talking about a class of Republicans that do exist out there. One of 70 classes I'd imagine. But for those of us Republicans who own boots, workgoves and chainsaws (you know it!), there's a bit of an attitude adjustment we have yet to deliver in the national electorate.

So I'm digging the angle of how close knowledge, power and (for lack of a better word) transgression are to what is generally percieved by dainty people to be criminality. The line is not so thin as many would like to think, and those of us whose responsibility it is to make things work, know very well what it would take to sabotage those very things. But we never do, we're responsible and we consider it our duty to remain that way.

America has millions who own 4WDs that never get engaged. And I think there is an image that youth has that only lefties and anarchists get dirty. Those on the right who do are all either 'stupid rednecks' or 'gullible soldiers'. Whatever to that. I'm going to have fun getting dirty and going to places where it is expected that only delinquents and homeless people are. So I'm looking, through Jinx, for folks in LA who won't mind getting their feet wet in the LA River. I know just where to start too, Civil engineering departments.

BTW, Chris, misguided as he is politically, has admirably gotten himself a 100-ton master's license. (Google that one your damned self.) Reminds me to call my boy Bernard who used to hang out with Liberian freighter captains.

One more thing. Remember the Spirit of Mega.

Posted by mbowen at March 15, 2005 02:45 PM

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Posted by: Steel Turman at March 15, 2005 05:48 PM