DARPA Technology Could Aid Oppression of America

ascists everywhere were delighted when news of the Pentagon's DARPA technology sailed predictably beneath the radar when announced to the news media Wednesday. America, believed to be fully absorbed in the release of Legally Blonde 2: Red, White and Blonde and the death of screen legend Katherine Hepburn, hit the snooze alarm on the report, unconcerned what it could mean for antiquated notions such as privacy and government boundaries.

DARPA, the geekish acronym for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, proudly announced the creation of urban surveillance technology this Wednesday purported necessary in the defense of the country. The defensive surveillance equipment will protect our country by being placed in other countries, where U.S. troops will be found. Pentagon defense plans project the U.S. being completely defendable by 2020, when U.S. troops will be stationed in every country throughout the world except the U.S.

The key component of the surveillance technology, built for urban battlegrounds, lies in the computer software so complex it can identify vehicles by size, shape, color, and license plate number, and can even identify vehicle passengers' faces. Add-ons to the program are being designed to identify the titles of books in vehicles and the contents of passenger wallets, should the need ever suddenly pop up.

"Privacy nuts," previously referred to as "Americans" prior to 2001, challenge the necessity of such equipment and worry the domestic implications are extremely dangerous.

"It's all fine and good to say this technology is only going to be used on foreigners," said privacy watchdog and University of South Hampton, Cambridge custodian Rutherford Mays, "but it only takes another big movie weekend for the government to sneak this technology into major cities and start using it for 'our own safety.' It is not enough that rights to search and seizure have been unconstitutionally bypassed in the name of this War on Terror, or that our computers are being turned into high-tech tagging tools. Now they're developing laser eyes than can pierce your walls and read the dirty magazines under your mattress. And that really pisses me off, because I didn't pay all that money to share those magazines with government laser eye technology."

According to Pentagon spokesperson Col. Gary Gawain, the issue has already been addressed in previous memos concerning the production of the technology from no less a source than former Central Command Gen. Tommy "Frankie" Franks. In short? Frankie says relax.

"All of this fuss over a 'what if' situation is pretty silly," said Gawain, straightening a pipe in his mouth and adjusting a smoking jacket he inexplicably wore to the press meeting. "Technically, a bomb could go off tomorrow and kill everyone in the country and the technology would never be set up—wouldn't you feel like quite the ass then? What you're looking for is a definitive declaration that the surveillance equipment developed by DARPA will never be used against American citizens for political reasons or personal vendettas, and I think it's safe to assure you completely this technology will never be set up domestically before 2004. Possibly even later, the designs are a little sketchy. Now don't you feel befuddled?"

Gawain could not respond to further questions, as he was cackling loudly as he disappeared down a trap door leading who knows where.

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In 1947, a researcher at MIT realized that he knew the Pope. Well, not him personally, but his cousin Bernie once met a guy who's grandfather's shoeshine man once stepped on the Pope's robe when he was staggering out of a bar one night, so that was pretty damned close to knowing the Pope. This researcher's gears started turning upstairs as he realized the ramifications of what he had discovered. "I'll be shit in dip, I know the motherfucking Pope!" he yelled to no one in particular.

Then he promptly went out and got shitfaced in celebration, dying of liver failure in a cheap motel nine years later after waging a half-assed battle with alcoholism. But while he was at the bar he had mentioned, loudly and in the form of a song, his discovery to a man in a pirate costume who was occupying the barstool next to him. The pirate said "Arr, the Pope indeed!" and moved further down the bar, but another researcher sitting at a table within earshot heard the conversation. He was less of a fuck-up and actually did something with the information, thank God.

He sold the idea to a third researcher for a fix of heroin, and went off to Naked Lunch his way into oblivion. This third researcher wrote the idea on the back of a map of Utah, where it stayed in his trunk for ten years, until he went to sell the car to a naïve college freshman who actually believed that the car's monstrous rust problem was a new high-tech ventilation system. When the researcher was cleaning out his trunk he found the map with the idea scribbled on the back, and since he had recently been fired from the University for selling test tubes as magic condoms, he decided to make this his next project.

He called the project Six Degrees of Mark Womack, because Mark Womack was his name and he liked to tell naïve freshman girls he had six degrees so they would sleep with him. When one would occasionally ask what his degrees were in, he'd make up subjects like Astrocomedy, SuperBiology and Calculean. Womack spent the first six months of research feverishly trying to figure out how he knew the Pope, and why he couldn't kick this lousy fever. First he called everyone he knew to ask if they knew the Pope, then he just started calling people at random from the phone book in hopes of finding a link. After six months and an assassination attempt by the phone company, the answer finally came to him while he was driving to the police station to bail his brother Don out of jail.

Don had once been arrested for sneaking into Madonna's house dressed in a floor-length evening gown, and Madonna had of course recorded the theme song for the Pony Express: "Express Yourself." Pony Express rider Wild Buffalo Bill McLanihan had once shot Walter "Left Turn" Sykes for riding his horse too slow on the hauling-ass trail, and Sykes was the maternal great-great-grandfather of Father Parrish Lunt, who once French-kissed the Pope at a Vatican mixer before being reassigned to Buggery Beach on Easter Island.

It was almost brilliant in its simplicity! And more importantly, it proved scientifically that Womack kind of sort of knew the Pope. He ran out into the street half-dressed to share his incredible news with the world, and was run over to death by a trolley.

Luckily for science, that pirate-dressing guy from the bar ten years previous had been working on the same problem this whole time, mostly while he was in the doctor's office awaiting his weekly treatments for lupus. Samsonite Cooks had taken a somewhat different approach than Womack, focusing instead on the idea that any two people on earth could be connected by a chain of six or fewer acquaintances. He came up with this idea after running into an old ex-girlfriend he'd been avoiding and subsequently misunderstanding the title of Womack's project. However, he quickly realized that this was bullshit, since it's not like Leon down on 6th street knows the freakin' President. Shit. That dirty dog would need at least 100 steps and a hang glider.

Thus, the idea lay dormant in Cooks' sock drawer for another forty years until he sold it in a sports bar men's room to Michael Bacon, celebrity brother and one half of the celebrity-and-his-brother musical duo The Bacon Brothers. Bacon was desperate to step out of the shadow of his actor brother Kevin, a man who wears jogging shorts so hideously small you can see his Bacon bits. Michael Bacon pitched the idea to Ernie Bradley, an upstart board-game publisher desperate to step out of his own brother's shadow, and there the parlor game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon was born. Michael became rich but still could not escape from his brother's shadow, so he had to settle for playing out of key when Kevin sang, making him look like an asshole.

Science jumped on the Six Degrees idea and claimed it was real, much as they did after the first Star Wars became popular. The world took notice, said "Huh, weird" and went back about their lives. More importantly, however, a young scholar-for-hire named Griswald Dreck started his own mail-order business, linking customers to the historical figures of their choice for a nominal fee, and ended up landing a regular columnisting job after he linked Red Bagel to Ivan the Terrible in four steps flat. It's a small world, as they say. Or sing.

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Grape. Fuckin'. Nuts.

That's what my mornings are reduced to these days, ladies and gentlemen. A bowl full of rock-hard gravel that's supposed to help me live to 120. Have you ever even seen a 120 year-old? Sweet Bubble-Yum Jesus, I saw a guy who was 118 once and I thought he'd come to tell me about Christmas Past, I almost shit my pants. He looked like he'd died three times already but kept coming back for the buffet. So I'm really starting to wonder at the wisdom of choking down this mole-food.

And yet now I find myself more in the mood for some kind of gooey sugar treat in the shape of a rabbit or bird. How fickle these desires, that tear my soul asunder.

-RIIIIING-

That's right kids! You've found today's magic vocab word, "asunder"! Congratulations!

-drunks cheer-

Now, for the grand prize, can you use today's word in a complete sentence? Let's see:

"Uh, yeah. Here we go: Man, if she gotta assunder that miniskirt, I'll give you TWENTY bucks for an hour!"

-DINGDINGADING-

That's it! Congratulations, you're now the proud owner of "EAT IT!", the board game that makes cleaning out the refrigerator FUN! If you can't name its atomic weight, you're gonna EAT IT!

Ah, what a precarious, flighty thing this day is, like a little bird lofted on the wing, a little, gentle bird, so small and downy, so delicate and blue-eyed, a precious drop of God's love on this sylvan sphere, like a-JESUS CHRIST, how did I get this gun in my hand? For the last time, I don't know anything about any mass shooting at Chuck E. Cheese's! And for the love of God, tell the voices in my head to stop arguing about football!

Remember kids, if you feel a tingle in your dingle, make sure she's single before you mingle; you know what I'm saying? I've got a scar here that taught me that very lesson, and I'm passing it on to you. Not the scar. Unless you get too close to my Mustang, then all bets are off.

And now, from your friends at Hallmark, a warm greeting:

Rub a double-dumpling

Stick it up your nose

Cease with all your mumbling

And take off your clothes.

Thanks folks, we've been getting a lot of requests for that one, a real throwback to the lyrical styles of yesterweek. I'm Dick Van Patten, and you've been great. Goodnight everyone, and smoke a doobie for Huey P. Newton.

-closing theme aka Darth Vader's Empirial March-

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