A Minty Fresh Cavity Search

Hi. Got home yesterday and back at work today. Still trying to get everything settled, which includes hundreds of pieces of email and trying to track down a missing homework assignment. I was a good student, I promise. Sent my homework in last Friday, and am waiting patiently for the new tasks by my writing mistress. But I am forlorn, staring patiently at my email slate, wondering when she will acknowledge me, when she will command me and take me by my unworthy little snout and...well...you know.

Work here is same as it ever was, except people have been giving me that double-take of "Oh, you're back...wait, when were you gone"...that vacant half-second of puzzlement via cocked head followed by eyes growing in recognition. Yes, you were the missing widget out of place, finally restored to the grand machine. Oh, and thanks for the cookies you brought in. Oh wait, your mom made them. Nevermind.

Very very happy to be back in my own bed. I'm getting to that age where I can only get a good night's rest in my own domicile, where the air is the right flavor and you know the sounds as they whisper around you. The mattress is your second spine and you have the topography of the pillows mapped down to the square inch. When you open the window to let in the spring breeze, you can drift away knowing the world outside your glass, the mind drifts in slow waves to the trees and the river nearby. An owl calls in a low drone, and yes, this is what it means to have a proper slumber.

Now on to the bad news: When wifey and I checked in to fly to Chicago, I learned out I was on the FBI passenger watch list. I wasn't detained. I wasn't harassed, but the government has flagged me for some reason. Now, I have to begin a shaky process of clearing my name through paperwork and weeks of waiting. There's a circulating theory that because I have a common name I got tagged, which is embarrassing in this post-9/11 world. Why can't the government tell the difference between me and another John Ryan? What's even the point of a watch list if you flag all the John Ryans, hoping to nab one person, when you let every John Ryan know he's being watched? Isn't the point of "watching" someone to keep tabs on them without them knowing? What good is telling me, given that if I was the bad guy, I'd just cook up a new alias? What good is the form you gave me to clear my name, asking for my driver's license, passport information and birth certificate? Doesn't the government have all this crap to start with? Shouldn't there be a system to sift through the army of John Ryans out there to make a clear distinction? I thought that's what the whole big deal was about giving up civil liberties after 9/11: The government knows what you are up to. But now, all I see is a government that is less Big Brother and more Inspector Clouseau, comically bumbling along in an annoying way (unless you are Arab American, then you get the hood, the wires and everything) until it gets the bad guy, or not.

So, here I am, digging up data to prove who I am to a system who cares name-only about me to start with. It's Kafka meets Cletus, a bureaucracy of dunces. And I'm helping pay for it.

And I grit my teeth because my mom lets me know that she heard on her local radio about a guy who travels a lot, irate with the government for being on the watch list despite long months of maintaining his innocence.

Yeah, I feel secure.

At The Movies

"The Interpreter" is great. Taut, smart, well done. Go see it.