toodles and poodles

So many of you say, "Chelsey, your posts are so sparse, what have you been up to?" Well my dear friends, (do I sound like McCain?)

Besides work I have been cleaning, cooking, sleeping. I want to say its been a rejuvenating time for me. But I feel like I am sinking further into a sandy grave. I want to ask people who work full time, "How do you do it?" But then I think if I do, they will realize they can't and I will have ruined their life. On the other hand, some people really do love working. I guess I like folding mail and running it through the stamp machine.

Sometimes I catch a smell or a feeling I had when I was in London. It sends me back instantly to the school computer lab. I would describe it for you, but it's my private memory. If I left a memory ghost anywhere, I suppose that would be the place. Do you ever force yourself to remember something? I do it all the time. I will stop and stare at something and tell myself, remember this: it's important. It seems to work because when I recall a place I can vividly remember the image I looked at. It is wonderful in a sense; yet horribly disappointing when I return to a spot and find it changed. I know my European experience can never be relived again. Nothing would be the same. But I still dream about it. It was the one place where I grew up. The freedom was reviving, exhilarating. I literally felt like I could accomplish anything I wanted. Surrounded with those buildings, the history, and those stuffy secluded people makes the imagination invulnerable.

What am I anyway? Am I a post-college abomination? Is this it? Is this what it means to be thrown out into a declining society where jobs are clouded by consumer bureaucracy and prejudices? I feel boxed in and lied to. They say, "Go to college and the stars are yours!" Granted, I loved the professors I met at college and the literature I was exposed to, but any good tutor could have provided that for me. Yes I know, I am an unmotivated whiner.

I am also becoming increasingly paranoid about the amount of information being stored on databases about us. (Even though we willingly put most of the information on the databases ourselves) On digg.com the other day, an article popped up saying google was creating a face distortion machine to take random faces, pulled from the internet, and blending them with their street cam images (so innocent walkers wouldn't be identified). This is a great idea, yet, YET, they are taking images from flickr. Then again, nothing is private online, right? Oh except your online bill pay, purchases, and banking of course...

Not to mention what is happening in China right now. 300,000 surveillance cams went up with face identification abilities, they bugged most of the taxis, and there were even rumors of hotels having peek-a-boo mirrors where the staff can spy on their guests. Let's not forget the internet nonsense. I wonder who they are looking for, and if they will catch them. We will probably know in another thirty years.

Then in Great Britain (yes I know they have way more cam surveillance than China) a engineer professor hacked into the chip on a passport and changed all the identification information on it! In an hour! "They," whoever they are, are hoping other people won't figure out how to hack the chip. /big slant face. So next time you go through an airport and suddenly you are identified as a terrorist, thank your friendly hacker.

Alright, I am off to have horrible spy dreams. Cheers to the most random post. But hey, it was bound to happen. It's been a week after all.