Cameras

Watching Me Blasting Icons
I'm still upset over the very "more pious than thou" comment The Daily Growler got for me, yes, I'll admit it, making fun in a mocking, smart-ass, "better than thou" sort of way of the precious Joan Baez, the ultra-precious Jane "Barbarella" Fonda (Janey, Petey, and their legal mother came home one night and found old Henry Fonda, their legal father, banging Oscar Hammerstein's teenage daughter--and the old bastard didn't miss'a stroke--he didn't finish off in mid-air, folks, just because his legal wife and legal kids had the audacity to expect him to not finish what he'd started, just like he fulfilled all his contract obligations when he made a movie--and I thought "Hank" Fonda was a damn great actor--both stage and film--in fact, I heard him lecture on the difference in stage and film acting and he was quite interesting--Gideon's Trumpet, isn't that old Hank acting his ass off? Trouble is, actors are actors are actors), and the superactivist Tom "Port Huron Statement" Hayden (though yesterday I gave old Tom plenty of space--he seems as whacky to me in his politics as Governor Jerry Brown is--remember Governor Jerry's "We the People" organization and movement?--how Governor Jerry was going to have town meetings and community forums all over the country--radio program with call ins from all over? He gave that up to run for mayor of Oakland, California, where he had moved after his presidency run failed, down into the Jack London Square area of Oakland, at that time one of the most deteriorated parts of inner-city Oakland--where the train station used to be--etc).

So I was still pissed about that "lecturing" comment--why do "goody-goody twoshoes" think they're so qualified to call someone jealous because that someone trampled on three of their, I suppose, revered personal icons?--and I was walking up the eastside of old Broadway, once the Great White Way, and I looked up and noticed a new object hanging off a light pole, a big silver-metal box with two big light-bulb-looking things hanging down off the box like the three balls used to hang down outside the pawnshops (whatever happened to pawnshops?). I'm a sociologist, remember, so my natural inclination was to study the box more closely--I'd never noticed it before and I go by that particular spot every day. On close study I noticed it honestly admitted via signs what it was. First it bore two shields I knew symbolized the New York City Police Department and under the shields was a statement that the box and the two light-bulb-like things was really a surveillance camera put up by the cops for MY protection--and, of course, what it was protecting me from was the al-Queda terrerists (G.W. Bush's pronunciation) who are amassing in London and whose eventually intent is to come on back to New York City and kill a few more thousand of us innocent jerks who are trying to keep our economic heads above water in this rich boy's paradise--and now doctors for God's sake are into killing mass numbers of human beings, who of course according to the great teachings of the great Mohammed (OK, so he lived in a cave and had sex with his sister; so what?) are not really human beings at all but dogs--heretics--therefore, even doctors get an immediate trip to Allahwood in the Sky and their 10,000 virgins just like the Saudi drunks with the box cutters who were able to bring down the two tallest symbols (cathedrals) of American Capitalism (also a religion) there were, the World Trade Center, doctors now learning to use surgery with bombs as they pledge allegiance to the mighty al-Queda terrerist force that is amassing to eventually kill off all WHITE Americans as they begin their impending takeover of the USA. And, oh yes, most of these doctors are what? I mean from what country? I'll give you one guess. Where's Prince Bandar Bush from? There's your answer.

Anyway, so what I saw up there on that Broadway light pole was a police surveillance camera. Then this morning, our little shanty Irish police commissioner, Ray Kelly, has announced the cops have under the cover of night installed 100 cameras watching all the traffic entering downtown Manhattan from Queens and Brooklyn and from Jersey--Holy Christ! I'm thinking, 100 cameras is all you need to cover the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Holland Tunnel, the Ferry Terminals?--blah, blah, blah--I mean...Kelly did say these cameras are particularly for spotting terrerists--they are also specifically going to allow the cops to zoom in and catch terrerists license numbers--since I suppose their logic tells them they can tell by a license number whether you're a terrorist or not.

Then I got to thinking, well, hell, if these cameras are zoomy tough enough to eagle-eye in on your license plate, isn't it possible, too, they're zooming in to eagle-eye and capture on film your face? Of course, hundreds of thousands of cars, trucks, buses, motorcycles zoom into downtown Manhattan all day long from these downtown entrance points--and also, do these cameras work at night?--and it seems an idiotically reasoned out terrerist surveillance tactic.

Besides, do cameras really stop terrorists? Are there cameras set up all over Baghdad?

I stopped and reasoned: Do the cameras in all banks prevent bank robberies? A man with tree limbs taped all around his head robbed a bank in Queens or somewhere yesterday--and that's what the security camera caught--a man with tree limbs taped to his head. I mean, wouldn't a bank security guard stop a man with tree limbs taped around his head coming into a bank? Of course, most bank security guards look like your grandfather and it looks, too, like your grandfather only sleeps when he's on the job. I jest of course. I know: "How dare you mock bank security guards. My father was a bank security guard for 25 years and he fed us and sent all of us to St. John's and he was good man--how dare you...."

What good are cameras say in the subways? So you see a Saudi-Arabian-looking dude taking a bomb out of his backpack, so what--oh, you've got an image of him right before he blows himself and 30 or 40 other poor slobs to smithereens over a religious conviction--his death glorified, the others's deaths simply a pile of dog corpses.

New York City apartment buildings are loaded with security cameras--tenants have no idea how many cameras these greedy mostly foreign landlords have trained on their asses all the day long. These new apartment buildings--what would prevent the developers from putting hidden security cameras in the apartments themselves?--since personal privacy is now a thing of the pre-9/11 past. Yet, women still get raped in apartment elevators and stairwells and even in their own apartments.

OK, OK. I'm not afraid of a bunch of Saudis blowing me up--my neighborhood is turning rich young and white though and these white insurgents are running out a lot of Persian and Arab rug dealers from this neighborhood--the Persians, Arabs, Indians, and Pakis have hundreds of perfume and cheap jewelry stores in this area, too. The perfume businesses are interesting to me. I know a block behind me over here where there are 5 perfume stores on one side of the street and right across from them on the opposite side of the street are 4 more perfume stores, and last night as I walked by them, I saw a Muslim dude taking perfume from one store on one side of the street over to another store on the other side of the street--perfume? How the hell do these people make a good living --and folks, these peddlers all drive new Beamers, Mercedes, and Lexuses--same as the London doctor bombers--new Mercedes--how do they do it selling counterfeit perfumes? Foreigners love bizarres and that's what these stores are really. And they are all Islamic; I know a couple of perfume store owners and both are Islamic nutjobs who "God bless you" all the time and "Give praise to God" when you buy something from them--my fruit and nut seller is Islamic; the guy that runs the newstand and lives in my building is Islamic; the coffee and doughnut guy in the morning is Islamic. And I love all these gentlemen, and they're gentlemen, too, but I also know down deep in their Koran-trained souls they consider me a filthy heretical dog and would slit my throat in a cool minute were Allah to order them to.

Say cheese.

thegrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler