Snowdened-in: life is stranger than fiction.

Kickin' it with coffee beside the sale aisle!

Location: The Davinci Coffee inside of the Yeonju HomePlus.

Sometime around noon-- after weighing myself and discovering my relocation fugue has resulted a six pound weight gain-- I left my apartment and headed in the general direction HomePlus seemed likely to be. (HomePlus and E-Mart are the K-Marts and Wal-Marts of S. Korea, in Yeongju in December, about the only thing to do.)

I went the wrong way.

And then I went the right way. But in the interim, I walked and thought.

I came to the not so brilliant conclusion that I miss the boys and my roommates. Well not so much Stacy, the belligerent alcoholic divorce` (she just disappeared and saved me from having to quit) or  the lesbian couple the father moved in to replace me (in typical K. Wilson fashion, I came home from work to discover characters right out of the movie Monster living in the basement) but Ramon who was friendly and would sit with me by the fire and talk despite hardly speaking any English at all.  But mostly it was the boys who occupied every Saturday night for the last 11 months.

It was crazy working for K.Wilson this last year, and a testament to how life can be stranger than fiction.  And while it was mostly good, mostly drama free, there are moments that I look back upon and....I wonder why. I feel embarrassed, ashamed, as though I have done something wrong.

And as I walked, I realized my send off, or lack there of, still hurts.  I hate that I invested so much time. I hate that I am still thinking about them, missing them when I am already forgotten. I hate above all things, how it was just a job: employer/ employee.

And while no one could predict the arrival of  Selby (the nanny) and Aileen Wuornos,  I am still deeply bothered.  I love the boys, perhaps always will. I hate that I was weak, saying nothing when I wanted to grab the boy's father, shake him and say:

"Think dam it! Think! Never mind that she doesn't have any source of income, or a driver's license, and probably has warrants out for her arrest in Kentucky... And I understand that you like to help people who are down on their luck. If you lived alone so be it. But you have the boys and she got kicked out of her last place for getting into physical altercation with Aileen in-front of the children! She was living with family, for crying out loud and they didn't want that shit around their kids, why would you invite that around yours!"

But sometimes life is so much stranger than fiction that there is nothing to be said. Sometimes you have to trust that life has a way of working itself out even when it shouldn't. Above all else, sometimes you need a good distraction like a short story that needs writing or a handsome co-worker (how happens to be in a long term relationship, darn). And sometimes you need to walk in the wrong direction before you can walk the right one.

But this brings me to one more thing: Edward Snowden and Prism. This and the above my seem completely unrelated, but they are not. (Everything is everything, after all.) For one thing, Prism is something that has bothered me greatly, something I have thought endlessly about, felt exceedingly helpless about. Because, even though the powers that be say, "Well, we only intend to use it for good," I can't help but think how messy life can be. How a life time of bad judgments or even the lack of foresight, could be complied and used.

Can you imagine a future where businesses pay money to get access to the emails of job candidates? I can. I simply have to look at the budget crisis and say, at some point government will look for alternative streams of revenue. And what is the biggest business to day? Data. What you buy how you buy and what you do with it.

It scares me to think that a future me could lose a job because I worked for a man who hired Selby to replace me. Or because I lived with Selby for two years. (To be clear her real name was not Selby. I'm using pseudonyms to illustrate character.)

A while back I started a short story about a future decent of Edward Snowden. In this reality, Prism is strong and well and (more technologically advanced than present day). The government uses the program to target the Snowden descendants (among the program's many nefarious uses). The Snowdens are targeted as a form of entertainment, distraction, and most of all a deterrent. For who would speak out against the government when, not only themselves, but generation after generation would be punished?  

In the story, I address one of my predictions long held beliefs, which is the right to bear arms maybe constitutional, but what does it matter when technology has made constitutional rights obsolete. (There is a gap between the weaponry technology of governments and private citizens. The wider the gap, the higher the cost civil war. When the gap hits an apex, the right to bear arms offers zero protection for citizens: Think about how Avatar would have ended if all the animals of Pandora had not joined the war.)

Okay, so my mind is hopscotching today, but there is a point to my madness. I have been thinking about doing, not a contest, as in past, but opening submissions to an anthology about said subjects above. And by above, I mean Prism, not boss cum roommates who hire a highly inappropriate nanny replacement. Just so we're clear.

Any thoughts?