Surveillance Software Programmer Blues
The champions of civil liberties have long been defeated. You are being watched by secret cameras. It does not deter crime, nor intimidate criminals. Your confiscated income is diverted to the equipment, installation, and maintenance of these intrusive devices. Your suspicions that the eyes watching you in your public moments are really motivated by the most twisted lusts are not far from the mark. There are cameras in more private places, placed by the ever growing number of sexual deviants that the state encourages, in the same way that a mushroom farmer is a connoisseur of manure. The jerk offs that direct the state have an agenda of taxation and spending. Those voices that are critical of either are ignored by the lick spittle media; why upset the apple cart? The incest between media and Bolshevism stinks like sun ripened road kill. But there are those that hold their noses and accept the unsupervised funding that comes from the state. A few cameras here; a few cameras there. Like the great biblical figure Pontius Pilate one just washes ones hands before depositing the funds into the General Account. And if you have cameras, you need surveillance software, which means you need surveillance software programmers; and programmers have human resources problems. You are lucky that I, Fenris Badwulf, hold down the Human Resources position in Mitchieville. I make Humans into Resources. I care.
Floyd (not his real name, obviously) was hired to add some special touches to the surveillance system installed at the Mitchieville Public Library. He is a typical Un-Hyphenated-Canadian: he does not eat in restaurants, avoids crowds, calls ‘taxes’ confiscated income, and has a poor opinion of the quality of public health care, public education, and public transit. Not a word of his opinions appears on the internet in connection to his public persona: his real opinions are cloaked, concealed, and disguised. In the open he smiles at the stupid chatter of the CBC; his jaded beliefs about never workers, dirty fingered doctors, and crack pate journalists are hidden: and now, having been exposed to the surveillance images that are his trade, he is now truly cynical, the secret cynic. But his cynicism has begun to affect his work. He has become a Human Resources problem. He has become a project of mine. Can he be made more efficient?
I met with Floyd for a cup of tea. He carefully washed his own cup which he keeps in a locker secured with a stout padlock. He supplied his own tea, and demurred on the offer of milk, creme, and sugar. I never leave my lunch in the refrigerator, he mentioned, and I always prepare my own food. I nodded. I care.
Floyd has the usual amusing anecdotes about work. Is there any executive who does not have sex on their desk? Floyd has seen it all: do not get him talking about the equipment (handcuffs, et cetera) nor the outfits our business executives like to dress their office staff in before consummating their lust. I was surprised to learn of the popularity of military uniforms (parts, anyway; like boots, berets, and belts), but not about the diversity of bondage gear. Toronto, City of Light, boasts a number of leather and latex fashion boutiques within easy walking distance of the heart of the Ontario bureaucracy which holes up in Queens Park.
Floyd does not eat in public restaurants ever since he wrote some surveillance software for a fast food chain. No, it is not allowed for corporations to spy upon their staff. No, it is forbidden to spy upon staff in the washroom. Strangely enough, it goes on all the time. Those corporate entities that do not spy are the ones that have the ghastly scandals: the condoms in the soup, the crunchy insects in the pudding, and the dirty, poo stained hands that leave stains upon the counter tops. The spying corporations spot the filthy, the dirty, and the degenerate, and, unable to fire them for being filthy, dirty, or (especially forbidden) degenerate, find some clever way to give the heave ho to the Miscreant-Canadian. Fifty years ago, stirring the bosses coffee with your penis was grounds for instant dismissal; now it means eventual layoff due to shortage of work. If Floyd is ever to spend money in the entertainment sector, ever to hold a fork full of Chef’s Special to his lips, or sip a pint of mystery lager, it will not be until the common Canadian culture of the 1950’s is returned. Floyd knows the secrets of diversity: for him, e coli is not on his menu.
Floyd does not much like people, either. There is a word for this condition: misanthropist, I think. Floyd wrote the sub-routine that uses shape recognition to identify nose pickers. Three months of his life with his nose in a computer screen fine tuning the algorithm. You can imagine. But he was successful. Then, he got a verbal warning for doing so: apparently, nose pickers are soon to be added to the diverse list of protected groups in our racist, sexist, homophobic society. Floyd grits his teeth at the memory of how he was served with papers at his former employer by the Human Resources department: some nosy co-worker had denounced him. A pre existing vulnerable group has a disproportionate number of nose pickers, and they are concerned that the nose picking shape identification software will be used to single them out for hatred. (All the details are out there on the Internet, but I will not link to them.) He left that company and came to Mitchieville Library Services, and works at the Supreme Central Library. Here in Mitchieville Human Resources are not a dumping ground for the more stupid inbreeds that leftism creates. In Mitchieville, Human Resources cares.
Floyd listens as well as watches. He has a sufficiently large database of vile primate behaviors to statistically prove the existence of criminal subspecies within our midst. As you can imagine, concrete proof of such is not politically correct. The common tax payer, feeling sore in the rump from their daily exposure to the creatures created by their confiscated income suspects, but in a visceral way. Their fingers itch for the pitchfork; their ears hunger for the whish, thunk, and the ‘cabbage plop in a basket’ of the guillotine. Good thing the evidence to support their opinions is being suppressed. A Toronto without crime, with a sufficient budget for a exemplar road net, public transit, and ’see you in minutes’ health care system: it is awful to realize that one is being cheated out of this utopia by the aristocrats. Floyd listens to the chatter of the never workers as they go about spitting in your food, leaving washers and bolts out of the assembled machines you purchase, and mopping the medical instruments about to be stuck into your body with dirty dishwater. According to Floyd, the ‘most vulnerable in our society’ embrace a deep and murky malice to those whose confiscated income supports them. Ask Floyd yourself, and if he trusts you enough to not be a greasy informant of the Bolsheviks, he will tell you.
So, Floyd is cynical. His work is suffering. His supervisor, Doctor No, is filled with concern. I was moved to tears as Doctor No told me about Floyd, and how much his co-workers cared about him. The Supreme Central Library is a caring place. I clutched my Cthulhu plushie closer to my heart and had a good cry. Just as surely as exposure to hair tonic can earn a French barber a lifetime pension, so had Floyd’s exposure to the corrupt and degenerate nature of Bolshevik culture earned him a place in the Army of the Righteous with an agenda of Reform, using the cleansing power of fire.
I shared with Floyd the Good News about Set, the Snake God. He was not alone. His desire to be chef at a banquet for the Emerald Eyed One was a good thing. He had brothers and sisters who would help him, be his kitchen staff, waiters, and scullions. We could use his software to find the entree. It all starts with dinner. The cynical humor was expelled from Floyd. He smiled. He has a vision, and purpose. He has an agenda, a secret agenda; and a secret society of like minded fanatics whose eyes burn with the same fire. I breathed a sigh of relief. Helping people is what I do best.
I am Fenris Badwulf, and I care.
