Sample Reality

Covert versus Clandestine

I never knew it, but there is a legal difference between “covert operations” and “clandestine operations.” According to today’s NYT, covert operations are missions “in which the [U.S.] government denies any role and that can be undertaken only by presidential directive and with formal Congressional notification.”

Clandestine missions are not “officially deniable” and require less oversight.

The general thrust of the Times article is that the Pentagon is seeking more covert operations—of the type that used be the providence of the CIA—for use in the Middle East.

Just think, top secret operations for which, if they screw up, the government can just plausibly deny ever happened!

I wish I had some sort of covert operations capital myself, in which I could achieve that exalted state of deniability. The nice wine glasses we just bought and which somehow are now chipped and one is entirely missing? I don’t know anything about that! Never heard of it. Didn’t happen.

Can You Hear Me Now?

There was a fascinating article in the January 11, 2005 New York Times: you know when you call customer service and a recorded voice says, “This call may be monitored for quality assurance purposes”? It turns out that’s no lie. Even when you’re waiting on hold and talking to your cat or wife or husband or maybe yelling at your kids, somebody may be listening.

The most revelatory part of the article, however, is how hard that job is, to be on quality control and listen to a hundred or so calls a week, evaluating the customer service rep but also listening silently to customers and their rants, sob stories, and in some cases, pick-up lines. There’s a huge turnover rate in these call monitors, and Ken Belson, the journalist who wrote the article, provides a striking insight that explains why: we live in a culture where listening is “a rare commodity” and “the opposite of talking is waiting to talk.”

Belson is dead-on. Listening is a dying art. In America, what counts most is how many words you can get in edgewise before you’re interrupted. And the interuptee, to coin a word, isn’t responding to what you’ve just said, but rather is simply saying something that’s been in his or her mind before you even began to speak.

We live in a world of preemptive interuptions. We live in a world, it seems, of preemptive everything.

Update on Burglary

First the facts…the word floating around town was that there were over thirty break-ins over the holidays. The police have announced that there have actually only been twenty-four reported break-ins. So already I feel safer. (So already I feel safer?)

Other facts: mostly jewelry was stolen. Yes, some Oreos. And in one case, seven bars of Irish Spring soap. No electronics, no firearms, no alcohol, none of the Christmas presents wrapped under all the trees.

The police announced all this at a recent community meeting, held on the neighborhood green, which I left feeling like I had just stumbled in and out of a Twilight Zone episode. Which episode? Any of them, I guess.

The police chief told the crowd of nearly fifty that the thief is most likely “one of us” and could even be there at the meeting. I had momentary visions of the Salem witch trials—neighbors turning on each other, fingers pointing, the gallows being readied right there in the middle of the green, hastily assembled from nearby benches. Luckily, my neighbors all had cooler heads than that.

My own theory is that the criminal is a college kid, who was home for the holidays and needed some cash. Gambling debts? It was either steal his neighbors’ jewelry or have his kneecaps broken? Or maybe he wanted to woo his girlfriend with an awesome Christmas present? The police estimate that the total value of all the goods stolen is about $31,000. That could buy a nice iPod and a few accessories. (Of course, why not just steal some of the doubtless countless iPod-shaped presents that were under everybody’s Christmas trees?)

At any rate, in our own household we were lucky. Or just a plain waste of the thief’s time. We can’t find anything missing. We don’t have many valuables, but it’s not like we don’t have any. Surely the crook could have found something worthwhile to steal after going to all the trouble to break in? Truth be told, I feel a little dissed. Like somehow I wasn’t good enough to rob.

The American dream lives on…

Robbery in a sleepy little town

Like many of our neighbors, our house was broken into sometime in the past week. We can’t really nail the exact time down, since we were gone. And we can’t really say what was taken yet, since we’re still gone. Jewelry seems to be the main objective. At least that what’s been taken from most of the other thirty or so houses in town that were also robbed.

So we’re here at my inlaws, and speculation runs rampant, about what we could’ve done differently to prevent this, about the thief or thieves’ modus operandi, about what might be missing when we finally get home.

Here are some of our brainstorms:

Who the thieves are:

• a professional jewelry ring
• a local kid out for kicks
• the Pink Panther

What their goals are:

• get rich quick
• looking for money for drugs
• just plain looking for drugs (sorry, we took all our heroin and crack cocaine with us for the holidays)

How they got in:

• jimmying the back door
• jimmying the kitchen window
• down through the chimney, quick, quick, quick

How can we prevent this from happening again:

• a security alarm
• a vicious bloodsucking dog
• never leave home again