Overheard Starbuck

"I've been wondering if I'm under surveillance. If a few of my neighbors working for FEMA, or whatever part of the alphabet, are reporting on me whenever I step out the door or watching me with see-through-the-wall radar."
---"Paranoid much?"
"Why couldn't somebody in one of the houses or apartments nearby be paid to watch me on a screen in bright glowing colors while I'm stuffing my face, picking my nose, taking a crap or wanking? The technology doesn't exist?"
---"Who would want to watch you?"
"Who wouldn't? Working at home for Homeland Security? It's a dream job for law-and-order types. Crime victims and/or bigots weaned on tv cop shows and urban folkore: Dirty Harriets secured in their rooms while securing their communities, their nation...."
---"Ok now..."
"'...This crap's dedicated to the freaks secretly watching out there! The eyes and ears of crime prevention, the heroes of Community Policing-- now on the frontline of Homeland Terrorism Defense! Ya'll know the service you're providing, the invaluable information you're gathering. This crap's for you!'"
---"I mean who would want YOU watched? Who pays, who benefits?"
"You're saying I couldn't be an enemy of the state? A fabricated but necessary threat to the status quo: the Masons, the Mormons, the sex-klubbers? I've seen things: I've seen cops in uniform getting freebies from hookers; I've seen boxes of drugs delivered in the middle of the day to the Art Institute's shipping dock; I've seen pedophile pimps working the City's Zoo."
---"Sure you have."
"I could be a witness."
---"You can be a pest."
"Wouldn't that be reason enough?"