Tuesday 27 August 2013

somewhere in the middle of nowhere

The prison industrial system had gone haywire. White collar criminals were housed with the social media criminals, in a less than secure fashion. They were hatching and then carrying out leveraged buyouts of miniscule candy-wrapping companies, via aggregate snatches of pooled, so-called friends; who then became encouraged to open their google wallets and paypal pocketbooks to support fabricated facebook (et al.) causes. 

The money was then laundered, of course, penny by penny, into offshore accounts administered by friends of the white collar criminals, through joint accounts. Then the money returned to the United States, clean, and ready to be put to use in any way possible to get the imprisoned braintrust of the two specialized areas of expertise, out from where they were currently located, ie,  somewhere in the middle of nowhere. Political inflluence and bribery, were the preferred methods. And were rather successful.

The prison industrial system had gone haywire. Statistics, like usual, had not yet caught up with the situation. Patterns and trends had not yet become visible. There were wealthy pyramid schemers and social media predators conspiring, while eating shrimp scampi and watching flat screen televisions in common areas which were wallpapered, carpeted, and quite nicely ventilated for somebody's comfort. This was somewhere in the middle of nowhere. Where your average taxpayer was seldom located (thus often unaware).

Somewhere in the middle of somewhere, your average taxpayer was busy working and coming home from work, eating, sleeping, fucking, arguing, drinking, watching family guy reruns... and returning to work in the morning. And doing that all over again. And doing exactly nothing on the weekends. Other than maybe babysitting or arranging babysitting for the kids. And all the aforementioned activities, in between. Oh, and watching meet the press so to have a finger on any non-developments in politics worth arguing about, customarily, at the lunch break.

The prison industrial system had gone haywire. Summarily. If haywire is still currency in the english language. The English language had gone beserk. What with the movement away from the Oxford standard and the Merriam Webster. Hardly anyone could remember who the hell Strunk and White were, anymore. Except that they rode tandem. Even less read their book on grammar, the Elements of Style . Exactly nobody read that 1918 text for fun, anymore. The Urban Dictionary got the nod. Wikipedia got the nod. Scrabble and lottery crossword scratchers were among the new tools which replaced the old tools. Punctuation was a luxury, not a necessity. Spelling was often a free for all.

Meanwhile, somewhere in the middle of nowhere, white collars combined forces with social media criminals to bilk millions of their hard-earned hundreds and thousands. Amounting to millions. While eating extravagantly and laying their scheming heads at night on feather pillows, on the taxpayer dime.

Inside the prison walls, somewhere in the middle of nowhere, was crime. The enforcers paid to enforce there, became careless and distracted. Being non-tech savvy was the norm for a guard. Hours of conversation in the well-ventilated, carpeted common areas, drifted to the topics of the inmates' expertise. Many a guard had his eyes opened to the new world of androids and their usefulness in killing paid time that had no precise designation. Somewhere in between locking and unlocking doors, spot checking rooms, etc.

This kinda special acquaintance between a man and mobile phone, quickly accelerated into an attachment disorder. The inmates knew the psychology, having experienced this, themselves. They did not share the psychology with the guards. The guards were not interested in psychology, anyway. Not until they lost their jobs over it. Long after taxpayers lost their paychecks. For having been easily enticed into ramping up privileges, somewhere in the middle of nowhere, at the confluence of white collar river with social media streams. The currency on the floor was now petty wifi favors. The extraspecial yet ultimately simple tasks of rooting phones for free wifi hotspots, to enable laptop access of mature internet content. To escape the eye of intranetworks and the data clocks of mobile corporate carriers. What mattered most to the guards who would soon lose their jobs, but not soon enough: getting mature content on to larger screens. They were easier on the eyes.

The prison industrial system was off the hook. Somewhere in the middle of nowhere, on the taxpayer dime, in between the locking and unlocking of doors, on a cush-comfort carpeted feather down experience, where white collars collided with those found guilty of social media crimes, under the distracted watch of wannabe enforcers who spent the greater majority of their relaxed minimum-security level shifts, gambling or watching youtube videos or texting girlfriends and wives, and whom would soon lose their jobs...

Somewhere there in the prison system, on the taxpayer dime -- was crime.

Katya Mills 08/13