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If I Disappear, You’ll Know the Pentagon Brass Has Their Claws Into Me

I’m a little worried.

Lately, I’ve been getting a lot of hits from a certain .mil domain. Rather a lot, and it’s got me thinking.

You see, this particular domain — NIPR.mil — is, from what I can gather, a gateway set up for several, um… sensitive military domains, quite possibly including the Department of Defense and the Pentagon. Yikes!

So, here’s the thing — the hits coming in are all from the same subdomain, based on what I can gather from the IP address info I get in my logs. And there are a lot of hits lately. Specifically:

On 11/24: At 9:58:42pm, 5 hits over twenty-five minutes

On 11/25: At 1:27am, 18 hits over two hours and forty-five minutes(!)

          At 2:11am, 2 hits over seven minutes

          At 3:37am, 5 hits over fifty-two minutes

On 11/27: At 7:09am, 4 hits over 2 minutes

          At 7:17am, 6 hits over 18 minutes

          At 7:17am, 8 hits over 18 minutes

And no, those last two lines aren’t a typo. If the logs are correct, there were two sessions that started at exactly the same time, with exactly the same duration, within one second. Creepy, no? Like they’ve got some sort of intelligent, sarcasm-seeking automated web crawlers or something. Of course, if they do, that’s probably classified info. I might get arrested flogged fanny-spanked by John Ashcroft for writing about that. *gulp*

I suppose it’s possible that it’s just a fan, or several fans in the same office.

(Or bunker, or missile silo, or Area 51 alien-hiding tent. Whereever these military types hang out and read blogs.)

But it seems unlikely. For one thing, I don’t think I really talk about things that would pique the typical soldier-girl’s or flyboy’s interest.

(Assuming those people wouldn’t just kick my ass in the first place for calling them ‘soldier-girls’ and ‘flyboys’. Some of these folks are pretty close to the snapping point already, you know.)

On the other hand, maybe it’s even someone I know. I’ve got a couple of friends in the Air Force and Marines… I even had a really good friend in high school who freelances, doing Chinese document translations for the DoD. But I haven’t heard from her in a while — since before I started the blog, in fact — and I doubt she’d get clearance behind the ‘official’ firewall, anyway.

So, there’s a real possibility that the sudden, near-obsessive interest from the NIPR.mil domain is more… professional than personal. And so, I’m left wondering — have I mentioned anything here on the blog that would be considered questionable? (In terms of threatening national security, I’m talking. Everything I write here would be considered questionable in terms of good taste, propriety, sanity, and even plausibility. Even the grammar needs work.

(Which is, itself, a sentence fragment. Ooh, and so is that! And that! And… okay, I’ll stop now. Sorry.)

But I can’t think of anything that would set off the warning bells of the Federali watchdogs. Honestly, look around — there’s crap about the grocery store, and a job interview I had, and made-up shit about the Wheel of Fortune. What’s so sensitive about any of that? On the other hand, I did once mention the Great Wall of China. And the Iran hostage crisis. And more recently, I even talked about Ramadan. Twice, and the second time Mecca and Eid al-Fitr even came up! *gulp*

So maybe I am in trouble, after all. Right now, they’re just trolling around, collecting ‘evidence’. But it’s only a matter of time before they step up their efforts. Maybe they’ll start following me around, or even tapping my phone. Hell, who knows — they might even start hacking my computer and censoring my blog posts.

(Nah, that’d never happen. Even a bunch of gun-toting, paranoid Pentagon hacks wouldn’t go that far. Would they?)

Anyway, it’s probably just someone, or someones, who enjoys this particular brand of ridiculous drivel. And if that’s the case, then welcome! Glad to have you, and feel free to look around all you like. You can even leave a comment if you like, just to let me know the ‘heat is off‘, if you know what I’m saying. I won’t tell anyone, and you can even use an alias. Seriously, it’ll set my mind at ease.

On the other hand… if I start seeing those black cars with tinted windows driving a half-block behind me, or ‘pizza trucks’ stationed outside my house… well, I don’t know what I’m gonna do. This blogging thing is fun and all, but I don’t want to end up being pistol-whipped in Langley or thrown in a cell in Guantanamo Bay. I mean, I like to party and all, but goddamn — that shit is serious.

But if the Feds are after me, then I will say this: If you think for one damned minute that I am gonna let you guys go to all the trouble of reading this blacked-out stuff without giving you an Easter Egg or two, then you’ve got another think coming, brother. Like it or not, I am well within my rights in saying that I’ve now got a journal on LinkFilter. I don’t know how much I’ll post there, but feel free to check it out at: http://linkfilter.net/?s=j;user=hatton98.

And another thing, dammit, while I’m on a roll — um, yeah, I really don’t have another thing. I just think another line or two of blackened text would look cool. Oh, hey, if you like the effect and want to use it, just check out the .blackened CSS code in the header of the page. There. That’s another thing. I feel much better now.

So, that’s it, then. I guess it’s only a matter of time before they read this and cart me away at gunpoint. Ah, well — I had a good run. Just tell them my wife had nothing to do with it, okay? She doesn’t even read this shit. (Why would she? She hears all this crap all day, every day. Poor girl.) So maybe she’ll at least keep the house, and the dog, and whatever the military goons don’t break when they cart me off.

Or maybe I’m wrong, and the web hits are from people looking for a good yuk. Whatever. I guess you’ll know when I’m back later today for another installment. Or when I’m not. At least I’ve got my free speech for now, though. And no overzealous government weenie is gonna take that from me. Bastards!