Dear National Security Agency:
I know you know everything about me, including the dirty parts. Especially the dirty parts. After all, they are the ones worth savoring.
I know, deep in your digital brain, you have categorized me as only a mild security risk and that you follow my movements because you follow everyone’s movements. Your program is designed to determine which among our friends might have a strange last name and belong to a terrorist cell. And I know your digital imagery categorizes Laguna as a high-risk, micro-target precisely because no one would believe it. In spy craft, reverse logic always works.
So, to save you the trouble of figuring who and what is happening in Laguna, I will lay it out for you. There may be secret code words used herein, but that is for your digital intelligence to unearth.
First of all, the Great Uproar over the Laguna village entrance is merely a device by the politicians to get citizens of Laguna interested in something more than the sunsets.
The politicians need occasional uproars to legitimize the existence of government in this fair city that needs nothing more than the police keeping the midnight downtown drunks under semi-control. That, and the lifeguards. You cannot have too many tourists drown as it would affect the trades.
The Great Fight over the entrance between Laguna Council members Elizabeth Pearson and Toni Iseman is staged. They love one another and have worked together on a host of good things for Laguna for years. Their teamwork on this issue — staging the fight to create interest in government — is a thing of beauty.
Local gallery owner Peter Blake, widely hailed as the “coolest person” in Laguna, does not exist. He is high-def hologram composed of several leading actors and his pronouncements come from a combination of comic-book novels and Shakespeare. It is all a concoction by his supposed girlfriend, Stephanie Brochereo, who created him one afternoon while fooling around on her iMac.
Greg and Barb MacGillivray’s One World One Ocean campaign to create a marine preserve over 10 percent of the ocean’s surface, is a capitalist plot. They mean to secure the only remaining ocean trophy species in their preserves, from which they will sell the rights to hunt them to billionaires trying to impress their girlfriends. The hunts will come complete with tiger sharks circling them but drugged to the gills so they can be petted. Cute, eh?
Local provocateur Sam Goldstein really is a frustrated drummer who takes it out on whatever cause he deems worthy of his scathing attention. His contempt for most of the so-called establishment should be watched closely. He is not personally a terrorist, but sometimes he thinks blowing things up is a great idea. But his wife Pamela, she of pure English heritage and the accent to match, is the one to watch closely. All those lunches with her friends at Zinc Café. Come on. If those are not terrorist cells, what is?
Then there are all the beautiful people. They are not from Laguna. They are posers from Central Casting. They know the satellites follow their movements and they want the reflected fame of being known as locals. Or perhaps they are long-term plants set to deploy at a later time by evil masters. The actors have no idea who their masters might be. It does not matter. They do not care. They are posers.
Finally, we do know no actual human beings at NSA read the emails, texts or tweets or watch the videos except to spy on salacious acts. That, by now, is no secret. Tracking millions of potential terrorists is boring, so most human time is spent on SpyPorn. And those cheeky bastards do not even share it. And with our tax dollars, too.
Michael Ray grew up in Corona del Mar and now lives in Laguna Beach. He makes a living as a real estate entrepreneur and is involved in many non-profits.
