Deep in the heart of Texas, I have no idea what?s happening. But here?s what?s going on deep in the asshole of Texas.
A few miles from where I grew up in a corner of unincorporated Northwest Houston, the Spring school district is making kids of all ages carry RFID cards. The kids ?swipe? on and off the school bus and then in and out of the school building. The principal?s office and the local police can track the movements of individual kids on a little video-game like screen. Since the kids often forget their cards, there?s already talk of implanting them with chips just under the skin.
How cool is that? I love it when my dire predictions come true. I thought that chipping everyone in the country would start with kids, to ?protect? them — but I thought it was maybe 10 years off. Maybe it can be combined with cool tattoos and body piercings!
It would be great if an electric shock capability was built into the chip! The police chief in the Panopticon would ?joy buzz? anyone who pissed him off or cut class.
I?m just stupid and technophilic enough that I?d go get chipped on purpose. But forcing kids to do it WILL happen and it?s incredibly fucked up. The ACLU has an interesting Position Statement on RFID that?s worth checking out; the EFF wrote one too.
Meanwhile, thought crimes are being averted and diverted in Plano, which is deep in the diseased, swollen tonsils of Texas - sort of the early warning alert of the country?s immune system.
There, a small-town school has TWIRP Day, a tradition which in my East Texas high school was called ?Sadie Hawkins Day,? on which everyone reverses gender to some degree; girls are supposed to ask boys out to a dance. Apparently in Plano they take it a little further, and actually cross-dress for one day during football Homecoming Week. But no longer! Complaints from homophobic parents and the Liberty Legal Institute have changed Cross-Dressing Day into Camo Day, so that kids can be trained up for the Army. Because dressing like you?re going to kill somebody is moral, and crossdressing threatens the very fabric of society, or maybe the very thin crepe paper of society.
It?s not like queerness and crossdressing are diametrically opposed to war and killing. Think of the Sacred Band, or the male teenage fighters in Liberia who put on pink wigs and wedding dresses for the most incredibly disturbing battle uniforms ever. Maybe we can join up with the noble ?queers in the military? movements to promote crossdressing in the military. Crew-cutted jarheads will don regulation lipstick and those cute little dresses that WACs or WAVES or whatever used to wear. Embedded fashion magazine reporters will accompany our troops to war, chirping brightly about stockings that match one?s machine gun over their satellite phones.
