Subpar Subculture: The Politics of Generation Z

Did the FBI bring me cocaine in 1977?
Did the FBI try to kill me in 2008?
Did the FBI really have to shoot and kill Imam Luqman Ameen Abdullah?
Did the "soup kitchen" Imam even exist?
"race42012.com," eh?
I'll blow them all out of the water, if I can ever get out of Thousand Oaks, California, that is.

In the 1960's, it was drugs, drugs, drugs, and thank God I was both too young and too far away to travel to Woodstock, New York. Spilling over into the 1970's, for about the first half of that decade, the subculture was still drugs, drugs, drugs, but they were not as good, except marijuana, so when Chevy Chase reminded us of Gerald Ford's clumsiness, at my spy boot camp college, we laughed--a lot.

Sadly, the second half of the 1970's turned narcissistic, a word the CIA tells me I'm not supposed to use, but this is a retrospective application of the label. Good cocaine? What a bright late 70's idea to make people artificially peppy, but alas, our family dog named "Peppy" was run over during one of #5's Almost Famous style parties. Question: Who went to the police station to determine Peppy's fate? In other words, what kind of valiant suburban hippie boy would go to the police during a party very much like the one in the movie?

That's me, the leader, and as usual, the policeman either didn't know nothin', or he was lying, because Peppy was found dead-on-road, and I did not leave the gate open, but my sister has held this canine fatality against me to this day. Late 70's pep led to a thriving industry in the 1980's, when the subculture was all about making money any way you could. Illegal, quasi-legal, on the books legal--everybody was making money except poor me.

Yes, someday we'll have the courtroom Powerpoint slide of want-ad traffic when Hughes was depositing a paycheck vs. looking, looking, looking for work. Rigged? I think so, but the old chums were always willing to parade me around on Friday night and have supposedly spontaneous conversations with drab old spies who always seemed disinterested--in murdering me, that is.

Oh, the hometown advantage! I'll get it back somehow, maybe with a campaign commercial that recreates me chasing drug-running spooks through an intersection on two wheels right in front of the policeman, who merely shook his head as if to say, "It's just Hughes out chasing spies." Moving to the 1990's, the zeitgeist got digitalized, and when Hughes tried to write his first book, many, many floppy discs were corrupted, I now suspect by rodents hacking away upstairs. "Friends" thought this could not happen, but they were part of the "Death threat, what death threat?" crowd.

Speaking of that first book, I did get a bit confused with roughly a half-dozen agents and three publishers interested, resulting in only a cardboard box full of compliments. Ouch! Bygones be bygones? Don't think so, and clever individuals have let me know sales are brisk in China on the second book, which exists in the USA as only a Microsoft computer file. Who is "free" around here, anyhow? Never mind.

Back to subculture, the computer worship of the 1990's, and the hacking you all enjoy has caused a pain in the neck for Golden Boy, because getting into DOD computers wouldn't be any "fun" if you get caught, but mysteriously, "they" don't. Why do people look at me crazily when I say you need a black & white screen and carrot-ridden command prompts to really know anything about computers? They look at me that way because I was supposed to launch a Minuteman missile or two based on one trip to Omaha, Nebraska in 1979.

Wow! When Bush went there on 09/11/2001, "they" wouldn't let him do a thing, but husky .mil spooks toting little gas cans to the Chevron was the manner in which "they" let me know I was cleared on that caper, and need I mention the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act passed in 1978, right before the trip to Omaha? Does eating in Italian restaurants count in obtaining an FISA order? Just wondering.

See how "they" are? Can't beat 'em, join 'em? I beg your pardon. I have all of the money, and I am running for president, if you don't mind. Moving along to the current decade of cat-herding, it looks like the new subculture is all about paranormal events and powers. I've decided I am not expending my precious time writing to the DOD Inspector General to tell of how I know objects flying around my room does not indicate the work of witches, warlocks, or E.T.'s.

Nope, just another Hughes toy applied toward driving the boss nuts, and this is not unusual, it is totally Americana to keep certain things from the boss. Ah, but Mr. Hughes knows his power supplies, his plugs & jacks, and thanks to NASA, his ions, too. This has all of the other defense contractors trippin' over the fact I am honest, and though I did not help a little old lady across the street the day I wrote this piece, I did give one some of my envelopes, which I use to send-in FOIA requests.

Real gov'ment types, you'd better get cracking, because the spykids I grew up with are all in their 50's now, and we just might get around to reordering the whole terrorist-coddlin', E.T.-chasin' mess on the back of an IHOP placemat.

And what are you going to do about it?