Spies #3

This is the story of how I became a spy.

It all started when I was enlisted to partake in a Quest, a scavenger hunt of sorts heavy with secret agent elements, put together by friends. My roommate, we’ll call him Bombador Ali, and I immediately began preparing clues for Sydney and Bristow, our challengers:

We hollowed out a book and placed a camera inside, researched matrices to encode messages, and printed maps on transparencies, maps which only revealed a path when overlaid with alternate diagrams. I climbed a fire escape ladder and hid a message at the top. Bombador removed ceiling panels and climbed into a dusty attic, finding his way by the light of his cell phone while college professors chatted one floor below. (A creak on the stairs!—we pause, Bombador’s foot dangling from a removed panel in the ceiling… the creak is a false alarm. We resume.)

We thought we were awesome. (And to be honest, we are rather awesome. Hollowed out books? How much cooler can a man get?) We worried that the quest they were creating for us would not measure up to ours.

Then the Quest was launched. Bombador was at a birthday party when I received the email initiating the quest, so I opened it without him. It read: “A friend (or foe?) sent you a self-destructing message. You have one chance to read it.” I clicked on the link provided, which sent me to a new website. Numbers in the upper right corner immediately started counting down from sixty seconds, and I read the message quickly. In short, the text stated that Bombador and I were to meet in the basement of a building on campus at 9:00 PM, wearing “the appropriate attire.” When the ticker hit zero, the message erased.

That was my first hint that their quest was of a high caliber indeed. Self destructing messages! This was a spy’s bread and butter, and I was swallowing it without even chewing.

Bombador returned. Being too poor to own a suit, I borrowed one from another roommate. Bombador wore a black wool cap and leather jacket. I looked like James Bond, and Bombador resembled a feisty henchman. At 9:00 sharp, we arrived at the specified location. I was more giddy than severe, and it showed. I became a chatterbox, spouting off words so fast that later, when Bombador repeated to me some of the things I’d said, I didn’t even remember them.

A dour stranger in a long tan trench coat approached us. I’m embarrassed to admit that I was smiling broadly, unable to hide my eagerness. The man handed me a briefcase, nodded once, and departed, all without a word.

Back at base, we watched the DVD provided inside the briefcase. Words scrolled across a black screen: “We’ve been watching you.”

Suddenly, I appear onscreen. A shaky camera follows me as I walk through the school cafeteria, tray of food in hand. I look in the direction of the camera, and the image freezes, zeroing in on my face. Next, the video transitions to show Bombador, standing in a stairway. A third scene reveals Bombador and I, standing and reading a newspaper.

As we watched this, Bombador and I giggled like children on a Tilt-A-Whirl. While I’m sure it might freak out a person who is less obsessed with spies, the fact that Sidney and Bristow had taped us without our knowledge was invigorating. I was impressed with the skill required to pull off such a feat, but more than that, I was impressed by their audacity.

Sidney and Bristow were not amateurs. Whereas before, Bombador and I had worried that their quest would pale in comparison to ours, we now worried that the quest we’d created wasn’t good enough.

So we made a plan. We would break into their apartment.

Spies #2

While hanging out at my friend Penelope Rubix’s house a few years ago, I discovered in her father’s desk drawer a wad of currency from a range of nations. (I made this discovery while searching for a stapler. I know, I know, this is just the sort of lame excuse you would expect from an amateur spy, but it’s true.) Upon asking Penelope why her father—we’ll call him Mr. X—would possess such a stash, she replied that he goes overseas a lot on business.

On business.

I knew exactly what those words meant. My suspicion only mounted when I asked what her father did for a living.

“He works with computers,” she said.

I wasn’t sure whether she thought I was stupid, or whether she was really that naïve. “Working with computers” is the spy’s equivalent of the adulterer’s “staying late at work.”

Following this incident I began to make other curious observations in relation to Penelope’s family. For instance, every time I called her via her family’s landline, I heard a slight clicking sound before the call connected. Hers is the only phone I have ever noticed do such a thing.

I questioned Penelope about her father’s prior occupations. Turns out Mr. X used to work inside a government base. Mr. X’s office was not open to civilians, including his family. Because of this, Penelope knew very little information about what his job entailed.

(I, by contrast, knew much about what his job entailed. From the little information I’d been given I was easily able to conjure the rest: Mr. X places his eye to a retinal scan, pausing in the next room for a thermal x-ray, before taking an elevator to the subterranean levels of the building. [If an agent in training were to accompany him one day, she would watch in confusion as he swiped a pass card over a scanner while simultaneously depressing the “door close” button. “Where are we going?” she’d ask. “The basement,” he’d reply. “But there is no basement!” “Precisely.” And she attempts to quiet a tremor that begins to overtake he fingers as the elevator descends and a cold stare enters Mr. X’s eyes.])

Mr. X quit working at the base eight years ago for no apparent reason. As if we, the American public, are meant to believe that spies can become non-spies by “quitting.” No, the truth is they move higher up the ranks, so high that they are no longer even allowed to admit they work for the government.

When the body of information verifying his secret agent status had accrued, I confronted Mr. X during a game of cards, asking him point blank if he was a spy. He was slow in answering, and a mercurial haze settled in his eyes.

“You got me,” he said. “I kill people for a living.”

His mischievous grin was chilling. I couldn’t discern whether he was toying with me or plotting to break into my house that night and strangle me.

“I better watch out then,” I said, grinning in kind. This is called repartee. Among the arsenal of spy skills, repartee is just as valuable as a silenced pistol or tight leather pants. I laughed, effectively breaking the tension that had amassed in the room.

“I’m joking,” I said.

“I know,” he responded.

We continued playing cards, matching move for move, navigating through other conversation topics. I avoided Mr. X’s gaze for the rest of the night.

And I’m still alive. The amateur spy must understand the advisability of playing dumb when a situation demands it, rather than ending up dead in a bathtub, as Sidney Bristow’s boyfriend did on the very first episode of Alias. I may have uncovered a bona fide conspiracy, but this knowledge is worthless if I play the idiot and “out” an American agent.

What I would really like to say is, if I have uncovered conspiracies in the lives of friends and loved ones (and there are more examples to come), it is not illogical to extend speculation to others we know. Perhaps it reveals the true nature of our existence, when we begin to question whether our friends’ lives—and our own—aren’t really so mundane as we believe. And if we are not so mundane as we believe, then our lives can hold up to a bit more inspection, a heightened curiosity. We must be skeptical of our neighbor’s ordinary façade and of our friends’ seeming monotony. A bit of digging will reveal the truth.

Spies #1

There is a certain claim that is easily made but should never be believed. It is simply this: I am not a spy.

That being said, I am not a spy.

I am, to be honest, an average human being. I am a white, Protestant, straight male who lives in a suburb with a middle-class family. Like many twenty-somethings, coffee is my drug of choice. My favorite color is blue. I feel like a hipster when I wear a sweater.

If you’ve watched the TV show Chuck, you know that the very characteristics that make me seem ordinary also make me a prime candidate for accidentally falling into a heinous conspiracy—or at the very least, wanting to. Thus, my obsession with spies.

*The entries you are about to read take place over a lifetime of infatuation with spies. They are not made up. Many names have been changed for the safety (and sometimes dignity) of those involved.

Junior High saw the pinnacle of my attempt to achieve secret agent savvy. It was during these formational years that I became obsessed with the TV show, Alias. Jennifer Garner plays Sidney Bristow, a spy who discovers that she is working for the “bad guys” and decides to become a double agent. In between episodes, I was often inspired to practice sparring with a friend, a pastime which we stopped after I roundhouse kicked him in the face, causing blood to spurt from his mouth. I’ll admit: I had never felt so badass in my life. The feeling was unwarranted, however, as my successful kick owed more to junior high gawkiness than any skill.

Some commentary: Spies are not people who accidentally kick others’ faces. Spies are people who, when held from behind, run their feet up a wall, propel themselves backwards over their assailant’s head, and land perfectly after rotating fully and delivering a scissor kick to the neck.

It was during my Alias years that my then girlfriend phoned to reveal her identity as a secret agent. She gave such proofs as her mother’s German accent and referenced a tube of lipstick she allegedly owned that doubled as a gun. My skepticism crumbled in a matter of minutes, with less credit to her storytelling skill than my own desire to be romantically involved with a spy. When she revealed an hour later that day that it was all a farce, I was crestfallen.

(As for her German mother, she was in fact only German, not a spy.)

My life is a connect-the-dots of small-scale conspiracies. A few weeks ago, as I waited to pass through airport security, I questioned whether the African American woman in front of me was traveling under an assumed identity. She handed her passport to the security guard, and I noted pink skin peeking out at the base of her neck and behind her ears, as if she had not quite finished a hasty disguise. The thought that she might only have a skin problem didn’t occur to me until later.

I would be lying if I claimed that I don’t question even close friends’ hobbies and occupations regularly. Maybe you would question too, if you knew the people I know. Consider my next-door neighbor, who recently grew a bushy beard, shaved his head, and put on weight so that he could integrate into Somalian culture and catch pirates off the north-eastern coast.

It is easy to understand why a guy like me might find solace in the world of spies. Jason Bourne and Ethan Hunt are nothing if not extraordinary. Even when performing mundane tasks, such as crossing a street or climbing into a car, they do so with an economy of movement and a style that comes naturally. Their every action is streamlined to display an inherent importance, and they exercise control of the most impossible of situations.

I have often wished that I were a spy. Or at the very least, dating one. Then I would be involved in that world of intrigue and secrets; of cars, houses, and warehouses that explode in bursts of flame; of pricy liqueurs and pricier vehicles; of women who speak their minds and betray the presence of a gun through slits in black satin dresses.

It’s a dangerous world, to be certain. In fact, as I was reading this entry aloud to my mom, she looked at me sternly and delivered an exhortation with utter sobriety: “I would be careful what you say in that thing.”

“Why?”

“What if the real ones read it?”

What, indeed?

Tune in next Saturday for part two. If I die of a mysterious heart attack before then, you’ll know why.

Nation Shudders at Large Block of Uninterrupted Text

I just read this Onion article and thought it was funny. I thought maybe you would like to be able to say the previous sentence for yourself.

-Josh

Nation Shudders at Large Block of Uninterrupted Text

WASHINGTON—Unable to rest their eyes on a colorful photograph or boldface heading that could be easily skimmed and forgotten about, Americans collectively recoiled Monday when confronted with a solid block of uninterrupted text.

Dumbfounded citizens from Maine to California gazed helplessly at the frightening chunk of print, unsure of what to do next. Without an illustration, chart, or embedded YouTube video to ease them in, millions were frozen in place, terrified by the sight of one long, unbroken string of English words.

"Why won't it just tell me what it's about?" said Boston resident Charlyne Thomson, who was bombarded with the overwhelming mass of black text late Monday afternoon. "There are no bullet points, no highlighted parts. I've looked everywhere—there's nothing here but words."

"Ow," Thomson added after reading the first and last lines in an attempt to get the gist of whatever the article, review, or possibly recipe was about.

At 3:16 p.m., a deafening sigh was heard across the country as the nation grappled with the daunting cascade of syllables, whose unfamiliar letter-upon-letter structure stretched on for an endless 500 words. Children wailed for the attention of their bewildered parents, businesses were shuttered, and local governments ground to a halt as Americans scanned the text in vain for a web link to click on.

Sources also reported a 450 percent rise in temple rubbing and under-the-breath cursing around this time.

"It demands so much of my time and concentration," said Chicago resident Dale Huza, who was confronted by the confusing mound of words early Monday afternoon. "This large block of text, it expects me to figure everything out on my own, and I hate it."

"I've never seen anything like it," said Mark Shelton, a high school teacher from St. Paul, MN who stared blankly at the page in front of him for several minutes before finally holding it up to his ear. "What does it want from us?"

As the public grows more desperate, scholars are working to randomly italicize different sections of the text, hoping the italics will land on the important parts and allow everyone to go on with their day. For now, though, millions of panicked and exhausted Americans continue to repetitively search the single column of print from top to bottom and right to left, looking for even the slightest semblance of meaning or perhaps a blurb.

Some have speculated that the never-ending flood of sentences may be a news article, medical study, urgent product recall notice, letter, user agreement, or even a binding contract of some kind. But until the news does a segment in which they take sections of the text and read them aloud in a slow, calm voice while highlighting those same words on the screen, no one can say for sure.

There are some, however, who remain unfazed by the virtual hailstorm of alternating consonants and vowels, and are determined to ignore it.

"I'm sure if it's important enough, they'll let us know some other way," Detroit local Janet Landsman said. "After all, it can't be that serious. If there were anything worthwhile buried deep in that block of impenetrable English, it would at least have an accompanying photo of a celebrity or a large humorous title containing a pop culture reference."

Added Landsman, "Whatever it is, I'm pretty sure it doesn't even have a point."

In Which I Write A Sentence That Kills Me...

A few metaphors to make sense of my current situation:
I am...
-The movie snob who takes secret delight in Transformers 3
-The union soldier who names his son Robert Lee
-The football jock who misses practice to watch Oprah
-The "go-local" enthusiast who secretly buys Starbucks

In short, I...

I...

I'm considering buying a Kindle.

There. I said it.

You don't know how hard of a confession this is. I have raved against the perils of e-reader technology, that oil-powered bulldozer ravaging the luscious, unspoilt vineyards of my youth. I saw a Kindle sitting sleek and savvy on a desk, and my mind filled with the flames that burned down the library at Alexandria.

But I've had a change of heart. ("Yes," my literary conscience berates, "you've traded your heart for a contraption made of steel, powered by Jane Austen's tears! You crooked son of a-" But I digress.) The first temptation came when I found out that, with the Kindle, most classics are free. In the beginning I steeled myself against this Siren, but later as I was perusing some classics at Borders ("Behold, the saintly colossus, technology's sword still protruding from its parchment skin! Fiends! You would partner with these mother-" My literary conscience again. What a mouth on that thing!)

Anyway, I was at Borders, when I saw some classics I desperately wanted to read but could not afford. And I suddenly realized that my refusal to buy a Kindle had hampered my access to quality literature.

The second surprise came today I was reading a book by a respected Wheaton professor, Dr. Alan Jacobs. Out of nowhere, he suddenly begins lauding the Kindle, which somehow rescued his anemic literary soul from its torpor.

So it seems that the Kindle can in fact be an aid to those of the literary breed. An inexpensive one, at that. ("For sixty-nine dollars, you would betray me, dear Josh?")

But there are further moral dilemmas involved, not least of which was a vow I distinctly remember making six years ago: "I will NEVER buy a Kindle!" If you have read Ecclesiastes, you know the penalty of rash vows. "Let not your mouth lead you into sin, and do not say before the messenger that it was a mistake." How much worse a premeditated vow, as this one was?

Quite the dilemma. I need a little help from commentors (all two of you). If you have any insight to give, please do!

A Note on Sinning for Friends (Part Three)

There’s hope!

I’m going to rely heavily on the Bible to speak for itself here, since I’m still so much in the process of figuring this out myself.

John 13:34 says, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

Remember back in part one, where I said that in his counterfeits, Satan always mimics God’s calling? That means there’s an original design for our lives. We see it here in John. We are called by Jesus to love one another as He loved us.

How did He love us? Well, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).

So God has called us to lay down our lives for one another in friendship. He has called us to wash each other’s feet, to share our plenty with those in lack.

What do we do with these verses in light of our previous discussion? There seems to be a contradiction of sorts. Our purity is insufficient, yet God calls us to wash each other’s feet. Our sacrifices are ineffective, but God wants us to die for one another.

It seems like He wants us to have a love that isn’t even possible for us.

…Which is probably exactly right, now that I think about it. No wonder I keep encountering locked doors, places where my love can’t enter.

It reminds me of 1 Corinthians 13, the oft-quoted wedding chapter. Clean off some of the residue from

overuse, and there’s some brilliant stuff here. The beginning is all about our weakness, how all of our efforts amount to nothing. We can give our bodies to be burned, but if we don’t have love, it doesn’t count. Many of the problems in my relationships can be traced back to that idea. I’m trying so hard, but there’s something missing.

In Psalm 103, David writes, “God knows our frame; He remembers that we are dust. As for man, his days are like grass; he flourishes like a flower of the field, but the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place knows it no more. But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear Him.”

Some days my love seems to flourish, and I grow excited and puffed up. But then a slight wind jostles me, and I find myself acting selfish or abrupt, with no memory of the strong love I boasted in.

God knows my frame. I’m the one who keeps forgetting. He’s not surprised by the frailty of my love. After all, He sees the past simultaneously with the future, and in those times when I am basking in the glory of my own strength, He is already forgiving the great failures which loom ahead. Like Graham Cooke says, “He’s not disillusioned about us. He never had any illusions in the first place.”

I’m the one with the illusions, so practiced—manicured, even—for the convincing of myself and others.

But we know what comes of that. Maybe you’ve been the recipient of my weak love. Maybe you know better than I the great blind spots I ignore.

All I’m trying to say is: there is a love that is stronger than ours. And we are called to love with Him, to consider others before ourselves, to lay down our lives for our friends. It’s a shift in heart posture that will manifest itself increasingly in our actions (or so I hope). I think the primary difference may be that the love discussed in Parts 1 and 2 is primarily self-focused—“look at how good I am becoming! look how good I am at loving”—whereas the other, real love is always focused on the other and foremost on God—“look how great His love is!”

I want to do this impossible thing, to become inhabited by Someone who is too big for my space, to love well. I want to let go of the compulsion to make myself appear grand. I want to draw attention to God’s love.

A Note on Sinning for Friends (Part 2.5)

This may be an instance wherein I give one reader happiness by robbing it from ten.

But that's a risk I'm willing to take! Introducing... a dinosaur comic about friendship. If you're unfamiliar with dinosaur comics, you are in for a treat, as long as you are the kind of person who enjoys a certain kind of humor involving T-Rexes.