Malicious Balloons Attack!

 OVERHEAD OPTICS?

Or innocuous floating flimflammery

There I was, standing on the beach in San Clemente, thinking that if the Earth was indeed flat, I’d be able to see Japan, when a binoculars-wearing local tourist exclaimed with an expletive that something aloft was amiss. Turning to decipher what he was declaring,

“Balloon! It’s one of those #!&$% balloons that steals what’s ours only! With all we spend on the government, you’d think they could do something about them!”

As I squinted into the vast wide open wild blue yonder, I couldn’t see anything. After letting the aforementioned sky sentry know my eyes were lacking the wherewithal to make out any strange, out of the ordinary shapes, spherical or otherwise, he let me know his opinion by questioning my ability to see.

“Here, take these things,” he said, handing me the binoculars. “Now look up over there about where my finger is.”

I took the field glasses and looked in the direction he was pointing. After a moment of visual adjustment, I could make out a white dot. After relaying my discovery to my new alarmist aide, he regaled me with conspiratorial views of governmental misbehavior.

His proclamations ran the gamut

Everything from: it’s a false flag operation to distract attention from the military industrial complex robbing us blind, to the current president not having the mental acuity of a common house plant, and some foreign entity accomplishing espionage while he wanders the White House aimlessly in his pajamas, or something to that effect.

When I asked if the distant white dot might be an un-moored giant marshmallow advertising drifting boondoggle or an over-sized high school experiment gone awry, he again openly questioned my ability to perceive reality.

After an animated discussion yielding no learning at all by each of us, we endeavored to find common ground by availing ourselves to a local public house to belly up to the bar and imbibe in a few fermented concoctions meant to render us slightly demented.

It was during this time of getting inebriated to the point of befuddlement that the conversation turned to what made up a surveillance contraption. My conversationalist companion held the common belief of conventional information seeking control apparatuses. Ones that fly in space and in our atmosphere.

The point I tried to make was there might be other forms of supervisorial machinery. Ones that the appearance of what a bird might represent, or a bat or a wombat, perhaps. A familiar creature that wouldn’t raise a thought at first glance. A computerized cat or a robotic dog. We could use all for scrutiny of movement of the unsuspecting sort.

That point raised his hackles

I could tell by the look that flashed in his eyes. Alarm pervaded his countenance, or perhaps, his visage. He slammed down the last bit of his beverage and took action to retrieve a wallet from his rear pocket. Once he laid a few bills on the bar to pay for his libations, he was off with haste and without a word.

Later that evening, there were reports regaling the patrons in the tavern of some maniac popping balloons at a child’s birthday party. The purveyor of pizza chased the purported popper from his parlor.

Then there were tales of a loony chasing pigeons in the park while shouting tropes of violation of our beloved constitution by those that are sworn to uphold it.

And people wonder why these reported occurrences cause unrest.