Happy Hour

Last night’s drink: Domaine Fontaine Rouge

After helping to successfully pull off my annual HUD training for the collaborative I lead at work, I offered to take our department assistant out for a celebratory drink. It was early, so we were the only people in the bar, and the assistant and the bartender began exchanging travel stories about Budapest, Belgium, Switzerland, Amsterdam, etc. etc. Of course, I have only been to England and Italy, so my contributions to this conversation were pretty bland. But I was still generally pleased with myself for being able to properly announce the name of my wine, so I was content to listen, even in my jealousy.

The green monster of international intrigue was aroused in me again this morning when I happened across this article in the Guardian Unlimited about an 18-year old who led an international hacking ring. I know the gods of karma are going to strike me down for this, but my immediate thought – actually more like an internal exclamation – was, “Woah cool!”

It isn’t that I think hacking, stealing, or generally hurting others for personal gain is great or right – it’s more that this “man” set up an international operation that affected 1.3 million computers – and he’s barely through puberty. I don’t care if you set up an international ring of spitballs, or banana peel booby traps – an international ring of anything of that magnitude, constructed under the radar, is incredible.

I always wanted to be James Bond. To travel around looking debonair, carrying pens with little poison darts in them – I have the ability for stoicism and determination that Moneypenny would have enjoyed. I bet I would have had a slight leg up on Bond, too, as Moneypenny and I could have exchanged stories of female sexual conquest. Then I’d slip into my wetsuit and weld bond’s tiny submarine craft to the chain of a cruise ship’s anchor, just to play a joke on him.

That’s not to say that I could ever bring myself to kill people, or steal valuable things. Truth be told, I don’t know if I could do those things – I’ve never tried. In a perfect world, I’d be the Bond of tranquilizing people so that they’d lose their productivity for the day. Or, I could be the Bond of doing away with dogs that won’t stop barking. I like driving to remote locations in the countryside.

It’s raining in San Diego right now, and the promise of an overcast Friday is only feeding into the romance of my Bond aspirations. Instead of auditing programs and turning in reports today, I would get dressed in a pencil skirt and pumps with a poppy colored mohair sweater and upswept hair, shoot a few tranquilizing darts into the necks of certain people at Claire de Lune while I sipped my espresso, steal a few chihuahas for “Frank” the florist, and finish up by 2 p.m.

Time to get in the shower.