In preparation for repatriation, and to try to decide where I belong in the US after this, I just took that What American Accent Do You Have Quiz - and it says I’ve got a Philadelphia accent. Which is funny because I grew up in Rhode Island, home to the most wicked awesome and distinctive accent in the whole US, maybe in the world.

My parents, on the other hand, are actually from Philly. Perhaps the hoagie doesn’t fall far from the tree?

speaking of tin foil hats, which we will in a moment
this is the Nauru Building in Saipan
back in the day that round bit on top was a revolving restaurant

I like to think it’s a UFO that will, one day, spin into the air
and fly back to its home planet
serving delicious cocktails all the way

Meanwhile, here’s another kind of tin foil hat thing to think about, next time you’re at your therapist’s office with some time to kill:

This New York Times article about the US’s supposedly “successful” Iraq rebuilding projects - which are actually falling apart (good job, Haliburton!) - reminded me of something that a Saipan lawyer I know was talking about over the weekend.
Why, in the mid-to-late 1990s, did the US Federal government give massive contracts to Kuwaiti companies to build Voice of America relay stations in the US territories? The same company expanded Tinian’s airport (an FAA-funded project), and has just been hired to build the new U.S. embassy in Fiji. They’ve also been sued in Saipan for their shoddily-constructed public housing construction (that’s what got me thinking about government contracts and badly done projects).

This lawyer I was talking to over the weekend suggested there’s more to it than a lowest bidder-type situation in the case of the islands’ construction projects. She thinks it’s, like, spooky, if you get my drift.

preposition ships in the Saipan lagoon

they’ve got a zillion dollars’ worth of military equipment on board
and are to be quickly deployed
in case the US finds itself at war with any nearby countries
like North Korea, for example

also, they are guarded by Ghurkas
why are U.S. merchant marine ships guarded by
British Army units comprised of Nepalese soldiers?
a merchant marine stationed on one of these ships
who I was talking to at a party tonight
also wanted to know the answer to that question

I don’t have a tin foil hat, and I certainly don’t have answers to any questions at all (not even to the question: where are you going in two weeks when you leave the island?). So don’t look to me for either. My head hurts when I try to think about where I’m going. It also hurts when I think about spies and spooks, especially on Saipan. The CIA really was here after World War II and people, not just drunk people, say that the reason Saipan got more roads and buildings than any other island in the Trust Territory was because the CIA needed the island for training Chinese guerrillas.

But is the CIA still here? Is Telesource an information-monitoring organization helmed by the US government? What does the Voice of America really do? Am I going to get a book deal?

stay covered up when using the computer

or they’ll know your innermost desires
like your desire to wear ski goggles indoors in the tropics

If my head could make sense of - or make up - any of this stuff, I’d already be a best-selling author. All I’m saying is that if any writer-type is clever about looking at government contracts and cultivating sources and digging up primary sources and blocking spy waves designed to read the thoughts inside their head, they’d probably find a heck of a story about Tinian, Voice of America, Telesource, spies, Nigerian expats on small islands, Iraqi communities on small islands, Kuwaiti communities on small islands, the continuation of the cold war, and a plucky young lawyer (not me - the person I was talking to over the weekend) who unravels the whole nefarious thing.

ps - I love that you can isolate a few facts, string them together in a meaningless but suggestive way, and come up with the start of a plot. Isn’t writing grand? Isn’t the US government inspiring? Doesn’t B. look nice in that hat/scarf combo?

pss - it turns out that tin foil hats may in fact make it easier for the government to read your thoughts, according to MIT.

psss - the fact that MIT has studied the effectiveness of tin foil hats makes me want to move to Boston, and pronto.

posted by Arin at 3:01 pm & filed under Uncategorized, bloggy stuff, saipan, tin foil hats, travel |