I’m Not Laughing AT Them; I’m Laughing NEAR Them.

Every cruising port has an informal cruisers’ net on some VHF frequency or another where general cruising and port information is exchanged.  La Paz boasts a second cruisers’ net – this one, on VHF 21 about a half hour before the more standard cruisers’ net starts on VHF 22 at 0800 Monday thru Saturday.  Both are radio shows that Should Not Be Missed.

The VHF 21 net has a net controller as is typical; but the topics for discussion are more political in nature.  Most participants are clearly expatriate boaters or former boaters – all male and single, from what I heard – from the US or Canada, that the US Social Security Administration would classify as "of advanced age."  From what they say on the daily net, most of these men have lived in La Paz for many years.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

The VHF 21 net started off just fine – a free-format discussion of current events in Mexico and the US where both right-wing and left-wing views seemed to be welcomed and respected.  One gentleman remarked that he had just seen a computer demonstration of a "new” type of satellite software called Google Earth, that could zero in on and show a clear picture of your “property” or your car; he further remarked for the listening audience that “for a price” you could get a satellite to focus so closely on your area, in real time, that “the satellite picture could count the hairs on your head.”

Then things got weird.
Another participant offered that he had been in the US military in 1959* ** and knew the type of “brain-control experiments”** the US military was performing on the public back then; and certainly by now “the government” must be using satellites with hyper-sophisticated software applications like Google Earth to alter the public’s brain cells “molecule by molecule.”** “The government’s” aim, as I understood it, was to make the public more compliant. With something. By altering brain structure or DNA or something. From outer space. But nobody explained why 75-year-old men in busted boats semi-floating in La Paz, Mexico’s harbor would be targeted to comply with the vague agenda of an unnamed government that may or may not be Mexico. I was tempted to break in and share that aluminum reflects those brain rays so everyone should wear a tin foil hat at all times, but I thought I wouldn’t sound sincere enough for that bunch. Plus the female voice might be a giveaway.

* Yes: 1959.
** I am not making this up.

m