We're ALL being watched

I decided on my way home on Friday that I was going to take charge. I was going to be a man. I was going to show Alise who wore the pants in this household, I was going to exert my masculine authority.
I strode purposefully from the train station. I didn't even look both ways twice when I crossed the road. I was a man on a mission and nothing was going to stand in my way.
I burst into the house, threw down my bag, negotiated Coco with ease, located Alise and made my manly declaration.
'We are going to Home Depot!' I barked.
'Why?'
'We are going to buy a ceiling fan!'
'Okay', Alise said. Clearly not ready for what was to follow. 'Who are we going to ask to put it up for us?'
'I am going to do it myself!'

Bombshell.

I'm really not a handy person at all. I have, and this is true, cried while holding a running drill. My arm aches when I paint, and I have no idea how to get down from a ladder without whimpering. I'm less of a man than I've known any man to be, and it often shames me.

An hour later we were in Lowes (Home Depot was a step a little too far for me, Lowes is a little more 'inadequate man' friendly). We settled on a ceiling fan that said it was 90% assembled, and was called a 'five minute fan'. The box claimed that it could be installed in five minutes. The box, it turns out, was a lying sack of shit.

In my defense, we do live in a very old house with very old wiring. We (ok, Alise) eventually worked out how to unscrew the old light fixture which then revealed a hodgepodge of scary, knarled, and unrecognizable wiring. I stood staring at this maze for a few minutes, scratching my head while making 'hhhmm' noises.
'We should call Dave', Alise said.

Dave is a friend of ours who is remarkably skilled in all things manly. He can fix cars, he's built a house, he can do 'shit'. Dave is a man.

I tried calling Dave, but he didn't answer his phone. I left him a message. These days Dave has been doing a fair amount of manly work on a house that is out of cell phone range, and where he doesn't have internet access. I figured he was there and would call me in the week, when he steps back into civilization.

About two hours later Alise was on her laptop, checking her facebook. 'Dave just changed his status!' she told me. 'He's not at that house at all!'.

And this, in a roundabout way, is what I wanted to talk about today. I am as anti CCTV and Government spying as the next lefty, but yet I often stalk my friends and family online. You see the 'sitemeter' icon at the bottom of this page? This is how I can see how many people are on this site and roughly where they are from. I don't know who in Austin, Texas visits me daily, but I know that you do and I hope that you'll say 'hi'. When the child is born we will no doubt deploy baby monitors and maybe even a camera in a bear to keep an eye on the poor little bugger. Even before he or she is born, we will take pictures and watch the creature on a video screen. I want to watch everyone yet I hate to be watched myself.

So what kind of world will our alien grow up into? How far will surveillance have come by the time its my age? Will he or she have an implanted chip that tracks its movements? Will they have any privacy at all?

I ended up placing an ad on craigslist for an electrician; 'Brian' is coming tomorrow at 10am to put up a ceiling fan and to make himself $100. being a man can be so profitable.