Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

For there is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed, and nothing concealed that will not be known or brought out into the open.

• Luke 8:17

There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known.  What you have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight, and what you have whispered in the ear in the inner rooms will be proclaimed from the roofs.

• Luke 12:2-3

Last week, I talked about the advertisements I was getting regarding getting rid of my timeshare.

The only problem was that I had no timeshare.

Telemarketers are leaving messages now, leaving 2-3 every day, for the past couple of months.  They want to help me resolve my tax debt.  But I do not have any tax debt.

I think that criminal enterprise is spawned from recent tax changes in the USA and there is a lot of confusion regarding the changes.  But then why do 2 out of every three of these scammers originate their call from Canada?  And not just one province, nearly all of them.

But that seems to me to be how Artificial Intelligence is missing the mark.

But before I go further, you should set the mood.  Go to your music source and play the most eerie horror film theme song you can think of. You might like the Psycho theme or the Halloween theme, but my favorite eerie music is the theme from the TV show Twilight Zone.

Okay, now you have that started, a week ago, I had an appointment with my audiologist.  Yes, I have hearing aids.  They had been my wife’s hearing aids, and I was still paying them off after she passed away.  The audiologist checked my hearing, adjusted the hearing aids to my hearing loss, and now they are mine – actually finished paying for them.

But I awoke early the morning of my appointment.  Too early.

I sat in bed and played word and number puzzles.  When I beat a level, I would get one, two, or three ads before the next level would load.  In an hour of puzzle playing, I probably heard 25 ads.  Of these 25 ads, twenty of them were hearing aid commercials.  The other five ads were for a fancy new ear plug for people who shoot firearms – able to block the noise of gunfire while allowing you to carry on conversations with other people.  Every ad pertained to hearing protection or aids.

Is your eerie music that you started sounding a little louder?

Mine is.  One out of ten ads now, a week later, is on hearing aids.  Maybe in a month that will be down to one in a hundred.

But someone must have known that I had an audiology appointment that morning.  The day before the appointment, I might have had one hearing aid ad all day long.

I did not spill the beans.

I have been the victim of targeted advertisements based on my research.  I have a playful eccentricity built into the character of Gwen Quinn in my fictional writings.  She gives naughty lingerie to all the ladies in the wedding party, especially the bride.  Well, I asked a search engine for images of a “teddy”, “babydoll”, and such.  I had to know what they were or I would look silly writing about them.

For months, I had lingerie manufacturers worldwide sending me e-mails, wanting me to buy my lingerie from them.

Okay, that is creepy.  That is an invasion of my privacy.  I am not in the humor to buy any of that stuff.  I was writing a short story.

Thank heaven when I ask a question about what the penalty is for one crime or another, I have never had a detective knock on my door to ask questions… … …  yet.

At least when I saw the ophthalmologist later in the week, the ads for natural tears and glaucoma prevention techniques only doubled.  They did not command every ad time slot.

We have news feeds that learn our interests and then slant the news as to not offend us – when we all need to be offended by not hearing the truth – and that includes all of us.  The technocrats are purposely isolating each of us from all the others not “for our own good” but for their evil purposes.

But do we want our computers, phones, and televisions to know when we are going to the doctor or worse yet, knowing each time we go to the bathroom?

When will this stop?  And where is the money going?  To find the source of evil, tracking the money is one of the best ways.  These technocrats are not isolating us from each other just for giggles.  They are using it to make money, lots of it.

Let us trust the only thing pure and truthful, God and God’s Word.  And it makes no difference how many intrusive ads we receive if we ignore all of them and keep our eyes on Jesus.

You can turn off the eerie music now, that is unless that is your thing – and if it is, keep it to yourself.

I feel that I need to explain something about those five hearing protection ads that talk about hearing conversations, but loud explosions are not heard.  If this following story is the reason for those ads, about three or four everyday since a week ago, then someone did some deep digging on me.

In a military training exercise, over fifty years ago, I was the squad leader for a weapons squad.  We were going to have a live fire demonstration, and the entire thing would be filmed for a training film in the future.  And yes, they showed us the film. We pretended that there was an enemy defensive position on a nearby ridgeline.  On the day of filming, we had half the squad call in sick.  Four of us climbed a rock face, two of us carrying M60 machine guns and the other two carrying a few ammo cans each.

I also had a radio.  I had to listen to the radio while firing my weapon at the far hill. Where the enemy was supposed to be.  A company sized unit was going to attack the hill, and since we were all firing live fire, meaning deadly projectiles flying toward the enemy, it was important to the entire company that my machine gun and the other one that I commanded stop firing when the heads of the people attacking the hill were getting too close to where we were firing.  At that point, we were to stop firing and run to the objective.

I could not wear hearing protection.  I would never be able to hear the radio signal to stop.  But firing live rounds is extremely noisy.  One round being fired without protection is ear damaging, but an M60 fires about 550 rounds per minute. We did spurts of a few round and then count to three and do it again. Then the sergeant who was over me said he wanted no ammo left when we got back to the barracks. I fired until we had run out, right as the radio call came. The barrel of the weapon was noticeably hot. I had trouble with my hearing for weeks after the ringing stopped, and that took days.  By command of the people in charge, they wanted no one to report hearing loss.  So, I started trying to read lips.  Once the ringing stopped, my hearing loss was not noticeable, measurable, but not bad enough at the time for hearing aids.

But I think the hearing protection for people firing weapons ads were due to a friend who sends me comical videos about people who fire a weapon without really knowing how to do so.  Hilarious! So, now I get those hearing protection ads and ads questioning why I have not gotten my concealed weapon permit yet.  Yeah, it got eerie again, even without the music.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.