So, Dear Reader, you do not want Big Brother reading your e-mails to your mistress in Dubuque. How unpatriotic of you! Anyway, Dear Leader assures you that he and his minions are not reading your e-mail – they are only collecting addresses of the people with whom you correspond. If you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you. It’s cheap. You’ll like it. Just sign here.

They are also not recording your phone calls. They are just looking for evil interconnections. Once again, we enter bridge territory. You may have noticed that you have a digital phone, not an analogue one. Your conversations are chopped up into little bits and bytes that the Fed’s exabyte storage facilities are swooping up. They know everything. (Now, my e-mails and phone calls are world-class boring. But that’s a different issue.)

They are also monitoring everything you do online. Forget about kiddie porn and drugs. They know what you are buying at Victoria’s Secret! They know how many times you visit Republicans websites! They know how much you spent at Sears! MY GOD, they know how often you visit Funwithdoom!

Now, remember that all this data is being sent in real time to the IRS, the EPA, OSHA, the CIA, the NSA, and Guido the Chicago Hitman (a subcontractor for the Democratic Party). So you are in trouble.

But this is great!

What you have been thinking of as a problem is actually a fantastic business opportunity. And the solution was discovered by the great Baron Rothschild. You may recall the Battle of Trafalgar. That’s the naval battle in which the noble Lord Nelson defeated the short slimy little Frenchman, Napoleon, thus saving us from the fate of having to eat frogs on  a steady basis, and of speaking through our noses even when we do not have a cold. The battle took place in 1805, so we did not have instantaneous communication. But everyone in England was concerned, and the stock markets were boiling. Now Rothschild was the greatest stock trader in the world, and folks noticed that he was standing in his usual spot next to a column in the stock exchange, and he was selling, selling , selling. Panic! Rothschild knows something! We too must sell, sell, sell! And then, when prices hit rock bottom, Rothschild and his buddies bought, bought, bought! And then the news came in that Lord Nelson had won the battle. (Unfortunately not his personal battle, since he was killed.  Oh, well,)

How did Rothschild know the outcome of the battle? Because he had superior telecommunications.

He had pigeons!

Yes Dear Reader, the great Baron had a fleet of carrier pigeons spread about the world, and he knew things way ahead of everyone else. And nobody could intercept pigeon mail. His line of communications was secure.

Astute person that you are, you see where this is going. My breakfast companion,  Bob, pointed out the security of this method to me, and suggested that pigeons could replace the e-mail system. That intrigued me, but I pointed out that carrier pigeons are not that fast, and anyway they cannot fly more than about 1800 miles. Undaunted, Bob proposed that the system could incorporate relay stations.

That’s it!  I spit on the Pony Express! I will set up the Pigeon Express! Picture it: a little pigeon winging its way across America. a missive of enormous importance (handwritten in a secluded hut in the deep woods and then photographically reduced to a microdot) tucked securely into a little capsule attached to its leg. At each relay station, one of our men, immunized against psittacosis, removes the capsule, reads the address of the final destination, and consigns the capsule to the appropriate bird for the next leg of the journey.

The Feds can not interfere with this system for fear of violating the Migratory Water Fowl Act, incurring the wrath of both PETA and the Audubon Society, two powerful voting blocks. They will be forced to sit docilely by, fists clenched in rage, while we share our secrets with each other in perfect safety.

Also when the pigeons become too old to work any more, we can eat them. Pigeons are delicious.