(Well, well: apparently when you're a big muck-a-muck in the CIA or whatever, common decency becomes optional at best... SIGH!)
They've done it again, gang! You know how the movie 1408 was really just a bold-faced retelling of the many apparently supernatural incidents that have happened to me over the past decade here in this notoriously haunted apartment of mine at S--- Towers in Alexandria, Virginia: the infamous "efficiency" number 1106, before whose imposing ebony door even the most brazen leafleteer drops their junk-mail (in terror or in laziness, who shall say?) on the faded hallway carpet, in lieu of their more common practice of forcing those generally unwelcome hand-outs through the horizontal slit at the bottom of such entranceways with all the cynical and galling presumption of a carnival barker (as if all we homebound residents do all day is sit around awaiting the arrival of the latest gaudy and typically misspelled menus from the local Chinese and/or Pizza fast-food restaurants).
Bourne in the U.S.A.
Here we see the intrepid Jason Bourne, celebrating his 5th year anniversary as a spook, grilling a half-dozen mushroom burgers for his colleagues. (Don't worry about the banner behind him: It is perfectly permissible CIA practice to post such signage in public places, for the very reason that no one would ever believe that a TRUE CIA agent would do so! -- not unlike the Anarchist in 'A Man Called Thursday' who conceals his role as an anarchist by behaving like -- you guessed it -- an anarchist).
Well, no sooner did director Mikael Hafstrom and company plagiarize my paranormal past here at the Towers, than here comes his professional colleague, Mr. Paul Greengrass and friends, to do the same with my (alas, formerly) top-secret career with the CIA.
That's right: I was the original Jason Bourne (although the wise guys back at the lab in New York City used to call me "Jason Bonehead," which I thought was SO unprofessional of them -- but then I'm afraid they were encouraged in their antics by the fabulously intelligent but unfortunately rather puerile Dr. H.... "Jason Bonehead," indeed!)
Well, think about it. I mean, none of the following "coincidences" may seem decisive in themselves, but consider them in the aggregate and I think you'll find that I'm "up to my pretty little neck" in espionage (or at least I was until the recent nationwide release of "The Bourne Ultimatum" spilled every one of my occupational beans!)
Laugh Only as Directed
1) I've been online now for 10 years and I've never told you guys what my "day job" is. (How convenient of me!)
2) I live within 7 driving miles of CIA Headquarters at Langley. (Very convenient, indeed!)
3) I live within walking distance of my apartment complex's very own 7-Eleven. (Very convenient, again! -- That is to say, the convenience may not be immediately evident to a layperson, but you'd be amazed at the secret discussions I've had with shady characters at the Slurpee machine. "The eagle flies in summer, padre." "Yes, amigo, but this Pomegranate Slurpee s--- sucks." "Ben, it's you!" "Arnold! How have ya been? Still spying, I see!")
Not convinced by THOSE "coincidences"? Read on:
4) I've been known to wince noticeably in public whenever I'm on the metro and I overhear some presumptuous, young political science major telling his generally slack-jawed cronies how the espionage business "really" works here in the Washington area and even what the Director himself is likely to be thinking at that very moment on the various issues of the day. (Ha! Dream on, outsider!) Such comments are generally so amusingly off-target to me, that I'm tempted to break my cover at once, merely for the fleeting pleasure of rushing across the car and telling the show-off that he's lying through his teeth, thereby indirectly suggesting to the falsely enthralled females in his kow-towing coterie that, if they wanted to worship anybody, they should probably be worshiping ME, thank you very much! Instead of which, of course, I have to hold my tongue for national security reasons while Joe College over there convinces the ladies that he is Georgetown University's answer to James Freakin' Bond. (The undercover life has its downsides, believe me!)
Besides the existence of all these convenient "coincidences," consider the simple fact that novelist Robert Ludlum had to base the character Jason Bourne on SOMEBODY.
Still, the character portrayed by Matt Damon in the recent film debut is not 100% accurate with respect to my top-secret past at Langley (and incidentally, I hope you lot are enjoying these supplemental revelations of mine, because the Director himself is probably reading these words even as I type them, racking his stereotypically malevolent, white, middle-aged brains over which thug to send out next in his now-almost comically unsuccessful campaign to kill me!)
In the novel, of course, Jason Bourne is set loose on the world as a one-man killing machine. And, indeed, metaphorically speaking, that's precisely what I was over my last 10 globetrotting years with "the Firm." But at the end of the day, I was really little more than the male equivalent of one of those female Russian spies that James Bond used to meet up with at the baccarat table: My job was simply to catch the eyes of any female foreign spies in the vicinity of my (it must be said) somewhat "dapper" person and lure them into a relationship whose surprise last-minute consummation was to be signaled by the clicking of handcuffs around unsuspecting wrists amid pained cries of betrayal on the woman's part, to avoid hearing which I generally employed the tried-but-true counter-psy-ops technique of placing my index fingers firmly into my "meati" (what the layperson usually refers to as their "ear holes") and repeatedly shouting such historically effective phrases as:
"I'm not listening!" "I can't heeaaar you!" and even, "Na na na na na na na na! I'm afraid you'll have to speak louder than that if you want to send me on a guilt trip: I can't hear a word you're saying!"
That's right, I was (let's face it) a sort of "love magnet" for the CIA -- male style, of course.
Not that I went to Langley with the goal of specifically acquiring such unlikely work. No, I just told my interviewers in my pre-employment grilling that I wanted to serve this nation of ours in the best way that I possibly could, anywhere that they needed me, and that I'd let THEM be the judge of those particulars. Just as long as I was doing my part. (My patriotism at the time, albeit doubtlessly naive -- I was only 22 back then, fresh off of the educational banana boat, so to speak -- prompted me to meet my country's call to service in the same selfless spirit with which the Prophet Isaiah himself responded to the call of the Lord in the Bible: "Here I am, Send me!")
You see how the facts just keep piling up like this, like so much... so much.... (Ahem.) Well, they keep piling up, is the point because:
I am the original Jason Bourne!
And yet I'm far too much of a realist these days to think I'll ever see one penny worth of royalties from this new "Bourne Ultimatum" movie with Matt Damon (whom, interestingly enough, I'm told I resemble to no small degree -- or at least I "did do" back in the day, before my brows had become unattractively wrinkled by the cynicism provoked by the irresponsible actions of Universal Studios and its many high-priced lawyers, not to mention their numerous "in the pocket" toadies slinking about at this very moment through the unsuspecting halls of Congress itself!)
The worst thing is, I can't even sue Messieurs Ludlum, Greengrass, et al. for damages, since my employer (or rather my FORMER employer after they read these confessions) can, by its very secretive nature, neither confirm nor deny the fact that I ever worked for them (in a job that was, until now of course, secretively known as a "Charmer First-Class"), now or in the past.
Don't worry, though: I won't take the low road by posting a spoiler here in the hopes of limiting the studio's box-office take for their new release that they've so obviously based (if somewhat loosely) on my clandestine career with the CIA. I will instead simply end this high-stakes rant of mine with a couple of cinematographic nits that I would like to pick with the director:
Nit #1: During the height of Jason's struggle with his attacker in the Moroccan lavatory, the skin above Matt Damon's upper lip is covered with blood. Seconds after he dispatches the villain and turns to face his new friend Nicky, the blood in question has almost entirely disappeared.
Nit #2: Show graphics initially reveal the Spanish Ambassador's name to be spelled "Neal." A subsequent graphic spells the name as "Neil."
See, Universal Studios? I took it easy on you guys -- when by rights I should have brought down your whole house of cards by telling even more about the real Jason Bourne -- i.e., ME!
But at least the world now knows (including unfortunately my by-now-livid boss at Langley) that the REAL Bourne was... well, a mere charmer, not a hitman!
He -- or rather "I" -- never turned a gun against my quarry -- although the case could be made that my then-alluring beauty (long since compromised, alas, by the physical effects of the legal headaches occasioned by the publication of Robert Ludlum's Bourne Trilogy -- which, I should have sued him back in 2002 with the publication of "The Bourne Identity" and gotten this over with!) -- this unwonted beauty on my part (augmented as it was with those extreme etiquette classes taught by Dr. H. himself in the New York lab) -- this once-great beauty of mine, I say, should have been categorized at once as a deadly weapon by Interpol the moment they laid their gobsmacked eyes upon me. Even my colleagues at the CIA, so long kept "out of the loop," should have realized that something was up when even the male receptionist at Langley started making "goo-goo" eyes at me! Yes, Project Blackberry, as we then called it, was top-secret: But use your brains, people, please: Obviously I was beautiful back then -- but WHY was I so????
See? Are the pieces starting to come together now?
Automatic weapons fire
Oh, dear, that's my exit cue, I'm afraid. Yes, indeed, it appears that they're firing at me again. Hmm, I wonder if it's Interpol this time, the local police, the CIA itself or some counterintelligence operatives from the Old Country?
As if it matters: I have a charmed life, you know?
More weapons fire
Nyeh-nyeh, ya missed me, now ya gotta kiss me!
