My favorite color is green. Specifically blue green, shades of turquoise and aqua. It’s not that I don’t like all the other colors, but I tend to favor green.
I wanted to make it official, you know, just get it out there in the open. You see, I suspect Big Brother has been watching me and well, don’t tell anybody, but I think he’s figured out that I like green.
I realized it when I set up this blog a few weeks ago. I didn’t like the limited selection of fonts, and I know this is picky but I was willing to pay extra for new fonts. With the new fonts came new choices in color palates. I was okay with the old colors but now they were presenting me with a display of varying shades of—you guessed it—green. The very first one I tried was so enchanting that I immediately abandoned the old color scheme and decided to go with this lovely green.
As I continued to futz with my new blog (me!—a recovering technophobe!), I felt proud of myself that I was becoming adept at my new found computer skills. I thought to myself, “Thank goodness the color choices were so easy. What a happy coincidence that they showed me my favorite colors first.” Sudden intake of breath. OR WAS IT?I’m not a big internet shopper, but I do make the occasional purchase, especially from Amazon—I’ll admit that. More often I’ll browse different store sites to see what’s available and then I’ll go to the brick and mortar store to make my purchase. And when I’m looking online at clothes, rugs, curtains or towels, most often I click on the items that are blue and green. So I wasn’t surprised when Coldwater Creek started showing me more green blouses and Pottery Barn started showing me more green and blue area rugs. That’s what I look at when I go to those sites. They know I like green the same way Amazon knows I like books by Margaret Atwood and CD’s by James Taylor. But how did WordPress know I like green? I’d never been to WordPress before. How did they know? Is that information just out there somewhere?
There’s been a lot in the news these past few weeks about federal surveillance of phone, text and internet records. Let me go on record as saying if it will keep the world safe from terrorism, I am happy to tell the NSA and the CIA and the FBI my favorite color. That’s why I’m writing this blog post. You don’t have to sneak around anymore, I’m telling you outright: it’s green, okay? You probably could have figured this out on your own. After all I am a redhead.
But let’s get serious. The government doesn’t need to know my favorite color. And they don’t need to know whom I call on the phone, or what I do on line. Not only is it an erosion of our liberty, it also seems like a big waste of time and money.
But while you’re at it, NSA, could you please drop by and “like” my FB page? Thank you!