admin
22 December 2023
I’ve got an idea for a device. I guess you could call it an Electronic Descrambler. And when I build it, I will unlock what must have been one of the most clandestine languages ever to be used in the cloak and dagger arena.
The most popular hits of the ‘80s and early ‘90s all had common words in them. Silly crap like: “heart”, “passion”, usually the number “two”, “night”, and lots of “oh, baby” and “aw, yeah”. There were hundreds of fluffy phrases with no apparent purpose. It must have been both redundant and deeply insulting for a reason.
I think I now know the answer.
Suppose you were to break the words down by the number of letters, or number of consonants to vowels, frequency of airplay, or even categorized them by the name of the group that sang them. Place the letters of the song on an X-axis, and after advancing your list one letter, run the same list along on a Y-axis. Trust me, the same sort of code was used in the Civil War. Start running extractor words on the other end. Words like: “hit”, “eliminate”, “extraction” and “safe house”. A pattern will emerge; I’m convinced of it. Then, let the decoder go to work on forming partial sentences. Eventually, I’ll bet it comes up with a whole new language; a hidden code used by assassins in the ugly decade one of my trusted advisors likes to call the Children of Nancy era. Top 40 pop commands from agency to agent, instructing them to seek out and delete known threats to national security.
That’s right. Back while you were all combing your hair in your sleeveless t-shirts, getting all self-absorbed in the Goth-glue of bands like Depeche Mode and OMD, The Man was tossing a carefree noose around the neck of the nation, seeking to oppress the masses. While you were searching for hidden meaning in your Peter Murphy albums, dark and powerful figures in the night were turning up their radios for news of the next attack.
I’m close to the truth. I can feel it.
The most popular hits of the ‘80s and early ‘90s all had common words in them. Silly crap like: “heart”, “passion”, usually the number “two”, “night”, and lots of “oh, baby” and “aw, yeah”. There were hundreds of fluffy phrases with no apparent purpose. It must have been both redundant and deeply insulting for a reason.
I think I now know the answer.
Suppose you were to break the words down by the number of letters, or number of consonants to vowels, frequency of airplay, or even categorized them by the name of the group that sang them. Place the letters of the song on an X-axis, and after advancing your list one letter, run the same list along on a Y-axis. Trust me, the same sort of code was used in the Civil War. Start running extractor words on the other end. Words like: “hit”, “eliminate”, “extraction” and “safe house”. A pattern will emerge; I’m convinced of it. Then, let the decoder go to work on forming partial sentences. Eventually, I’ll bet it comes up with a whole new language; a hidden code used by assassins in the ugly decade one of my trusted advisors likes to call the Children of Nancy era. Top 40 pop commands from agency to agent, instructing them to seek out and delete known threats to national security.
That’s right. Back while you were all combing your hair in your sleeveless t-shirts, getting all self-absorbed in the Goth-glue of bands like Depeche Mode and OMD, The Man was tossing a carefree noose around the neck of the nation, seeking to oppress the masses. While you were searching for hidden meaning in your Peter Murphy albums, dark and powerful figures in the night were turning up their radios for news of the next attack.
I’m close to the truth. I can feel it.
artid
77
Old Image
4_7_descrambler.swf
issue
vol 4 - issue 07 (mar 2002)
section
pen_think