Dave Barry + Encryption = I Swear I Am Not XOR-ing This Up

If you read Dave Barry or his blog, you know that he's a big fan of the Fox series 24, wherein ultra-agent Jack Bauer spends 86,400 seconds of his life fighting assassins and terrorists and America's nuclear facilities.

I watched the pilot episode and was not duly impressed enough to tune in a second time.

As a brief aside, those of you who watch the show religiously can probably recall, through all the twists and turns of the past seasons, the one thing I enjoyed about that first episode: how they introduced the hitman. Season One dealt with the attempted assassination of a major political figure during an election, and they introduce the hitman in a really clichéd set-up sequence, where Jack is getting briefed about how the assassin is flying into the country right this minute. Cut to a shot of an airplane at cruising altitude, and inside is this smarmy, greasy European guy with his shirt open and like a thousand gold chains around his neck. OK, not really, but you get the idea. "Hey," says 24, "check out this stereotypical eurotrash hitman. He's evil."

Then at some point over the course of the next hour, he proceeds to bang this cute little college student-type girl in the lavatory. "Man," thinks the audience, "if this amoral psychopath is going to put babies in anyone he can find on a trans-oceanic flight, he'll have no compunction putting a cap in a politician." We are led to hate Mr. Europe so much by now, that it takes us completely by surprise when the girl steals his ID, jumps out of the emergency exit with a parachute, and blows up the airplane with a bomb. Yes, folks. 24 is not above using misdirection to surprise you. I thought it was kind of well done.

Anyway, Dave's blog has been keeping tabs on the numerous similar plot twists of the series, and none has been funnier than this:

"Chloe — yes, Chloe — demonstrated why she should be in charge of the U.S. intelligence community. No, scratch that: Chloe should be in charge of everything. She demonstrated that not only is she a Geek Goddess who can immediately recognize a Blowfish algorithm — yes, a Blowfish algorithm — but also that she can, when called upon, armed with nothing but her wits and a machine gun, convert a terrorist into Terrorist McNuggets. We want to see MORE of Chloe. Chloe is our daddy. We want to have Chloe's baby."

I don't know who Chloe is, but I'm pretty sure that Dave doesn't realize he made me very happy by writing about Blowfish. Bruce Schneier spotted this mention as well. Schneier developed Blowfish. He's Blowfish's daddy. It's nice to see that the 24 writers are actually hitting a textbook now and again.