I have to be the last person on Real Earth to start playing with Google Earth. Google Earth is a magical land you can look at on your computer screen. If you type in an address or the name of a landmark, you will swoop down on Google Earth from orbit and see a satellite photo of that place. If you then type in another address, Google Earth will gently bounce you back up into the atmosphere for the short journey to the new location. Google Earth makes me feel like an eagle, an eagle of inquisitive love.

Taking a cue from our omnipotent government, I have over the past few days spied on everyone in my address book from space. Sometimes, I am also spying through time. The photo of my parents’ house was taken years ago, before they had a pool. The photo of my house shows our beloved backyard tree before it was mutilated by evil. You can see evil from space. There are times you can see it more clearly than others, depending upon the resolution. Some areas of Google Earth are rendered only as splotches of blurry color, and some are razor sharp. If you peer down on my ex-boyfriend’s house from space, you can clearly see the 2000 Volkswagen Golf I sold him when we broke up and the plants I spent months of my life installing in his sad little garden.

One of the most jarring things you can look at on Google Earth is Walt Disney World, and here’s why. If you are familiar with Disney World from walking around, you can picture the quaint old-tyme charm of Main Street, USA, but from space, these look like vast, soulless warehouses behind their homey facades. And do you know what? There are parking lots behind them. Maybe they are employee parking lots because all those smiling robots have to park somewhere. When I mentioned this to my husband, he was all, like, “Of course!”, as if he had poured the concrete for those parking lots all by himself. Rob likes to know about secret things, and now I can, too. With Google Earth, no secret is safe from me, no harsh reality unexplored. I feel like the Wicked Witch of the West, or George W. Bush, or Jesus.

You can look at Iraq from space, at Bagdhad, at something called the Former Republican Palace, which strikes me as actually being the Current Republican Palace and—like Main Street, USA—also looks vaguely industrial from above. I tried to find the Green Zone, but Google Earth had this to say:

Your search returned no results.

Maybe the Green Zone is afraid that the bad guys will spy on it. I know I am. On Google Earth, you can identify cars from space, and you can often see individual people. At the gym yesterday, in the locker room, a naked guy told me that he works for a company that has developed the next generation of traffic surveillance camera, which will take your photo if you go through a red light or are speeding or maybe even if you give someone who cuts you off the wicked wicked finger. These cameras will be everywhere, and according to the naked man, if you attempt to disguise yourself or your car from them, you will get your driver’s license taken away and maybe even go to jail.

That’s not Google Earth, that’s Real Earth. Google Earth can’t send you to jail yet.

If you go to jail, I will look at your jail from space. I will swoop down and try to find your cell window. I will wave and wave, and maybe you won’t see me, but I will see you.