This (http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.09/vision.html) is super-cool.

I got there from an oldish /. story... trying to catch up on some actual reading. Kind of.

I ventured out to get some milk, and on the way I was thinking about things apocalyptical. I'm sure people would remember the anthrax scares everywhere, after September in the US. Back then, we worked in a different building - on the thirty-fifth floor. We had some small outbreaks of hysteria, and then we had one really full on, building wide panic.

Frankly, I didn't feel the need to freak out... what are the odds, really? But the way it was handled was very... strange. Very hysteria inducing in a tense way. Lifts get switched off, air con gets switched off. (From experience that gives the floor 10 minutes before it becomes noticeably stuffy, and quickly downhill from there.) There's an announcement over the fire alarm system that no-one is to leave.

Half an hour later, there's an announcement that the building from 34 down is being evacuated. Ten minutes later we start getting calls from people who were out when the building was sealed, saying there's decontamination showers being set up.

Another hour, we have an announcement saying everyone except 36 can leave, and the lifts are back on. So we all head off, and have to show all kinds of proof that we are not from level 36 before the guys in biohazard suits let us out to the street.

It was just a scare. And the next week I'd be out at lunch, and it was not exceptional to pass a building sealed and guys in biohazard suits wandering around.

What pissed me off about all of that, is that this is the way it'll go. I would really much rather see a dramatic apocalypse, a'la mutants stalking the streets, or something a bit cyberpunk. Feel free to call me a loon, but I could almost look forward to an every man for themselves affair... like post nuclear war books and movies, none of which I can remember the names of. Something that FLA could do an appropriate soundtrack for.

The guys in biohazard suits and the bemused onlookers..... that's more like Stark. Stark was good value and all, but who wants to go out with a timid little whimper?

And then this guy asked me for a cigarette (still walking to the milk bar...). And I said no. Because I swear this guy was not more than 13 - if I'm generous, because I'm old now and the general populace gets younger every year. Gotta compensate for that. As I walked off, my brain gave away the apocalypse for something insightful like 'Damned if we're giving a cigarette to someone too young to know what to do with an erection.'

Then, when I came home I have my first trashy porn spam. Ever. Been online for a reasonable time now, and I sometimes wondered why I never got any of this stuff everyone whines about.

[Music: Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds - Loverman]
[Mood: listless]