Alcohol Ad Lib • Inasmuch as Bry's bit below counters the usual trend toward posting tawdry reminiscences on 9/11, I must say it's more than a little creepy to me at the same time, especially on 9/11. Reading about old cellphones going off almost inevitably reminds me of a particular scene from this summer's The Dark Knight... you may recall the one. Or the demolitions expert in The Bourne Ultimatum, who rigged a motorcycle to explode at the casual push of a cell button.
*sigh* To paraphrase High Fidelity: "Did I watch action flicks because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I watched action flicks?"
But what times we live in. When technological mistakes (see: The Chicago Tribune, Bloomberg) send stocks plummeting. (Who says QA doesn't matter online?) When a simple reference to an old hunk-o'-junk cellphone sends me spiraling down this train of thought, thinking to myself, "Oh, technology is democratizing, all right—democratizing in a lot of ways most of us probably don't want to think about." Even this little blog could be a bit dangerous, were its powers unleashed by the wrong hands. (Mine own, perhaps?)
But sometimes, that little bit of danger can be exciting. So we take up the pen (or hit that steampunk keyboard) and soldier on. As The Dark Knight itself asks us, even in these times: "Why ... so ... serious?" I'll relax if you will. ―Margaret Bauer, Assistant Editor
