at noon, on the third tuesday of every month, they fire up the air raid sirens in san francisco to make sure they work. never thought much about it before.
today i was on a hillside having lunch looking out over downtown and i heard them start wailing - for a second i forgot it was tuesday!
is it a gas attack? an incoming fleet of 737s aiming at downtown? a bomb on the underground? what the hell do i do- run for cover or get downwind or what? then it dawned on me that it was ony a drill.
real sign of the times i guess though i am angry that the terrorists succeeded in getting me to be on the defensive for a few seconds since that's what they're after.
looking at the buildings it struck me:
here's a huge camp, basically, of humans all banded together in a loose tribe most with similar superstitions. attacks from other camps of humans with different customs and superstitions are so common, and so much a part of our existence, that we actually have a plan to notify everyone if one is inbound!?
what a statement about our species! not only that, but we pool all our resources and and established a defense force to keep other tribes from attacking.
imagining the world from the perspective of an alien anthropologist is just embarrassing.
especially when you explain that those people wear that thing on their head and only eating certain foods, rocking back and forth while mumbling, crossing themsleves while mumbling <insert any mindless religious tradition here> etc etc, are doing so because they think an invisible father figure that magically never interacts with us visibly will send them to some imaginary bad place if they don't!
advanced monkeys in advanced concrete trees. the future may be bright but not today.
