Duct tape and plastic sheeting.

There ya go, Boss . . . that's precisely why i've found this thread so ho-hum. When i was in the army in Virginia, they used to try to get us to participate in drills for nuclear attack. Since the eastern half of Virginia would have been vaporized in any full exchange between the US and the USSR, we didn't wanna play. I feel pretty much the same way about the threats which we are told to fear here. Your final statement there says it all with a chilling elegance.

Then again, Tres's advocacy of nervousness as healthy behavior makes some sense. I invoked the name of another mental-health expert, Charles Manson, earlier in this thread. Listen up:

Manson taught his followers about Coyote Consciousness. Total paranoia, he suggested, means total awareness. Perhaps this is what Tres means re the value of heightened nervousness?

Twitch and shout!

I'm more of a lay around in the warm sunshine, or next to the fire on a cold day type of person . . . when the final trump is sounded, i will likely come out of a doze just after everyone else has left . . .

be sure to tag the toe and place the plastic duct taped body outside for identfication purposes.

Bring out yer dead!

Bring out yer dead!

heeheeheeheeheeheeheehee . . .

the humor is very dark out this evening . . .

Not as dark as its gonna be inside those body bags!

this is NOT humour this is per directive of the HomeLand Security guru Ridge/Ashcroft and WILL be adhered to under threat of being plastic bagged and duct taped WITHOUT toe tags.

I believe the thread was initiated as semi-serious and an avenue for humor, the best healer. Puck is just outside our view watching our foolish attempt at being astute. Ridge was chuckling to himself as he told everyone not to start shrouding and taping off their windows at home (but not their cars?), yet he was short of saying that nobody should wrap themselves in plastic and tape themselves up. Perhaps that would be the ticket to silence those who open their mouths to insert foot -- Ridge would look divine in a green plastic with yellow duct tape accoutrements. Kind of terrorist prevention drag.

edited, cause i won't admit my mistakes . . .

Ya know, you can get camo duct tape these days, too . . . then the terrorists won't see ya when they come by to spray yer block . . .

I like the fashion tip, Lightwizard. Maybe the Homeland Dept. staff could all wear matching outfits along these lines...

damn setanta, if i edited my mistakes i would never have anything to post.

Okay, ignore my lame attempts at humor (I was out gardening and dropped an edging brick on my foot).

edition

Don't return that duct tape just yet

By Mark Rovner
Sitting in my study is an unopened box, roughly 18 inches on a side. Inside is a generous supply of plastic sheeting and duct tape, the fulfillment of a recent online order to Home Depot. Sometime between the placement of the order and its arrival, sanity crept in.
As we all now know, duct tape and plastic don't have much to do with surviving a terrorist attack. And yet, in lemming-like fashion, Washingtonians and New Yorkers have managed to accumulate a gargantuan supply of the stuff. Putting aside the obviously important question of how we should really prepare for attacks, we now confront an even bigger question. While our leaders struggle with the elusive aim of beating our swords into plowshares, we face the more immediate challenge of beating our personal mountains of silver tape into - what?
Amazon.com has a list of suggested reading. In "Ductigami: The Art of Tape," author Joe Wilson offers 14 projects for making cool and useful stuff out of you-know-what. Online reviewers seem to have a special fondness for the waterproof duct-tape wallet. I am more intrigued with the "flak-proof" barbecue apron. Those hankering for a gun-metal gray baseball cap or TV chair caddy will find their desires met as well.
A team of writers compiled "The Jumbo Duct Tape Book," whose lone reviewer commends the book's "fatness" and calls it the product of a "lifetime obsession." The book proceeds from this core maxim: "If it ain't stuck, and it's supposed to be, duct tape it." Less practical and more zany than Ductigami, this attempt at a duct-tape coffee-table book could be the must-have Father's Day gift for 2003.
These same authors have another tome: "Duct Shui: A New Tape on an Ancient Philosophy," bringing a much-needed Eastern sensibility to the art of the tape. Here one learns how to attract wealth, achieve order and control in the workplace and at home, and generally keep your yin and yang nicely bound together.
An aspiring Martha Stewart for sure, teenager Ellie Schiedermayer's "Got Tape?: Roll Out the Fun with Duct Tape," showcases 25 projects to bring a certain domesticity to a party, complete with plans for belts, picture frames, bracelets, and purses.
So no excuses. If you can't return it, make something. Or do what I've done: Leave your cache unopened and in plain sight, a reminder of madness, or, like the monolith in "2001: A Space Odyssey," an exhortation to some higher evolutionary state. As far as the plastic sheeting goes, you're on your own

Perhaps the duct-tape-and-plastic-sheeting craze can be filed alongside the now-almost-forgotten Y2K scare...

And just think, a few decades hence we can tell the youngsters, "Heck, that's nothin'. Back in aught-three everyone was running around buying duct tape and plastic!" Of course, by then we'll be on our fourth or fifth Bush chief executive, Jenna Bush, American's first woman president...

http://www.theonion.com/onion3907/orange_alert_sirens.html

Re saving the duct tape: Just after WWII, my thrifty father bought up lots of nylon parachutes from the government "because we couldn't get nylon those days and I wanted some nylon undershorts." He actually made them HIMSELF, godawful things sewn with nylon SAIL THREAD. They were very uncomfortable and he phased them out quite quickly. But when he died, 35 years later, there were the shorts stored away with the leftover parachutes.

sozobe -- and all along I thought that was the neighbors screaming at one another.

I suppose what Manson was advocating is an example of what we call taking something to its logical extreme. Of course, most of us learned along the way that the failure of the logical extreme case does not mean that the concept is flawed at other more reasonable points along its path.