Ensign Redshirt: One AM

That was fun. An old flame sent some email with an attachment to the company list, and Chappelle actually opened it. Turns out it was a worm that pretty much crippled our computer. I’m texting this in on my crappy cell phone, so bear with me. The thing can’t even tell time.

I know of another clock like that. The Doomsday Clock is only symbolic, devised by a bunch of atomic scientists in 1947 as a metaphor for how close we are to oblivion from nuclear war. Martyl Langsdorf, a wife of one of the physicists, designed a magazine cover about it for the June issue of their Bulletin. “Seven minutes to midnight” was where we started at the beginning of the Cold War, getting down to two minutes from 1953 through the rest of that decade. It isn’t very accurate, though.

Arguably the closest the world ever got to using more nuclear warheads on each other (so far … we really need to find Evil Spock quickly) was the Cuban Missile Crisis. But the Atomic Scientists were too busy basking in the glow of “increased scientific cooperation and public understanding of the dangers of nuclear weapons” to notice. In fact, the following year it went all the way back to twelve minutes after a partial test ban. The furthest from midnight we got was in 1991 with the signing of START, when we were almost a full episode of Scooby Doo away from the end of humanity.

Sorry, got to go. They just promoted some moron to head my division, and the jerk is getting on my case about protocol. I’ve got to sneak out of here. My pal Walsh has a key card he needs to give me. I think he was muttering something about “assassins” and “out to get me” but it wasn’t a clear connection. Damn Cingular.

Transmission ended . . .