Writing the caption for this cartoon wasn’t easy for me. Not because the joke needed a particular nuance, or involved any special vocabulary… but because it involves a security keyword.
It’s irrational, I know. But I now have a Pavlovian aversion to mentioning anything remotely connected to terrorism or weaponry, because at some semi-conscious level I worry it could get me plopped onto some agency’s list. “Sure, he’s probably kidding about his 500-foot homicidal robot, but just to be safe — (type, type, type, type, enter).”
Which, let’s face it, is kind of crazy – yes, that could happen, but I’m frankly a lot more vulnerable to ticking off someone at, say, Facebook who worked very hard on that interface tweak, and doesn’t take kindly to a smartass cartoon from someone who might be quite upset if his profile were to, oh, I don’t know, vanish.
Actually, now that I put that in cold hard text, it seems pretty damn terrifying.
Next week’s cartoon will be all about kittens.
