Granny Weatherwax didn’t hold with looking at the future, but now she could feel the future looking at her. She didn’t like the expression at all.
(Terry Pratchett in Wyrd Sisters)
by Kate Federici, MSW.
....Alcoholic Architecture, a pop-up bar installation in London, England. Visitors enter a room and become immersed in a gin and tonic cloud of vapor, which has been pumped through a high-powered humidifier. The vapor is absorbed through the skin and eyes. And because the alcohol bypasses the liver and goes directly to the bloodstream, the intoxication is very intense and immediate. This is why the maximum amount of time allowed in the vapor area is 50 minutes, which is equivalent to drinking a very large gin and tonic. As far as safety goes, visitors are required to wear a poncho, leaving only their hands and face revealed because exposing too much skin to the vapors is dangerous. However, they are allowed to bring in an alcoholic beverage with them as they enter the breathable alcohol area of the bar and are encouraged to “breathe responsibly.”
Why is this appealing to people?
This method of consuming alcohol provides less calories and makes it easier and faster to get intoxicated. But even more than that, it’s a novelty experience....
Sci-fi movies love to show us flying vehicles scooting around skyscraper dense cityscapes. I've usually considered encountering one of these as unlikely as ever meeting one of those egg-headed wide eye-socket alien beings. However....
and away
It's more than 100 years since
the Wright Brothers. But humanity
has never stopped dreaming of flying
free like a bird
Humanity has always dreamed of flying. Leonardo da Vinci sketched out his idea for a “helical screw” flying machine in the 15th Century. But it wasn’t until Orville & Wilbur Wright made the first successful powered flight in 1903 that the dream showed signs of becoming a reality.
Future-gazing city planners always envisaged flying cars and planes - life in three dimensions. In Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) his genetically “pure” overlords rise vertically into the sky in their flying machines..........
I've always dreaded individual driving machines. Imagine the danger of all those crashes overhead judging by the idiot drivers down below.
ReplyDeleteAnd vapor bars for alcohol.
Kill me now.
We are a sad, sad species. We need to be shrugged off like the pestilence we are. Let the cockroaches take over and do a better job, I say.
XO
WWW
Wisewebwoman ~ Crazy innit? :) Even the self-driving earth-bound cars, which I think are already here, are a bit iffy - though the concept would be good for a non-driver like me, I'd be wary of trusting it.
ReplyDeleteVapor bars - why take all the pleasure out of drinking though - and the elitism - but maybe the wine drinking fraternity would still be able to do their thing, somehow, without that sip swirl and spit thing they do.
And the crazy vapour bar just had to be in London, of course. A marketing tactic, nothing more.
ReplyDeleteRJ Adams ~ Yes - marketing - the one skill (apart from aggression) humans have honed to precision. :/
ReplyDelete