Doc

Doc, originally uploaded by dumbeast.

Today's theme is surveillance. It started with an email from nessie outlining all the evil privacy issues that come unannounced and unbidden with your free gmail account.

Later, I ran into our mutual friend Doc at Bevmo. I took a picture of him while he was waiting in the checkout line.

One of the checkers saw me do this and told me, "I don't think you're allowed to shoot that in here," so I put my camera away. After a minute, the checker asked me what I was doing, still hanging around there. I told him I was waiting for my friend to check out.

Would he like me to wait outside?

"No, I guess that's alright. Sir."

I don't know. It's not as if they're not videoing everybody who enters their store. Very discreet, tiny cameras, but they're there, if you bother to look for them, which is what I was doing while I waited for Doc to check out.

As a younger man, I would have raised a stink about all this. It would have taken the form of going around ostentatiously photographing all their surveillance equipment until they called security and had me removed. But, Christ, the checker was probably just having a bad day and wanted to rag on somebody. I mean, he's probably making $5 a day waiting on alcoholics and, truth be told, I'm one of them, and I'd rather not get 86'd from the store.

Buh.