So The World Did Not End This Time, Did It?
Is it safe to come out yet? Do I need to wear a gasmask? Is the "world-end rapture" over and done with? Am I blogging to a barren wasteland of the www now?
I've always felt the end of the world would be synonymous with a "gasmask", as does the media who drums it into us. Be it a chemical outbreak, a zombie plague, World Wars, or biblical flashfloods and world-ending earthquakes, somehow gasmasks makes it "better" - I reckon tis just a propaganda-led excuse to NOT see your deformed face in fear when all the aforementioned disasters hit you, innit? None of us will survive unscarred would we? And a gasmask only helps delays the inevitable, doesn't it? Oh gosh but is apocalypse such a swell fictional-notion tho!
I've always had a "thing" for gasmasks. My first ever and only purchase was a used gasmask circa WW2 a long whiles back from an open air flea market in Singapore - known as "Thieve's Market" (there is absolutely no need to wonder why it is named such - Singapore is very literal :p). I was elated with my procurement, even though I highly suspected the mask to have actually been used before, with the crusty-green cluster at the breather-area might probably have suggested that ….
Years later, I had to put on a NBC gaskmask ("Nuclear, Biological, Chemical") during one of my Reservist-stints in the nation's Army (just the mask, not the suit tho *phew*). It was not a comfortable feeling. Hell, I do not think even the previous wearers had bothered to wash or clean it after they took it off (and the guys before them, the dudes before them etc - Not their fault though) … and I have never looked at a gasmask with allure as I had done years ago, after that episode.
These days, I prefer my gasmasks ON my toys :)[Above-Left: Flea Market gasmask but with single filter / Right: NBC-styled gasmask]
I've always felt the end of the world would be synonymous with a "gasmask", as does the media who drums it into us. Be it a chemical outbreak, a zombie plague, World Wars, or biblical flashfloods and world-ending earthquakes, somehow gasmasks makes it "better" - I reckon tis just a propaganda-led excuse to NOT see your deformed face in fear when all the aforementioned disasters hit you, innit? None of us will survive unscarred would we? And a gasmask only helps delays the inevitable, doesn't it? Oh gosh but is apocalypse such a swell fictional-notion tho!
I've always had a "thing" for gasmasks. My first ever and only purchase was a used gasmask circa WW2 a long whiles back from an open air flea market in Singapore - known as "Thieve's Market" (there is absolutely no need to wonder why it is named such - Singapore is very literal :p). I was elated with my procurement, even though I highly suspected the mask to have actually been used before, with the crusty-green cluster at the breather-area might probably have suggested that ….
Years later, I had to put on a NBC gaskmask ("Nuclear, Biological, Chemical") during one of my Reservist-stints in the nation's Army (just the mask, not the suit tho *phew*). It was not a comfortable feeling. Hell, I do not think even the previous wearers had bothered to wash or clean it after they took it off (and the guys before them, the dudes before them etc - Not their fault though) … and I have never looked at a gasmask with allure as I had done years ago, after that episode.
These days, I prefer my gasmasks ON my toys :)
