An amusing idea

Several people in the comments section of my Cannery story have suggested boycotting the place. A more creative idea occurred to me a few minutes ago.

I've always thought the whole "flash mob" phenomenon was pretty pointless, but today I see a purpose. Imagine this: There's, say, a hundred people at the Cannery, all milling around, doing nothing in particular. Then, on some prearranged signal*, this dispersed mass of people all pull out cell phone cameras and start taking pictures of everything in sight, all over the casino.

It greatly amuses me to think of Kwang and Larry and the rest of their crew suddenly being faced with a swarm of people taking pictures of their top-secret casino interior--a group of people that outnumber the entire security staff by 10 to 1. What are they going to do--try to surround and backroom all of them at once? Release tear gas into the central ventilation system to chase everybody out? Call in the North Las Vegas SWAT team? Detonate a electromagnetic pulse bomb to try to erase every offender's digital memory chip?

Even more fun would be to have a scanner with which one could listen in on the frantic radio communications that would ensue among the rent-a-cops suddenly overwhelmed with more photographers than they've ever had to deal with before.

Of course, the mob would have to agree in advance to certain things: Stop taking pictures as soon as they are personally informed by casino staff that it is not allowed (but then try to engage the security person in as extended a conversation as possible about the reasons for the policy, how stupid it is, etc., to slow them down from moving on to inform the next person); don't spend a single nickel in the place on gambling, food, drinks, movie tickets, or anything else; don't do anything that could even remotely justify a bogus charge of disorderly conduct; be good eyewitnesses (and photographic documenters) for each other if casino security try to get out of line with any fellow mobster.

Mind you, I'm not actually advocating or coordinating such a thing, since I wouldn't be able to be there to witness the fun. I'm just saying that hypothetically, it might be a blast. Hell, I think it's plenty of fun just contemplating the scene, and the frenzy it would cause among the fake-badge goons.


*The easiest, I think, would be for people to set their cell phones for an alarm at a specific time. Since cell phones receive their time information from centrally coordinated sites, they are precise and highly synchronized. I assume that the cell phone companies use the government's atomic clocks for their time source. In fact, every time I hear people get into one of those stupid debates about what time it really is, and who's watch is a little fast or a little slow, I want to deliver a dope slap and remind them that their cell phone clocks are probably correct to within about a thousandth of a second, if not better.