Why do I dislike that form of words? Thank you for not smoking, parking here, et cetera. It's simultaneously coercive and conciliatory. We're giving you an order, but we're scared of what you might think of us if we actually did give you an order. Something like that. We need you to like us, but don't step out of line. Maybe I'm over-thinking it, but I wonder: are the words "Apologies for any inconvenience caused" ever written by somebody who feels sorry?

Before the internet, there was the present day.
     Or rather, there were times when people thought they were in the present day. They didn’t realise that they were in our past, and it never occurred to them that actually, we are the ones who are in the present day. Watch an episode of a TV drama called Millennium. The star of the show was Lance Henriksen and it was created by the bloke who created The X Files, Chris Carter. Remember The X Files? Of course you do.
     Anyway – Millennium. The show was made in the nineties, and as the title tells you, these were the end times and everything was doomy and gloomy with shadows, deaths and (come to think of it, rather good) atmospheric music. The millennium itself was getting closer and the music was getting darker.
     Like the Mayan Prophecy, Millennium started from the premise that we were all doomed and the portents were all around us. It wasn’t just the “millennium bug” that was going to screw us up when the digital clocks clicked round from 19- to 20-, but all manner of cults and nasties (soundtrack included).
     Watch it today, and the thing that really gets you is that Lance Henriksen is always being called to the phone. He doesn’t have a mobile. How could he not have understood that he was in the past?