Fear and loathing are two powerful themes in politics, popular media and everyday life. Fear of crime, environmental disaster, job loss, child abuse, terrorism, and more, seems pervasive. As one commentator observes: 'Our children are no longer allowed to walk to school, and the landscapes of fear that we paint for them are populated not with trolls, wolves or wicked witches, but with paedophiles, satanic abusers, and generically untrustworthy adults' (Tudor, 2003: 239). To this list we can add terrorists, with governments urging citizens to report what they perceive to be unusual behaviour--a very loose category. More generally we are familiar with the changing physical, legal and social environments, which are part of the 'stepping up' of security measures involving increased policing and surveillance in a range of institutions and organizations. Witness the heightened airport security: metal detectors, bag searches, restrictions on in-cabin baggage, questions about who packed the luggage, and anxieties surrounding unattended baggage. Many other workplaces have detailed protocols for dealing with bomb threats and terrorist attacks. Many people seem to loathe or distrust the individuals or wider groups they believe might turn these fears into reality. Alongside the social types 'the criminal', 'the prostitute' and 'the juvenile delinquent', which have existed for some time, we now have 'the terrorist', 'the paedophile', 'the illegal immigrant', 'the people smuggler' and 'the drug trafficker'. Police surveillance techniques include profiling whereby various marker attributes are aggregated to produce the typical physical and psychological makeup of the lawbreaker. These developments all resonate with aspects of Simmel's notion of the stranger, who is 'near and far at the same time' (1971: 148). Current articulations of deviant social types emphasize their physical closeness but social distance. In contemporary renditions criminals, paedophiles and terrorists are living apparently ordinary lives in neighbourhoods alongside 'respectable' citizens. 'For a stranger to the country, the city, the race, and so on, what is stressed is again nothing individual, but alien origin, a quality which he [sic] has, or could have, in common with many other strangers. For this reason strangers are not really perceived as individuals, but as strangers of a certain type' (Simmel, 1971: 148). 'Fear and loathing' is one of those phrases, like the glass ceiling, bargaining in the shadow of the law, the opiate of the masses and white-collar crime, which have entered the sociological (and often the everyday) lexicon but whose origins are rarely referenced. The term 'fear and loathing' is attributed to the unconventional U.S. journalist--Hunter S. Thompson--who, on the day John F. Kennedy died, wrote: There is no human being within 500 miles to whom I can communicate anything--much less the fear and loathing that is on me after today's murder.... No matter what, today is the end of an era. No more fair play. From now on it is dirty pool and judo in the clinches. The savage nuts have shattered the great myth of American decency. (Thompson, quoted in http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/graffiti/hunter.htm accessed 4 May 2004) The phrase was popularized in the cult classic Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream (Thompson, 1971). Here, Thompson and his attorney travel to Las Vegas to look for the American Dream, which turns out to be the old Psychiatrist's Club on Paradise. It is an acerbic tale about the meaning of the 1960s and the future. Along the way, they get and remain stoned, destroy hotel rooms and attend (uninvited) a District Attorneys' convention where Thompson notes: 'It was easy enough to sit there with a head full of mescaline and listen to hour after hour of irrelevant gibberish...' (1971: 143). Hunter's famous style of extremely personal and super-subjective writing is known as Gonzo journalism, which entails conversation, quotes, sarcasm, humour, exaggeration and profanity (see www. …