Down the Rabbit Hole: The End of the World
Bill Maher did a bit the other night on Apocalypse movies and it stirred up an old thought.
Why are Apocalyptic movies so popular? We happily shell out hard cash to watch the end of humanity all the while secretly or subconsciously reveling in the notion that an unstoppable virus or a massive asteroid will all but wipe us out. Admit it…part of you is thinking…how cool would that be! Just think of how much quieter it would get. Give it a moment….no police sirens, fire trucks, airplanes, 18 wheel trucks on the highway…you wouldn’t have to compete with the Jones’s…because there wouldn’t be any Jones’s. Nice, huh? I never liked the Jones’s. In our new…fully agrarian society ,we’d sit by the fire at night reading a few pages of a book we always wanted to get through while sipping from a jug of home brew. What a fucking relief! Am I alone in this thinking? Nah. This notion has been around since Noah built his fucking ark. He overdosed on humanity even way back then.
So instead of turning off the T.V. and figuring out a way to make life more palatable, we sooth ourselves watching apocalypse movies…The Day After, War of the Worlds, The Andromeda Strain, all of the Mad Max films, The Postman, Water World, The Missing, The Walking Dead….oh, if only our only worry in life was getting rid of the Zombies. Glued to our seats with buckets of popcorn and quart sized containers of sugar water we thrill at the sight of our dwindling population, horrified but finding the idea of a fresh start for humanity utterly refreshing. (First thing I’d do is stop eating all this shit! I just know I would.)
I know people who keep weapons and food caches in their basements just in case they survive the extinction level event. I go out of my way to stay friends with them and while listening to their fear filled rants I usually find a moment to suggest menu items that I would require should I happen to be in their house when the asteroid hits. (I like my coffee fresh ground…my bacon cooked crisp…it’s not a deal breaker but I’m just saying…)
(A little up front honesty, my personal apocalyptic fantasies are happy affairs…me and my family survive…we live in Montana, ride horses, raise cattle, learn how to hunt and fish and are great friends with the Native Americans.)
I love finding fun ways to use…Extinction Level Event in a sentence. “God Almighty…the cat just dropped an extinction level event in the litter box!! The weatherman’s phrase “Cone of uncertainty,” is another winner around the house…”I’m not sure I can play golf tomorrow…my wife and I had a little tiff last night…I’m in the Cone of Uncertainty.”
