Armageddon It
It was a chill grey morning, the kind of morning the guys on the morning news console you about by saying “Sure it’s below the seasonal average but we’ll warm up for the weekend!” as though that makes you any less prone to miserable shivering when you walk out the door today. The bus rolled onto the bridge and I noticed for possibly the first time a sign that said “You Are Not Alone! 24 hour phone booth 50 feet ahead!”
That’s cool, I thought, they put in a phone line so you could talk to aliens. Space aliens that is, not the Earth-dwelling kind they hate in Arizona. Weird place for it but hey, if they opened that sort of thing up to the general public who knows what kind of panic might ensue. Then I realized we were getting on a bridge so what the sign was really saying was “Don’t Jump and Screw Up Everyone Else’s Commute, As Soon As You Pull Over To The Phone Booth A Cop Car Will Race Onto The Bridge and Scoop You Up As A Suspected Terrorist”. Honestly friends, do you think there’s anyone actually AT the other end of that phone line? It’s just to hold you up long enough so the cops can scoop you off the bridge and figure out if you’re part of Al Queda. Can you imagine the disappointment a prospective suicide who uses the phone will feel once he (and it usually is a he, women tend to off themselves at home I think, or at least that’s what I read in Suicide Quarterly) picks up the line and hears nothing but ringing at the other end? I wonder what that poor bastard will be thinking as New York’s Finest haul him into the back of a cruiser with a few “and that’s one’s for Osama” cracks with a baton after he can’t even complete the phone call.
As the image of Osama Been Jumpin played on the movie screen in my head I looked over at the piles of rubble that were recently toll booths and felt a theme going on. It might have been gas, but no, I kept thinking and it was in fact a theme. The theme it got me thinking about was my own fascination with The End. Not my own (don’t worry IYSCOQYAR fans, I’m not planning on offing myself anytime soon), but the Big End. No, not an eight ender what’s wrong with you? Yes, I curl, but it has nothing to do with this. I’m talking about The End Of It All, or at least The End Of Humanity.
I’m reading a happy little book right now called “The World Without Us”. I’m not linking to it because no online seller is going to kick me back a few pennies for sending you there so do yer own darn search. Anyway I’m only a little ways into the book but I’m fascinated as I’m sure countless others are and were since the book seemed to sell really well and inspired TV series and imitators on various cable channels. It’s just the latest manifestation in my affection for Armageddon; hell in my youthful dalliance with Christianity I took a Bible study course specializing in the book of Revelation. I still think the imagery therein is pretty cool, especially when it’s incorporated like this.
Everyone likes a good apocalypse when they’re feeling down, right? Rarely do I walk through Times Square without once thinking about “a real rain that’s gonna come and wash away all the scum”, though the scum I’m talking about is of a very different composition than the scum Travis Bickle was talking about. I suspect my own affinity for Japanese monster movies from the mid to late 20th century comes from the same root as the end of the world fascination but with a twist – I think all of us who watch giant mutant reptiles rampaging through cities are secretly (or in my case not so secretly) rooting for the monster to just wreck everything and not be defeated by some clever scientist’s plan. I was crushed when Godzilla was killed by the oxygen deprivation device even if it did save Raymond Burr and enable him to become a wheelchair-bound policeman with a black sidekick years later. I think a lot of us secretly imagine WE are the monster rampaging though civilization. If not that, then we hope that the monster is a manifestation of nature that has come to take revenge on humanity for the abuse heaped on the planet (c’mon, you KNOW you want to see a giant mutant sea turtle crushing BP/Halliburton/Whoever Loses The Blamestorming contest headquarters, don’t you?).
As we descended the far side of the bridge it struck me that a lot of the fascination with The End stems from an embedded belief that perhaps it isn’t, really, The End. Most major religions come with a post-apocalypse elevation to a better life (and if yours doesn’t consult your lawyer), so maybe all we’re collectively hoping for is to wipe the slate clean and start over. We all tend to assume that we are the narrator or the protagonist in works of fiction so I suspect we all consume those works assuming that we are the ones who will still be standing even when everything else is gone. Of course this can’t be so for everyone but then again there’s always that bright and sunny afterlife to fall back on. Regardless of how it happens, those of us who are fascinated by how it all ends are probably really expressing an unconscious desire for a do-over. Even “The World Without Us” focuses as much (if not more in the small part I have read so far) on the plants and the animals that will come in and take over once humanity is gone as it does how and how quickly the physical remains of civilization will crumble into dust.
We’re all looking for that second chance. But why? What makes us think we’ll screw up any less the next time around? There’s not a lot of evidence to indicate that we’ll change, but that’s a homily for another day. Enjoy that warm weekend that’s just around the corner everyone. Things will be different then. Of course they will.
That’s cool, I thought, they put in a phone line so you could talk to aliens. Space aliens that is, not the Earth-dwelling kind they hate in Arizona. Weird place for it but hey, if they opened that sort of thing up to the general public who knows what kind of panic might ensue. Then I realized we were getting on a bridge so what the sign was really saying was “Don’t Jump and Screw Up Everyone Else’s Commute, As Soon As You Pull Over To The Phone Booth A Cop Car Will Race Onto The Bridge and Scoop You Up As A Suspected Terrorist”. Honestly friends, do you think there’s anyone actually AT the other end of that phone line? It’s just to hold you up long enough so the cops can scoop you off the bridge and figure out if you’re part of Al Queda. Can you imagine the disappointment a prospective suicide who uses the phone will feel once he (and it usually is a he, women tend to off themselves at home I think, or at least that’s what I read in Suicide Quarterly) picks up the line and hears nothing but ringing at the other end? I wonder what that poor bastard will be thinking as New York’s Finest haul him into the back of a cruiser with a few “and that’s one’s for Osama” cracks with a baton after he can’t even complete the phone call.
As the image of Osama Been Jumpin played on the movie screen in my head I looked over at the piles of rubble that were recently toll booths and felt a theme going on. It might have been gas, but no, I kept thinking and it was in fact a theme. The theme it got me thinking about was my own fascination with The End. Not my own (don’t worry IYSCOQYAR fans, I’m not planning on offing myself anytime soon), but the Big End. No, not an eight ender what’s wrong with you? Yes, I curl, but it has nothing to do with this. I’m talking about The End Of It All, or at least The End Of Humanity.
I’m reading a happy little book right now called “The World Without Us”. I’m not linking to it because no online seller is going to kick me back a few pennies for sending you there so do yer own darn search. Anyway I’m only a little ways into the book but I’m fascinated as I’m sure countless others are and were since the book seemed to sell really well and inspired TV series and imitators on various cable channels. It’s just the latest manifestation in my affection for Armageddon; hell in my youthful dalliance with Christianity I took a Bible study course specializing in the book of Revelation. I still think the imagery therein is pretty cool, especially when it’s incorporated like this.
Everyone likes a good apocalypse when they’re feeling down, right? Rarely do I walk through Times Square without once thinking about “a real rain that’s gonna come and wash away all the scum”, though the scum I’m talking about is of a very different composition than the scum Travis Bickle was talking about. I suspect my own affinity for Japanese monster movies from the mid to late 20th century comes from the same root as the end of the world fascination but with a twist – I think all of us who watch giant mutant reptiles rampaging through cities are secretly (or in my case not so secretly) rooting for the monster to just wreck everything and not be defeated by some clever scientist’s plan. I was crushed when Godzilla was killed by the oxygen deprivation device even if it did save Raymond Burr and enable him to become a wheelchair-bound policeman with a black sidekick years later. I think a lot of us secretly imagine WE are the monster rampaging though civilization. If not that, then we hope that the monster is a manifestation of nature that has come to take revenge on humanity for the abuse heaped on the planet (c’mon, you KNOW you want to see a giant mutant sea turtle crushing BP/Halliburton/Whoever Loses The Blamestorming contest headquarters, don’t you?).
As we descended the far side of the bridge it struck me that a lot of the fascination with The End stems from an embedded belief that perhaps it isn’t, really, The End. Most major religions come with a post-apocalypse elevation to a better life (and if yours doesn’t consult your lawyer), so maybe all we’re collectively hoping for is to wipe the slate clean and start over. We all tend to assume that we are the narrator or the protagonist in works of fiction so I suspect we all consume those works assuming that we are the ones who will still be standing even when everything else is gone. Of course this can’t be so for everyone but then again there’s always that bright and sunny afterlife to fall back on. Regardless of how it happens, those of us who are fascinated by how it all ends are probably really expressing an unconscious desire for a do-over. Even “The World Without Us” focuses as much (if not more in the small part I have read so far) on the plants and the animals that will come in and take over once humanity is gone as it does how and how quickly the physical remains of civilization will crumble into dust.
We’re all looking for that second chance. But why? What makes us think we’ll screw up any less the next time around? There’s not a lot of evidence to indicate that we’ll change, but that’s a homily for another day. Enjoy that warm weekend that’s just around the corner everyone. Things will be different then. Of course they will.
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