one thing after another

ONE THING AFTER ANOTHER


I recently got done reading a post-Apocalypse novel, “Life As We Knew It”. Now, as this is young adult fiction, and written by a fem, it isn’t your standard collapse story. You have to keep that in mind. There are no zombie bikers besieging a town to gain control of nearby farmland or black helicopters aerosol spraying Swine Flu and certainly no Joe Bob’s Bar & Road Kill Grill & Nasty Ho Brothel. Which of course is very unfortunate. But as long as you don’t go in expecting that, you should enjoy this novel. If there are no boobs or machinegun fire or explosions, and it is still a good read, you’ve found a rare bird indeed. The problem I find with most female writers is that they want to explore feelings. Adult males are allowed to show one emotion and that is anger. Blood lust, plain lust, pretty much compatible anger emotions ( or so the feminists would have us believe ). Just think about it a second. Two cavemen are defending the village. Do they stop and talk about their feelings? How they are tired of the hate and can’t we all just get along? Of course not. Jeez, talk about an evolutionary dead end. They get pissed off and go kill the bastards. And afterwards they aren’t going to sit around and share their feeling about how unfortunate it was that due to fear they soiled themselves and how later they wake up from nightmares about how afraid they were. You can share those things, but it must be over alcohol and you must disguise it with vulgar humor or something similar. You don’t need a head shrinker to have you share your Mommy issues. Have you ever tried to read “Interview With A Vampire”? Page after page of absolute drivel about the feelings of the undead. Vampires are cool, if not done in teenager soap opera fashion. But unless they want to violate or kill something I could care less about what they are feeling. The above book isn’t nearly as bad as most female authors in the touchy feely department. But it does take the form of a teenage female writing in her diary.

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The story is about an asteroid hitting the moon and causing extreme weather on Earth. I hated the ending, which, after tsunamis and flooding hit the east coast still manage to have the Federales send relief food to the needy. Hereby saving the day. God, I almost vomited blood. It was just as bad as The Day After Tomorrow. The whole continent suddenly freezes, but our super duper powerful and all knowing and benign central government that couldn’t save one ghettos worth of people in one hurricane suddenly sends a fleet of choppers to save a few kids and one low totem pole civil servant. That is about as realistic as a super model moving in with me and crapping in a bucket. Which is okay if it doesn’t happen since I’m not going to spend good money on food and then have some skinny ass bitch puke it up so it doesn’t go to her thighs. Newsflash for husbands supporting trophy wives- the skinny ones are going to die first. And just think how nasty those fake boobs are going to look when the fool weigh 85 pounds. Anyway, despite all the negatives with this book, the one thing that I think made it worth reading ( and buying ) was that it did a masterful job of describing the process of one thing after another going wrong. One crisis hits, it is barely solved or adjusted for, and then something else goes wrong. Quite the roller coaster ride, and most likely a pretty realistic portrayal on your future.

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The typical post-apocalypse novel has the survivors battling to live, and then it seems that once that is done, they all live happily ever after. Somehow this doesn’t seem realistic. “Life…” was really good at describing the downwards staircase into doom and despair ( so perhaps it couldn’t have been written by a male since our typical response to a problem is to kill it ) as once one standard of living was abandoned and the adjustment for the worse was made, yet another worse problem came about. It was particularly good describing the long slow process of malnutrition as calories were slowly cut back continuously. Which made the ending all the more disappointing since it was unrealistic and a bit of a cop out. But, what can you do? I can’t say I could have done better. Is this the future we have in store for us? One problem after another, things never getting better but worse? One problem solved, not to our satisfaction but at least the full blown crisis averted and before long the process starts all over again? Hell, you should be getting a taste of that now as the Greatest Depression just gets slowly rolling faster and faster.

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Your money buys less and less, so you are always adjusting downwards. You are a gerbil running faster and faster on your wheel and the wheel goes slower and slower and you lose all your energy. But a fire is raging behind you and you have to run faster. Just like working for the modern corporation. Faster, quicker, now take a pay cut. Now give up your SUV, then your house. Oh, wait! You have junk land. No, just kidding. I know you are several months from living under a bridge in your Suburban. Sucker. But at least you have a wife and a flush toilet. Enjoy that while you can. Now, I’m not trying to undermine my waterfall theory of collapse. We are still going to tumble over violently soon enough. But it will be a downward adjustable journey there. And then afterwards. Have fun with that.

END
Next week: Review "Crash Course"
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