The Dark Night

They don’t have thunderstorms like that in the city.  To experience a storm like that you have to go out to god’s country.  The type of place that people who live there dream about leaving and people who leave pine for.  It’s the type of storm that makes you think your roof has fallen into your bedroom when the thunder claps at 4 in the morning and you are sound asleep.  The lightning doesn’t follow the thunder as much as it coincides, tricking you into thinking that bolt that lights up the sky is also responsible for making all that racket.  And it’s a good thing you don’t get storms like that in the city, because if you did that lightning would be striking someone’s apartment building or somewhere it would be similarly unwelcome.  Out there, you can rest assured that the lightning simply touched down in someone’s buffalo pasture, leaving nothing but burnt grass.  Although “rest” probably isn’t the word for what you’ll be doing.  At least not until that thunder shuts the fuck up.

Like roughly a bajillion other people last week I went to see the latest installment in the Batman franchise, The Dark Knight.  And while I won’t add to the countless breathless reviews that the movie has received (but yeah, everyone’s right, it’s good), one thing about the experience of the going to the theatre, if not the film itself, stood out to me.  Before the movie started there were the typical four or five trailers for upcoming releases.  And I know it had everything to do with marketing to the comic book/hero movie set, but every single preview was for a movie about the end of the world.  Every single one.  The world is coming to an end one way or another and somebody, preferably someone with some kind of superpower, please please please save us.  Otherwise, we’re totally fucked.  Either aliens are going to conquer and enslave us or a villain with diabolical intentions and the means to carry them out will do the same.  Or the earth will explode for one reason or another.  But whatever the case, please, please save us.  Somebody.  Anybody.

It’s apparent, with the current state of affairs on our lonely planet being what it is, that the end of the world is on a lot of folk’s minds these days, for a variety of reasons.  Some are convinced that earth’s days are numbered for religious reasons, some for political reasons, and others for environmental/scientific reasons.  Some of these reasons overlap.  But ignoring the fact that people have been fretting over the ultimate demise of our planet for centuries, everyday we are certainly closer to then.  How close, nobody really knows but definitely closer than we were at this time yesterday.  But that’s not the point really.  The point is, that it is going to end.  One of these days.

These days, everybody is going “green” in what seems like a last ditch attempt to save the planet from eventual ruin.  Now I don’t begrudge these “green” folks that much.  In fact for a while there I was kinda into all that stuff about being healthier and making the world a better place.  I adopted many green habits, but mostly only the ones that were congruous with my current lifestyle and didn’t inconvenience me.  But now, I may be starting to rethink all that.

I hate to break this to you, but that earth is not on our side.  I don’t know if you realize this, but it’s trying to kill us.  If the lightning from that thunderstorm hit someone, they’d be dead.  Or at least you wouldn’t want to take your chances.  Tornadoes, hurricanes, tsunamis, they don’t like your stuff and they’re coming for you next.  Even been to the middle of the ocean?  Obviously not because you wouldn’t be reading this right now.  You can’t swim that far, and even if you could you’d be drowned by a rogue wave or eaten by a shark.  Lions, tigers, and bears?  They’ll eat you if they’re hungry.  They all run faster that you.  Alligators too.  Ever been to Antarctica?  Me neither, but I heard it’s way fucking cold.  Even in more habitable places like the fair city I live in now, homeless people die on the street die all the time in the summer and winter because of the temperatures.  The very air we breathe is only good enough to keep us alive long enough for us to lose the physical and mental dexterity of our youth and die a slow death as an old man or women, wondering why our grandkids never fucking stop by.

So why are we trying to save the earth?  What are we trying to prove?  What if we, as a generation, decided you know what, fuck it.  Let’s drill the shit out of Alaska, build super highways through fields of corn, and use the rain forests as our personal toilet paper.  Let’s dump all our shit in the ocean and hunt rare animals for sport.  What if, all things considered, we decided to go out on our own terms.  Sure, the parents reading this may be concerned for the future of their little frankensteins, but the earth won’t explode in our lifetimes and probably not theirs either.  Let’s leave them to sort out all the details after we’ve been long buried in the earth that sought do destroy us and one way or another, succeeded.  If our kids want to have kids of their own, fine.  But let’s leave them with the tab.  Most of the next generation isn’t even alive yet anyway.

I love the commercials for the Discovery Channel that say the world is just awesome.  For some reason those thirty seconds make happier than I should be about anything.  And they’re right, the world is awesome.  On TV.  They way that zoos are awesome.  The way it’s awesome to see things you haven’t seen before.  The world isn’t in it with us for the long haul.  We didn’t ask to be here, and mostly all we do here is survive.  We weren’t in control of the way we started out here, it just sort of happened that way.  But we can be in control of how we end things here.  Let’s consider ourselves a generation of suicide bombers, dynamite strapped to our chests ready to blow this hoagie stand to smithereens.  It’s just, at some point you have to realize who your enemies are.  At some point, you have to take action.