I feel bad doing Monday books because it’s hard to get some books these days and I don’t want someone trying to go out. We will go back to them when the libraries reopen, or if the book can be guaranteed online.
Meanwhile, time for a true confession; post-apocalyptic movies are my secret guilty pleasure. When I despair over the state of the world, or my place in it, I watch actors try to battle off giant invaders, figure out how to make engines from rusty nails, etc. It’s fun. Because it isn’t real life.
Now that our lives are a little weirder than normal, and online games have become quite the rage, how many disaster movies can you find in our present situation? Here’s a list to get you started; play along in comments.
Perfect Sense – losing taste and smell as the most evident symptom that something is going wrong
World War Z – US government response is to manufacture and push fake cures as national health, ignoring actual problem
How it Ends – no one can pin down how it started but sure would like to find someone to blame
A Quiet Place – people send up flares to communicate they’re still here – we have Facebook
Containment – the slow erosion of social norms due to hoarding inside a cordon sanitaire – a phrase everybody just LOVES to keep saying
Outbreak – media hyping already tense situations to make it even more fun!!
Zoo – some asshole reports a tiger has COVID and gets a whole bunch of pets killed with his irresponsible conflating of cat coronaviruses (they are COMMON) and human coronaviruses (we don’t catch them from each other)
I Am Legend – the cure is worse than the illness
Left Behind- I got nothing on this one; anyone?
Shawn of the Dead – yes, people can be that stupid in real life. Been on Facebook?
Rollover – the world economy goes belly up but the really pretty people survive (Jane Fonda and Kris Kristofferson, namely)
28 Days Later – I literally had a colleague (his name was not Jim, though) backpacking in New Zealand who walked back into civilization intending to catch his plane on to India and … say what now?
Think of this as one of those picture puzzles online. How many movies can you spot in the way we live now? :]
Our time has come, gentle little sweet people with weird hobbies! This past week, I have blessed the names of those who sew quietly at home, hoarders who handed over supplies, and geeks who own 3D printers.
Mandy and Bonnie and Karen and Lisa (yet a different one – word to the wise: get to know some Lisas; they get stuff done) and Anni and Beth and the other Beth and Betty and Summer and Mary Sue and a thousand other women and men getting cloth masks out to the home team: y’all rock. Those masks do three things: 1) help us not touch our face in public 2) slow the virus spread; it can get through the holes in fabric, but in the same way a small fish at a big net sometimes it bounces off a fiber instead, this is extra protection sufficient for public use 3) remind the wearer that they are loved enough that someone wanted them protected, and made or bought them a mask. Mental health is nothing to be sneezed at these days–er, no pun intended. Feeling loved is important, and we can literally feel the love warm and snug on our faces, every time our glasses steam up.
Wendy Welch: Books, Yarn, Cats, Opioids 