Huzzawuh? Doomsday You Say?

I've been spending a large amount of time with my 14 year old son lately, scouring record stores for old punk rock & jazz & blues & weirdo records like Zounds! What Sounds where you find power tools mixed in with a full orchestra.

We've also been having a few giggles cavorting around the televised realm of Fortean phenomena.

We've chuckled as the Finding Bigfoot folk hunt "squatches," and we've literally pissed ourselves laughing at NatGeo's Chasing UFOs. Needless to say, the intrepid truth seekers at Chasing UFOs do not, by any warped stretch of the imagination, live up to their PR.




By far, my favorite bit of wanker silliness can be found on NatGeo's Doomsday Preppers.

Thanks to the Internut, & all its nutty paranoid denizens, the survivalist movement has veered out of the trailer parks of America & landed smack dab in the middle of white picket fence suburbia.

With hilarious results.

Here we have the self styled "Doris Day of Doom:"




By far, my favorite bit of dipshit logic can be encapsulated in her opening remarks:

"Black swan events are those events that come out of nowhere. We often say, 'Oh, I didn't see that one coming.'They have the potential to completely change the way we live our lives."

Black swan events? Gee, that has the stinky stench of the Internut about it.
I wonder if heart attacks, strokes and a good old fashioned cancer diagnosis qualify?
I'd bet not since those more likely DOOMSDAY events are almost impossible to PREP for.

It's so much easier to stockpile food & play make believe. In fact there are apparently entire Internut communities of like minded make believers willing to feed one's delusions as they simultaneously direct you to other, more mercenary, communities of survivalist businessmen & authors who are more than willing to empty your wallet.

Ain't Capitalism grand?

There are so many hurtling leaps off of Mount Logic during this one short segment that I think it's best to let it speak for itself.

In fact, every episode was chock full of hurtling leaps off Mount Logic into the frothy waters of Lake Delusion.

From the gent who didn't want his name used (although he had no problem having his face shown), and who built little dioramas of his prepper compound so he could, like a backwoods General Rommel, plan the best way to defend himself against roving bandits hunting for his stash of hidden canned green beans, to the gent who peppered his property with little "spider holes" and who headed a demented boy scout troop of teens he taught to roll in & out of moving trucks while firing automatic weapons, to the old hippie couple in the converted missile silo who look like they already have one foot in the grave & won't "survive" for much longer, catastrophe or no catastrophe, you will see the new face of madness at its most banal.





And after you watch a few prepper families conduct evacuation drills you'll find it hard to not wonder how all of these gas mask wearing, underground bunker hiding kids could possibly escape future mental illness.

While none of this has made me the least bit interested in installing a bomb shelter, it has made me realize how much these people need a catastrophe to occur. If it doesn't occur they've spent huge chunks of their lives stockpiling food no one will ever eat. They need the end, much like a junky needs a fix.

Although I suppose that, on one level, preppers aren't any madder than your average overweight sports fan who hasn't touched a football or a basketball since high school and yet still finds himself slavishly obsessing over his local sports team as if their win benefits him/her in some way.

Still, the preppers are a lot funnier.