So today Lonespark and I met Izzy, it was for too short a time but a great meeting none the less.
Things to come out of said meeting:
-What passes for conventional these days is shape-shifting dragons and Scotland.
-There seems to be a lack of works about the [whatever] apocalypse in which people act like people. Consider the zombie apocalypse, it's always assumed that those who rebuild in the after time will be the ones who follow a philosophy of, "If things get tough I'll trip you so I can run away while they chow down on you," not, "I don't care that ze can't keep up, I'm not leaving zir. I'll carry zir if that's what it takes," and the people who side with that person when given the choice. This in spite of, "We take care of each other," being the more inviting option and the one with the better retirement plan than, "Social Darwinism taken to a literal lethal extreme."
-The fact that there has yet to be a Hitchhiker's Guide/The Hobbit crossover is absurd. It's not just the actor, it's that he was in his dressing gown when the dwarfs showed up, it's that when you get down to it what Arthur Dent really wants is a Hobbit hole and not to be interrupted by adventures but if Ford/Gandalf gives him a nudge out the door then he's all, "I'm with you. I'm bloody well with you."
-Vampires are the new Manic-Pixie-Dream-Girls. See Underworld and Twilight where the vampire is the magic lover that exists to break the ordinary human out of their humdrum lives.
-Squid is best served fried.
-It's been too long since I've been to an actual city (Boston in this case) as opposed to, you know, Portland. I'd forgotten what a city looks like.
-A possible name for that project would be "The Night Shift".
-And such.
---
As for the first part of the title, the bus ride home from Boston crossed the path that I knew I'd be walking home, and then took exactly the same route to the station that I'd take back to the spot from the station. I guessed it would take me half an hour to walk from the station back to the spot. In fact it took 28 minutes. It took the bus four minutes to make the same journey in the opposite direction. Thus, it would appear, a bus is seven times faster than a pedestrian. At least over the bridge and in the city. I imagine that on long straightaways it's more than seven times faster.
I think that the behaviour of people in case of Foo Apocalypse is often influenced by the author's political views; Romero for example was making points about unthinking humans, and having his stressed-out people do each other down was entirely in keeping with that.
ReplyDeleteAs far as I can tell, people's expectations of behaviour in crises are often much more pessimistic than what actually happens. (See for example the aftermath of Katrina - bearing in mind that I don't regard stealing food and water from shops in order to stay alive, when the shop has been abandoned and you've been prevented at gunpoint from escaping, as bad behaviour.)
From outside the USA, the whole meme of "I will fortify my house/town and fight off the bad guys, defined as anyone who wasn't inside it when I fortified, because I can stand on my own like a tough man" feels kind of old-fashioned, and not something one would admit to looking forward to in polite company.
(Seen the trailers for World War Z? It does not look good.)
A bus doing an average of 21mph in town is a pretty good speed; I'd expect around 10-15. But that's in London, where they rarely have long distances without stopping.
Manic Pixie Dream Girls Must Die is probably a punk band.
Seen the trailers for World War Z? It does not look good.
ReplyDeleteReally? That's awfully disappointing. I felt like the point of World War Z was pretty much the same point we were discussing: organized cooperation gets shit done, civilization saved. Of course there are many ways to be tragically unlucky or oppressed that screw you over... but on the whole, a combination of Big Socialist Government and grassroots cooperation saves the day (in the US, in the book...)(and I wish Neighborhood Zombie Watch Dude in Wheelchair would be one of the heroes.)
Yeah, from what I've seen so far it looks like Brad Pitt Saves The World While Worrying About His Family. Just another zombie film with a bigger budget than usual.
Delete(I stand ready to be pleasantly surprised.)
I can always hope, but yeah: I saw the trailer, and it really doesn't look like World War Z. It looks like Starship Troopers, only with zombies instead of bugs.
DeleteIck. Frak that.
DeleteBrad Pitt's involvement didn't automatically make think it would be bad; I remember him fondly from 12 Monkey, and to a certain degree Fight Club, in ways that might mesh with Brooks's tone....
Boo.
Chris,
ReplyDeleteGlad you made it home alright. Hope you are enjoying you ski thing.
Also, I am wildly, ridiculously jealous of this meet-up. If any of you ever get down to the Dallas/Fort Worth area, give me a yell.
ReplyDeleteAs far as I can tell, people's expectations of behaviour in crises are often much more pessimistic than what actually happens. (See for example the aftermath of Katrina - bearing in mind that I don't regard stealing food and water from shops in order to stay alive, when the shop has been abandoned and you've been prevented at gunpoint from escaping, as bad behaviour.)
ReplyDeleteWhat's the most depressing about Katrina was that the government expected the bad aftermath and didn't think people were going to be good to each other. As a result, they reacted accordingly - heavily militarizing everywhere, arresting citizens for no reason at all, and sticking them in prisons similar to Guantanamo. When you assume people will be animals, you treat them that way. Both sides of the story - good people trying to be good and the U.S. government screwing up royally on a justice front - are very well told in Dave Eggers' book Zeitoun.