Friday, February 27, 2009

"My mind is going. I can feel it, Dave." (from "2001: A Space Odyssey")

As debate grows on how to best prepare ourselves, with particular emphasis on the readiness of our youth, for the upcoming Reagan/Bush/Clinton/Bush/Obama post-apocalyptic world just around the corner, Onion offers up the following video.

(Please note: this discussion focuses not on the more common survival meme of everyone cultivating any available space for the planting of pickles and pasta gardens, plus the domestication of lizards and small rodents for subsistence snacking, but rather how to effectively co-exist (or not) with others who have managed to weather the initial total collapse of world civilization as we knew it.)


Are Violent Video Games Adequately Preparing Children For The Apocalypse?

7 comments:

D.K. Raed said...

well at least now I know the PURPOSE for those games! Jeez, I was starting to worry kids weren't learning anything valuable anymore.

BTW (I feel like the businessman in The Graduate), one word (to the future survivors), cannabalism .... forget those lizards, kuru be damned!

ps, your title touched my heart. It is what my mom used to say when she was still in the early stages of alzheimers. But don't feel bad, it's actually a good memory because at least in that stage, she still knew who we were (and who she was).

Dada said...

OMG D.K.: Your story of your mom's mental acuity re her Alzheimer's: Were you trying to TELL me something? (At least, thankfully, it's not a painful memory I triggered.)

Ah, yes, another great movie - "The Graduate"....and the word of the day - 40 years ago - "PLASTICS, BEN, PLASTICS!" I wonder what the word today would be?

Dada said...

Ah, it was "Ben," wasn't it?

Dada said...

Or -- GOD FORBID! -- is my memory failing me?

D.K. Raed said...

No Dada I was not implying anything. It was just an odd little moment to see your title and recall my mom saying those words (sans "Dave"). It's funny, she never thought she was going insane (which could easily be refuted using the Catch-22 clause), but she definitely knew she was losing her grip on reality.

Unless my memory is also failing, I think Benjamin was The Graduate, although I generally think of him as Dustin. Did you know Mike Nichols first choice to play him was Charles Grodin? But he couldn't lose enough weight to look college-skinny. He did use Grodin in Catch-22 though.

So, what would be the equivalent of "plastics" today? I'm tempted to say "batteries"! Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio ...

Dada said...

Ahhh, "Catcha da Twenty-two" as an old Italian man wise in the ways of wars, the rise and fall of empires and how to survive them all might say. Another of my very favorite movies.

Funny, when writing about "Ben" and the one word of wisdom offered him as a kind of bonus graduation present -- "PLASTICS!", I got to thinking about the very question you asked, i.e., it's equivalent in the 21st Century.

I suppose much of it depends on one's outlook for the immediate future. In that mine's extremely gloomy, I was thinking along the order of the old 50's TV dinner, but seeing as how their will be no electricity to keep 'em frozen, no TV's to watch whilst consuming 'em, and -- really -- no dinners in that we'll probably be just a landscape with hordes of hunters and gatherers, maybe the new word should be, "RATS."

Rats are meal size and with their long tails, would easily attach to one's belt (if one has clothing of any form to wear). And their excellent portability would make them convenient trail "mix" on your way to new areas scavenge.

D.K. Raed said...

no no no, TAIL MIX! The imagery is too perfect!

(and yucky, but it's reminding me more of the conditions leading to the french revolution than catchada22 ... starving populace resorts to headless, ummm, corporate rats?!?)

BTW, I thought of you as I was recently reading of Hitler's list of banned "philosophies": Locke, Hume, Voltaire, Rousseau, Ricardo, Marx, Darwin, psychoanalysis, Impressionism, Dadaism, Cubism and film drama. You made the list! Yeayyyy! (and now we know where banning the view askew, leads)