CATASTROPHISTS DON'T SPARKLE

Technically and typically a catastrophist is someone who thinks that rather than a gentle evolutionary slope of slow change over time, the world has been ripped and torn and shoved ahead by massive catastrophic events. The dinosaurs were killed by a meteor. Bam. Catastrophe. Bam. T-Rex buys it. Bam. Lemurs rule the world. 

On a more personal level, a catastrophist is someone who envisions all nightmare scenarios possible for any given equation. Teenager + new license + family car = kidnapped by Bermudian   bandits. I know. I know. There’s a lot of missing steps in that formula, but believe it when I say, I can get there in my own head.

I am a catastrophist.

You can’t tell me that bad things aren’t going to happen. I’ve been alive too long for that nonsense. And yes, I know that is a double negative, making the bad things an absolute certainty.

 
Nixon did lie.

Kennedy was a dog.

Pandemics do happen every 100 years.

Hitler did manage to turn a nation of God-fearing Christians into homicidal accomplices. 

And if you put a toddler next to the dog’s food bowl, that kid is going to eat that dog food. And if the dog food is next to the dog’s water, that kid is going to dunk the dog food in the dog’s water first and then eat the dog food. Guaranteed. 

It’s like being a prophet with no followers or a general with no army. Sigh.

Being a catastrophist isn’t pessimistic; it isn’t even negative. It’ just thinking ahead.

Okay, I will concede that not everything goes into the toilet. Sometimes people who are late for curfew have not been kidnapped and trafficked for sex work. Sometimes it’s just a flat tire . . . slashed by a serial killer, waiting in a thicket . . . I mean . . . sometimes . . . it’s just a couple of kids groping each other under the light of a full moon . . . and werewolves.

See? 

My combat soldier son, who knows a thing or two about real evil and true catastrophe, says there is medication that can help. Of course, the side effects run for a page and half and include things like blindness, scaly skin, and vampirism. 

And yes, Vlad the Impaler, a great catastrophist, did Shish Kabob a bunch of invaders looking to set up shop in the shadow of his creepy castle. In his country, they have statues of him and call him a national folk hero. In this country they turn him into a vampire and make him sparkle in the sunlight.

Catastrophe.

And yes, I am a writer.  Amazon.com/author/lindazern

Linda (The Sky IS Falling) Zern
   
 
        

In Defense of the Echo Chamber

Bah humbug! 

Growing up in the fifties and early sixties, on the Space Coast of Florida, was an exercise in Americana. All our fathers worked at Cape Canaveral, sometimes named and re-named after that dead president, Kennedy. Everyone came out of their houses to watch the moon rockets streak across the sky. And we all hated the Russians like poison.

When Sputnik sailed over our houses, the adults would come out into their yards and shake their fists at the blinking, floating satellite watching us from space—mostly they were shaking inside, worried. 

No one worried that we weren’t getting the other guy’s perspective or giving the Ruskies a fair shake. Screw the Russians; this was a race and we were going to win.

Because it was hard. That’s what President Kennedy said. We were going to the moon because it was hard and America rose to the challenge. Damn the Russians.

Our whole world was an echo chamber. My mother talked to Mrs. Christenson over the chain link fence between our row houses. They believed: in God, in their country, in public school, in being neighbors. Over the back fence, my mom talked to the Spooners, who were Catholic and had seven kids. They believed: in nice yards, sales at Piggly Wiggly, and church on Sundays.

To the left of us, lived the Dornbushes. We didn’t talk to them. They were thieves. Mrs. Dornbush would load up her mob of kids in the family VW bus, drive around town to construction sites and steal the newly planted landscaping. We weren’t allowed over there. Their garden was legendary. 

But honestly, our world hummed along quite nicely as an echo chamber until Vietnam, LSD, and the hideous failures of President Kennedy’s assassination and the shock of Kent State.

And now, that we’ve crawled out of the echo chamber to listen to . . . well not to put too fine a point on it . . . kooky talk. Sure. Sure. Boys are girls are boys are earthworms. God is dead and the Church of Satan is suing Texas over their religious ritual of abortions. All cultures are the same, even the ones who believe in digging up dead bodies and dancing with them. Drugs and alcohol are the quickest way to becoming the life of any party or a bleary eyed buffoon.

Bah humbug. 

It takes half a lifetime to figure out whether or not being an earthworm pans out in the long run. I don’t have that kind of time to . . . mull over . . . the value of earthworm culture. Thanks but I’ll stick to what I know works . . . works . . . works. 

And of course! I talk to myself. Sometimes I need expert advice.

Linda (True Believer) Zern

Ants vs. Grasshoppers

 My long-time friend and fellow doomsday conspirator called me during the swine flu dustup and said, “I found a deal on N95 masks. Are you in?”

“I’m in.”

And I was. I stocked up on N95 masks against a when-not-if pandemic eventuality. A few years later, I found myself pulling them off my shelf to donate to our local hospital during the long awaited pandemic of the moment. It was a situation that left me scratching my head.

Who am I to be giving protective gear to medical professionals? Nobody, that’s who.

Had everyone at doctor school been absent the day they discussed the repeating, one-hundred year cycle of plagues? Apparently.

Without expertise or training, was I better prepared than the smarty pants people at doctor school? Yep.

If they need a phone number for where they can buy N95 masks cheap they should let me know.

Preppers are more like ants than grasshoppers. They work and store and get ready. They plant while the sun shines. They are mocked and laughed at, until someone needs that case of toilet paper they’ve got tucked up under the guest bedroom nightstand.

For the ants who are prepared, it’s hard not to fell smug. Don’t. Grasshoppers going to grasshopper.

For the ants who take twenty bucks a month and turn it into a stockpile against a time of fear and want, keep your chin up and keep prepping against the coming of winter. 

The grasshoppers are going to need you.

Linda (Ants Be Ready) Zern