My war was cold. I grew up waiting for the cold war to heat up. It never did. There were some tense moments when Castro invited the Russians to his island with their atomic bombs, and President Kennedy said, “Go home.” They went.In the meantime, I prepared for the cold war to go hot by hiding under my desk at school and every Saturday watching movies filled with mutants, fallout, and radiated wastelands. Those movies gave my bad dreams and ignited my imagination. My generation invented dystopian, futuristic, end-of-times storytelling. Godzilla wasn’t just a big lizard; he was also a metaphor for rampaging, worldwide destruction. Not to mention, he made a few bucks in the movies.I grew up thinking about fallout shelters and mutant monsters.And now I write “Prepper” fiction, among other genres. It’s a sub genre of fiction falling under science fiction but without the ray guns. It’s a category of action adventure with a futuristic theme but without the space aliens. It’s a kind of speculative writing but without the zombies. Humans are the zombies.Prepper fiction is a realistic, what-if, survival story. Pat Frank’s “Alas Babylon” written in the 1950’s, dealing with the aftermath of a nuclear war and set in Florida was a national best seller and is a classic example of the genre. Doomsday possibilities include: solar flares, EMP attacks, financial collapse, nuclear warfare, invasion, pandemic, ecological disasters, and the list goes on . . . Prepper fiction is an exercise in imagination.Prepper fiction can be frightening.Prepper fiction examines the collapse and re-formation of societal constructs.Prepper fiction deals with preparations for “doomsday” scenarios or the lack thereof . . .I’ve had people say to me that my books gave them bad dreams. At first, I was horrified and thought, “Oh no. What have I done?” But then, on future examination, I thought, after rubbing my hands together in glee, “Oh my! What have I done?!!”Prepper fiction is not your momma’s cotton candy romance, although romance in a doomsday setting can be much more intense and realistic than an average love story. Sex and pregnancy become a life and death theme without modern medicine.In a prepper novel, life becomes an exercise in imagination filled with “what if” questions. What if there’s no electric? What if I can’t refrigerate my food? What if I can’t buy gas? What if there’s no money? How would I find clean, drinking water? How do I stay clean? Preserve food? Stitch a wound? Set a bone? Pickle a cucumber? Keep bugs off? Have safe sex? Stay human and hopeful?Prepper fiction is action/adventure set in a realistic apocalyptic collapse of civilization that some people will be prepared for but most will not.It can be scary, intense, and upsetting. It can also get readers to think . . . and maybe, just maybe . . . prepare.Linda (Bunker Babe) Zern
People love horses in a parade and why not? They’re beautiful. They’re big. They’re mildly intimidating. They poop.
They poop, a lot, which seems to shock and delight parade watchers. As a country girl I find the parade watcher’s shock and delight, shocking. When did society forget that animals do not use port-a-potties?
Horses in parades pooping, redefines potty humor. Scooping poop behind a herd of horses is one step up from riding in the clown car at the circus. People love it. Ha. Ha. That horse just plopped a six-foot trail of masticated grass stuff and now you have to scoop it up. That’s hilarious. “It’s a crappy job, but somebody has to do it.”
But why? Why is poop so darn, ‘stinking’ funny? We all do it, from the Queen of England to the hamster in the kid’s bedroom to the search and rescue horses in your community Veteran’s Day parade. It’s a biologic imperative or the biggest laugh at clown-college.
I quit laughing at poop when I was nine. But I have a grown daughter (with five children) who still can’t not (yes, yes, a double negative) laugh at the idea of poop, the act of poop, or the cartoon depiction of poop. She’s a poop giggler. There’s a toy plastic pig that when you squeeze it, a plastic bubble of poop pops out of the pig’s bottom. She laughs—every single time. Squeeze. Laugh. Squeeze. Laugh. She’s a nine-year old boy. I don’t get it.
Recently, my husband discovered that movie popcorn acts like radioactive poison on his internal plumbing.
I can’t really go into details, but I will say that at one point after we’d arrived home from the movies and he’d retired to the room of rest, I thought my husband had died and his bowels had released. It had me wondering if the coroner had a one-eight hundred number. Later, he stuck his head out of the bathroom door and said, “Don’t come in here. No matter what.” He disappeared again.
Popcorn? Who knew?
Which brings us to dignity; there isn’t any. People telling you dignity is a God-given right forget that God designed the poop factor and the humor component associated with it. We come into this life in a haze of goo and go out of it in a pile of gick.
Abandon dignity and start living. That’s my motto. If you need a jump-start, climb on board the poop wagon behind the mounted posse and scoop up a bucket full of road apples in front of dozens of strangers. It will make you laugh. It will surely bring you closer to the humble edge of self-deprecating humor.
Linda (Scoop One, Drop Two) Zern
