Amanda, via the Crack Den. Go read and come back.
I’m readingthis book right now, because it’s summer and I need some entertaining brain candy, and it’s very entertaining. It’s also very blatant wish-fulfillment: Every SCA-joining war-reenacting hobbyist in the entire world lives to see the day that all the skills that lead the “mainstream” to regard them as eccentric at best and weird-ass at worst will be the saving of them and the entire universe. In this scenario, you’re a CPA who likes to play the piano in your spare time? You’re fucked. You wrangle horses and spend your weekends making chainmail? Take me now, Lord Humongous.
It is nothing more than the cosmic equivalent of “wait till your dad gets home.” Wait till the apocalypse comes. You mock me for my archery skills and my insistence on learning how to fight with a broadsword NOW, you motherfuckers, wait until me and my BIG ASS BEAR HELMET are the only things standing between you and destruction at the hands of insane cannibals! (This book is really incredibly awesome.) You may have said all that time memorizing certain parts of the Little House on the Prairie books was nerdy when I was a child (it was, it didn’t stop me, thank you Laura Ingalls Wilder) but wait until you need to know how to build a log house or keep grain from spoiling or make candy by drizzling maple syrup in the snow! THEN who will you turn to? Arnold Schwarzenegger? I don’t think so! You’ll turn to ME! Me, the mounted archer who can carve book bindings out of hides I tanned myself and thus record our glorious deeds! The End Times scenario plays into that perfectly. Remember all those assholes out there hawking Y2K survival shit with the assurance of the inherently deranged? Wait until the meltdown when you have to make a wood fire and cook your own snare-caught rabbit, fuckers, then you’ll be laughing!
In this world, I’m a nerd. If the world explodes, though, then I’ll be a fucking KING, and you’ll all have to depend on me. Bow down to me. Listen to me.
This is, of course, a couple critical steps removed from, yet still related to, the fuckwads who liked it on some sick visceral level when 9/11 happened, because it validated their psycho neediness. A disaster for others was an opportunity for them, an opportunity to show off how beautifully RIGHT they were to hate and fear. They’ve got copies of Soldier of Fortune and boxes of ammo gathering dust in Mom’s root cellar, and guns they barely know how to use, but when the Islamofascist revolution comes, then you’ll see, and you’ll be begging for a place behind their walls of protection. Jesus save me from people who need to make shit up in order to get out of bed, but really, it’s not that hard to figure out. They’ve convinced themselves they’re marginalized, and that their very marginalization makes them right. You see this on every reality show ever made, the guy who’s all “Bein’ a ginormous assmunch is my personality, and if you can’t handle that, that’s yer problem.”
My grandparents had a full-on garden and I loved to help with the harvesting of it. I had the biggest crush ever on Almanzo Wilder when I was ten, and a powerful wish to live deep in the past. I still think I’d make a pretty okay Edwardian, with the hats and all. However, should we all magically revert to steam power or prehistoric times, the urge to yell “I FUCKING TOLD YOU SO” will very quickly take a back seat to whatever will get me one of the last surviving bottles of scotch on the planet. Maybe I should train the ferrets to hunt, just in case.
A.