The Worst Survivor Ever

We didn’t see a movie this week. There was talk of going to see Real Steel, but I put my foot down for a few reasons. First, it looks like perfect fodder for MST3K, and I don’t intend to pay (much) money for that. Maybe when it comes out on DVD, we’ll sit down and mock it relentlessly. Second, it’s about boxing robots. Now, normally robots would be my thing. I’ll take Terminator any day, and I’m a giant fan of the Transformers movies (but that might just be because I’m also a giant fan of Michael Bay). But boxing? Boxing doesn't do it for me, and doesn’t really do it for the rest of the world, either. The only reason that boxing is in the public consciousness is because 40 and 50 year old sports writers grew up with boxing, and refuse to believe that it’s had its day. So they keep writing about it, despite the shadow that MMA casts over it. So in the near future, people won’t care about boxing robots. People will care about MMA robots. If they had made the movie about robots that do martial arts, I’d be all over that. But they went back to Rock’em Sock’em robots for nostalgia’s sake, and lost my interest.

So to make up for that, we’ll be having a Harry Potter movie marathon this Saturday, starting at 8 AM, and watching every movie we can get a hold of. Breakfast will be provided, and Evan even found a recipe for Butterbeer. I have to wonder if it involves either butter or beer, so we’ll see about that. Anyway, because there are at least seven movies, it takes about 17 hours to get through them all. And because no one (besides us) wants to sit through all of that, we invite you to pick the ones you want to see, and only come for them. Start times are as follows:

Sorcerer's Stone: 8 AM

Chamber of Secrets: 10:30 AM

Prisoner of Azkaban: 1:10 PM

Goblet of Fire: 3:30 PM

Order of the Phoenix: 6 PM

Half Blood Prince: 8:15 PM

Deathly Hallows I: 10:45 PM

Deathly Hallows II: 1:05 AM (only if we get a good copy)

Because we didn’t see a movie this week, I thought I’d write about survival. It might be the wasteland movies I've seen recently (well, not recently). It might that I've just finished playing Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas (and Borderlands, which has a similar - if alien - setting). It might be something completely different. Regardless, I've been thinking (albeit occasionally) about a post-apocalyptic future, and my place in it. And let me tell you, it ain’t pretty.

My first thoughts are from the results of a minor car accident I had a few months ago. It knocked some things loose in my car, and so a few days later, some wires and their rubber holder slipped into the alternator belt in bar car. I heard a bang and felt bumps, so I pulled into a conveniently empty side street and bemoaned my fate. Then I popped my hood and took a look at what happened. There were loose wires trailing from the passenger headlight, and the aforementioned rubber thing wedged neatly into a belt of some kind (I only know it's an alternator because my dashboard lit up the Check Battery light when I tried to start my car. And the alternator has something to do with the battery. I think. To be quite honest, I know the names of roughly two things in my engine. Alternator. Radiator. Wait - Sparkplug. There. Three). I pulled it out and tossed it into my front seat, then called my brother and a (Volkswagon knowledgeable) friend for help. My brother came to help me out, and after listening to what my friend had to say, wrenched the belt back onto the wheels upon which it had rested. Me, I stood off to the side and let him work (partnership! It works).

It all made me realize I have next to no mechanical skills. Sure, I can put together an Ikea set (given a screwdriver and an inordinately long period of time), and I've even been known to use a screwdriver and NOT seriously injure myself. Hell, I'm downright semi-capable with a hammer (although filled with temerity. It's as if I'm scared the nails will break in half if I hit them too hard). But anything more complicated than that will wind up in someone else's domain to repair.

Which means that post-apocalypse, when survivors are expected to work things out with repair skills and duct tape, I'm pretty much doomed. I'd have to rely on friends, siblings, and roommates to get by.

Then, of course, there are many other things. When it got rather warm here, I decided I would take a walk (it was 27°C outside, but it was also 27°C inside as well, so I thought I'd get some fresh air before going back to World of Warcraft). It could only be a short walk, though, or I'd get a sun burn. So I didn't stay out that long, and I stuck to the sporadic shade my neighbourhood offers at 2 in the afternoon. It made me realize that unless I holed up in a drugstore or made off with all their nuclear-grade sunblock, I'd have skin cancer and melanomas within a year of the apocalypse, especially when all the trees have died and there's no shade.

Oh, and have I mentioned that I can't forage for food? For the past several months, I've been on a steady diet of Boost+. On a sidenote, Boost+ and meal substitutes like it would actually be a fairly good food source after the end. Just load a bunch up, and no worries about vitamins, minerals, or energy for a few days at least, possibly a few weeks if stretched. But anyway, I'm having a lot of Boost+ and not much else. I'm pretty sure that living off scrounged potato chips and raw/charred meat would be such a large shock to my system I'd be sick for several days. Wheee.

My skills are more math and computer related. But it's not like calculus will be useful in a post-apocalyptic society. Because frankly, it's not very useful in a pre-apocalyptic society. But it helped get me my degree, so I'm thankful. Computers might be better, but what will they run on when all the power plants have been nuked, hmmm? I might be really good at data entry, but I have serious doubts about how widespread its need will be after Armageddon.

So I'm pretty much screwed, but that's not even the worst part. I'd like to think I'm a pretty nice guy. My moments of ego are generally balanced by my self-deprecating jokes (though feel free to disagree). I tend to get along with everyone. So in our group of survivors, it's not like anyone's going to vote for me to be the sacrificial lamb. No one's going to say "Sure, let's get Benjy to carry the bomb into the zombie hordes. He's got no discernable skills." No, everyone'll vote for the jerk who's good with guns and fixing cars, and then our whole group will be screwed.

So for anyone who's still around with me after Ragnarok, I want you to remind me of this post, and I'll be the one to carry the bomb. I'll sacrifice myself for the good of the group, as long as someone points to this points and said "See? You suck as a survivor!" Because it's true, I do suck as a survivor. So I'll carry the bomb, possibly with a song on my lips and joy in my heart. But only if you fix my car.