The Idiot Apocalypse

Prologue 1. We were ready to go, but we didn’t want to go near the door yet. The child had picked up a boxed toy off the pile near the doors and was screaming his head off. Mama, oblivious to the fact she was standing in the store’s main doorway, was trying to soothe the child, and he wasn’t having any of that. He wanted his TOY! And Mama finally put him down, took the box and headed for the register to buy it for him.

The child, finding himself uncomforted, unheld, and unattended, howled for a moment. And then he realized that Mama had left him with the rest of the boxed toys. He quit howling. And he picked up another one and proceeded to tear it open...

Prologue 2. “How the hell did he even get out of his CAR?” I asked.

We stood there and looked at our car. There was no way Berni was getting into the driver’s seat. The guy in the next space had backed into his spot, and his wheels were right on the line. His driver’s side door was within inches of OUR driver’s side door.

“I can’t see how he got OUT,” I repeated. “What, was he two dimensional? Or did he just park like an idiot and then climbed out of the passenger side? What the hell?”

And with some stoicism, Berni went to the passenger side of OUR car and proceeded to climb across to the driver’s seat.

Prologue 3. Ever see a zombie movie?

There’s a hell of a lot of them. And in most of the best ones, you get some foreshadowing, some clue that something is amiss. The zombies aren’t overrunning the landscape YET... but in an alley, you see this one guy staggering around aimlessly. Or in a graveyard scene, you see an abandoned funeral, left amid overturned chairs and an empty coffin... a clue that SOMETHING is terribly WRONG...

The first one, Night Of The Living Dead, had this. THERE was a movie that shot the sheriff in the first paragraph, yessirree. None of this character development, none of this Getting To Know Doomed Characters, naw, we go straight from Johnny being a jerk to his sister Barbara while this weird man staggers in the background, to suddenly he’s ON them, and he’s a ZOMBIE, and oh, SHIIIIIT--

Main story. ...and so, I ducked out this morning to run a couple errands. I’d forgotten about the idiot mom and her spoiled child the previous night, as well as the fellow who’d been so careful to park backwards in his spot that he apparently didn’t care if he or anyone else could actually get in or out of their cars...

And while I was out, I encountered an old friend: the person who roars past you well above the speed limit... gets in front of you... and slams on the brakes. Because they wanted to go ten miles UNDER the speed limit, they just wanted to do it in front of YOU.

This was actually a good thing. Because since I slowed down, I was nowhere near the guy who decided to change lanes without looking, and clipped the box truck in the lane into which he was veering. The box truck wobbled, and traffic all around him scattered, and I tapped the brakes and decided perhaps the side streets would be better, and took the next exit.

Errands weren’t much better. At one place, I was unable to approach the product I wished to buy because of a little mob of employees dragging around a pallet jack in such a way as to cleverly block the aisles as they carried on their conversation.

As I shopped for groceries, I encountered a man with no cart who apparently needed to block as much of the aisle as he could with his own body, to demonstrate his bigness. I grew frustrated.

....and out of nowhere... I found myself imagining a scene in every zombie movie. The scene where it hasn’t COMPLETELY hit the fan... but all the signs are there...

And it hit me: what if the zombie virus doesn’t turn you into a zombie? What if it just makes you oblivious and stupid?

It was a staggering thought. As the very large spread out man lurched towards me, I said, “ExCUSE me!”

He noticed me for the first time. He brought his arms and legs back into his personal space. “Oh,” he said. “Sorry.” And he walked past me like a normal human. He hadn’t MEANT to be trying to take up the entire aisle. He’d just been... oblivious. Just like the employees with the pallet jack who had turned hardware shopping into a slow motion adventure. Just like the idjit who’d been so concerned with parking, it never occurred to him that he was blocking others.

Oblivious.

And I envisioned that somehow, the Idjit Plague had been released the previous night, and Berni and I had simply been seeing the first cases, the Patient Zeroes, so to speak... and now the pandemic was underway. The March of the Morons. The birth of a generation of perfect voters. Idiocracy. The death of good customer service and awareness of others around you.

And it hit me again: Just like the employees with the pallet jack who had turned hardware shopping into a slow motion adventure. Just like the idjit who’d been so concerned with parking, it never occurred to him that he was blocking others.

Oblivious.

And I envisioned that somehow, the Idjit Plague had been released the previous night, and Berni and I had simply been seeing the first cases, the Patient Zeroes, so to speak... and now the pandemic was underway. The March of the Morons. The birth of a generation of perfect voters. Idiocracy. The death of good customer service and awareness of others around you.

And it hit me again: if I was right... how would we know?

The Horror Of Repetition

I haven't actually seen "Frozen" yet. Movie's been out awhile, but I've been busy.

But I can tell you chapter and verse what HAPPENS, oh yeah. And the snowman is named Olaf. And it's an allegory for bein' gay. Except when it isn't. And it's a feminist fable. Except when it's an allegory for oppression of women. And best of all, you can have "Frozen" cereal for breakfast, "Frozen" Campbell's soup for lunch, and a "Frozen" frozen dinner for dinner, and in between, you can play with enough "Frozen" toys to recreate the entire movie, before finally going to bed on "Frozen" sheets, pillowcases, and comforter!

I am starting to dislike a movie I have never actually seen.

It's happened before, too. I didn't WANT to hate "E.T." It came naturally, though.

The movie came out in 1982, and I went and saw it in a theatre. I thought it was a bit kid flavored for my taste, but not a bad movie at all; rather liked it. And I forgot about it about ten minutes after I walked out of the theatre. "Star Wars," it wasn't.

For about a month, everything was OK. And then, the happy meal toys appeared.

And the collectible set of glasses. And the marketing tie-in with Reese's Pieces. And the coloring books. And the toilet paper. And the sheets. And the windup toys. And the cereal. And... for something over a year to 25 months, I literally could not go out in public without having ET shoved down my throat in some form or fashion.

Staying home didn't help. They attached ET to anything they thought might possibly sell better with a frog-faced alien on it. Reese's Pieces' sales went stratospheric, and everybody else wanted a piece of the action. I literally couldn't watch a half hour sitcom without seeing some commercial with a clip from the movie in which ET was trying to sell me anything from hair conditioner to brake fluid.

And one day, I turned on the radio, and Neil Diamond of all people sang, "Turn on your heart-liiiight..." and I literally jumped back from the radio in horror. No, NO, NOT HERE, TOO! And the [expletive deleted] song went gold, and they played the fraggin' thing every five minutes, and I literally went out and bought my first Sony Walkman so I could listen to music without having ET stuffed into my poor ears. I wondered in calm horror, did they pay Neil Diamond to sing an ET song, or was he so wild about the movie that he wrote and sang the fraggin' thing out of sheer enthusiasm for the Culture God that was ET?

The phenomenon was that saturated in the fraggin' culture. To live in America was to eat, breathe, drink, and sleep ET. And to this day, if the thing comes on TV, I'll change the channel as fast as I can reach the remote. I've only seen the actual movie twice, but after a couple of years of marinating in the cultural phenomenon 30 years ago, I'm marked for life. Pavlov's dogs drooled, and I flee ET.

I mourn "Conan The Barbarian." I didn't want to dislike "Conan." I really liked it when I went to go see it in the theatre. But later, my roommates and I splurged for cable with ALL the premium channels, and that night, we made popcorn and prepared for the SHOW.

And we clicked on HBO. What's on? "Conan The Barbarian," with Arnold Schwarzenegger. How about it, guys? Meh. Seen it. What else?

Showtime! They try harder! What's on? James Earl Jones? No, Thulsa Doom.... in the middle of "Conan the Barbarian." Ah. Well. What else?

Cinemax! Awesome! The Home Nudity Network! What have they got? Ah. "Conan The Barbarian."

A couple of months later, we had the cable company pull the premium channels. And for 25 years, I haven't been able to watch "Conan The Barbarian."

It's especially bad with songs, though. I don't hate "All About The Bass." Not yet. Or "Take Me To Church." I'm getting there, though. But they haven't been ramrodded HARD enough yet. I don't walk into stores and hear it blasting at me through the sound system yet. And they haven't coopted the song for commericials. Yet. So far, I can escape from it by simply twisting a knob.

Not so "Elvira."

Not the erstwhile Mistress Of The Dark, Bad Movies, and Cleavage. Her, I still like. But the song of the same name by the Oak Ridge Boys, I cannot stand.

Because once again, back in the 80s, something went wrong with reality, and the dumbest song ever written became legally mandated to play on every broadcast medium, nonstop. "Ail-VAH-ruh, ah oom poppa, oom poppa mau mau, Ail-VAH-ruh..."There were days I kept the Walkman headphones clamped on my skull nonstop, to keep the earworms OUT. There was no ESCAPING it. At least one radio station in central Texas played the [expletive deleted] thing four times an hour. I heard it leaking from car windows, in sandwich shops, walking down the street... it Would. Not. Stop.

To the point where I finally snapped, and killed that one guy who was walking down the street singing, "...oom poppa mau mau, oom poppa, oom poppa, oom poppa mau mau..." Yup. Snapped. Shrieked like a banshee with kidney stones, and with strength borne of sheer wrath, I uprooted a STOP sign and beat him to death with it, right there on the street corner.

I'm lying, of course. I gritted my teeth and kept walking. But it was a near thing.

Anyone else got a tale of a thing that may or may not have started out as a good thing... until sheer involuntary immersion in it threatened to make you crazy?

Grandma And The Soft Core Porn

When I was a child, my grandmother and I had a weird thing about movies. Specifically, she would see a children's film advertised on TV, and would get it into her head that I needed to go see it.

When I was young, this did not bother me; I liked movies, and my parents seldom attended them; I spent my youth in little bitty towns that did not HAVE theatres, except one, about which the less said the better; when one never cleans a theatre, rats and worse things come to snack out. So when we visited the grandparents, she would make a point of taking me to a movie.

Whether or not I wanted to see the movie was irrelevant. Grandmother had decided that I would like this movie, and therefore, I would be taken to the movies. Saw a lot of the Disney life action films in the early seventies this way. Rather liked Kurt Russell's early Disney stuff...

Eventually, this evolved a little; she did not take me to the movies, but I would be told which movie I would see, and be dropped off at the theatre, with some money for refreshments and a quarter to call home when the movie was over. This worked much better for me, since the theatre in their town, an early megaplex, had three theatres in it, and the odds were good that there was SOME damn thing I wanted to see, and no one paid any attention to what theatre you entered after you paid to get in. It first occurred to me to do this when I was sent to see "Pippi Longstocking," and I realized in the first ten minutes what a wretched film I was watching, and why was I in THIS theatre when "Death Race 2000" was very conveniently showing right next door, and had car chases, boobs, David Carradine, vehicular murder, boobs, cool cars, a very young Sylvester Stallone, and boobs in it?

In retrospect, it occurs to me that my grandmother very significantly contributed to the psychological decay that today makes up most of my personality... all because she thought I should go see "Pippi Longstocking."

The Trouble With X

(X can be ANY problem, from "the plumbing has exploded," to "Donald Trump is running for President.")

"There is a problem with X."

"I see. I will address this problem, and do what I can about it."

"But there is a problem with X."

"Yes, I have been made aware of it, and am doing what I can to correct it."

"But there is a problem with X."

"Is there something specific that you would like me to do, right this moment, to address the problem?"

"There. Is. A. Problem. With. X."

"Yes, as you have now stated, in exactly the same terms, four times now. Is there something specific you would like me to do that I have not yet done about it? Am I not moving fast enough to suit you? Is there some new aspect of the problem you feel that I am unaware of? Do you have any NEW information about this problem to impart? What, precisely, do you want?"

"You don't UNDERSTAND! There is a PROBLEM with X!"

"And that makes five times now that you have told me that, and yet have not outlined what you want me to do about it beyond the obvious steps I have already taken. I regret that I lack telepathy, and cannot read your mind to see exactly what you want done, as you either will not or cannot TELL me, beyond simply repeating the same complaint. I regret that if you have no new information, I must ignore further repeats of the same statement, as this serves no purpose and wastes both our time."

"You're not taking the problem seriously."

"I dispute your statement. I have acknowledged the problem, and taken what steps I can at the moment. Later, as things change, I may do more, but can do no more at this time. Would it make you feel better if I discarded calm and freaked out about it?"

"You're not taking the problem seriously."

"Ah, we are back to repetition, which I had hoped I had made clear is not an effective communication style for problem solving, either for X or for whatever problem it is you are having with ME. I must therefore respectfully request that you cease repeating yourself over and over and instead offer specific insights into the problem and suggest possible solutions, or simply explain in concrete terms what it is that you want me to do about it."

"Now you're insulting me."

****************************************************************************

Don't be like this guy. Effective communications, people. Specifics. Explanations. Use the words. And choose new words and elaborate if the old ones aren't working. And just because you have an issue, please don't assume I'm laughing at you just because I'm not freaking out right along with you....

In retrospect, I kinda wish I’d just said, “I’m on it,” and repeated this every time the complaint was repeated. Wonder if that would have changed the conversation?