It's the End of the World As We Know It...and I Feel Fine?

The apocalypse has been on my mind lately, and not just because I watch Buffy every day and she's always busy stopping them.
Mostly it's because I've been reading Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games and Catching Fire. I cannot stop thinking about them. These books are amazing and deserve their own posts (which will soon be coming).

But it's also because last night I went to see 2012. My husband and I are rabid fans of disaster movies, particularly apocalyptic, nuclear, zombie, there will be few humans will be left variety. The over-the-top, lacking good acting and feasible plots content of these films always makes me giddy. But last night as I was watching human race scramble to save itself, I began to wonder - why is the apocalypse so popular (I mean, how many disaster movies do we get in an average year? Plenty. And that number only goes up when we're nearing some possible date of "real" apocalypse danger - i.e. 2000, 2012). What is it about watching cities leveled and nature becoming predatory that draws viewers to the big screen?

Because, hey, "morbid much"?

I have two knee-jerk responses to this query:

1) Disaster movies make us feel safe. In the context of real disasters that happen each year - tornadoes, hurricanes, fires - this security is obviously misplaced, but still I think seeing mass destruction somehow reassures us that this crazy scenario surely is so far-fetched that we must be safe, that could never really happen.
2) Disaster movies make us treasure the world that we do have. The one moment in 2012 where I choked up a little (um...yes, I'm serious) was the brief shot of animals being air lifted onto the arks. In that single clip the film made survival not just about the silly, stupid-decision-making actors on the screen, but about the the world as we know it. Suddenly disaster wasn't just about 'us' it was about this little blue planet and how precious and fragile it is.

So what do you think about disaster movies? Do they have anything of value to offer other than spectacle?

The Short, Hard Month

Only eight days of February left and I couldn't be happier about it. The sentiment barreled me into musings about why the hardest month of the year (at least in the northern climes) has the least number of days.

An investigation revealed that in fact the brevity of this month has nothing to do with weather sorrows (because, of course, it's not this frickin cold everywhere!) but instead with Roman emperors' egos.

Whatever the reason I welcome the close of this frigid 28 days with much rejoicing and await Oestara with not enough patience. Long twilight, warm earth, budding trees all become the stuff of dreams at this point in the year - seeming impossible beneath the shield of ice and snow. March arrives to ease the burden of belief.