Damien Galeone

A massive wave hits a tranquil monk banging a gong; an enormous aircraft carrier gets flipped by the ironically unpeaceful Pacific Ocean. After that, there are meteors hitting the Empire State building and tidal waves the size of mountains hitting New York City. Then Hitchcock’s birds, Godzilla, grumpy aliens, several airborne viruses and zombies.

No matter how you cut it, we are doomed.

This describes the cinematic line up in my house the day after (no pun intended) I read the science and nature section on Smithsonian.com or National Geographic. This week the article that attracts my sadomasochistic attention is ‘10 Disturbing Scientific Discoveries.’ I immediately click to read about the angry universe, which is evidently gunning for us humans for thinking that we have been the center of it for so long. And for Bjork music. I go on to read about how we are in between ice ages, and how the end of the human race, which is around the corner, promises to come in Micheal Bay-esque cinematic fashion. As if the world ending isn’t bad enough, it has to end like a Michael Bay movie. In other words, insult is introduced to injury.

After my apocalyptic film fest, I sit at my desk and my mind reels at the possibilities. How are we going to die? It’s raining, so in this fantasy I go with a massive flood. And just to make it more terrifying (it’s Monday) I add dinosaurs.

Of course, I will be the last person on earth and it won’t be like the movies. So I won’t be with Angelina Jolie and Scarlett Johannson and we won’t be overcome by a mutual desire to replenish the human race. I will be alone and forced to swim around the new Waterworld in water wings until a reawakened prehistoric shark (National Geographic May 2007 article: Monsters of the Ancient Sea) comes up to pick me off like a chubby HoHo. And, in this troublesome fantasy, my last thoughts as the 75-foot Shonisaurus Sikanniensis turns me into an afternoon snack are not of my lost planet or the fact that all of my family and friends have been annihilated. My last thoughts as I go under, making humans extinct, are that the world is ending because the universe hates Bjork music and it’s ending like a Michael Bay film.

Aside from gaudy American directors and annoying Icelandic ‘singers’ there are other disturbing factions to this fantasy. I find that my hypothetical concern is not that the world is over, but that my cat is dead. Moreover, so are Dan Akroyd, Ryan Adams and Bill Murray. Comedians and singer-songwriters are not known for their survival instincts. Also, all of my books are waterlogged, my wallet is in a dinosaur’s bowel and the world ends just as I figure out how to comb down my unruly cowlick.

In this meditative fantasy I come to the realization that I am not afraid of the world ending. I am afraid of the world I know and find comfortable changing. I suppose that’s something these films are so good at homing in on – our fears about change. Our irrational fears that things we have come to rely on will be taken away, like our cars, our houses, our daily routines.

But giant waves and dinosaurs are pretty scary too.

And Michael Bay and Bjork.

So, how is the world going to end?