Invasion
Unlike most people my age, it didn’t begin with the X-Files. The heart of a conspiracy theorist beat in my breast long before I saw Fox Mulder’s poster “I Want to Believe,” long before the tagline “The Truth is Out There.”
I’m not ready to sport a tin-foil yarmulke. Yet. But I’m pretty much of the “prove to me Bigfoot doesn’t exist” mindset.
I just finished watching Invasion, one of the few new dramas on TV that peaked my interest. From what I’d heard about it, it had two things going for it—alien invasion and Shaun Cassidy as a producer (he produced a forgotten exceptional TV show called American Gothic). Today, I realized it was also about a hurricane.
I never watched Lost last year until the last episode—and even that, I only watched the last 30 mins. But it intrigued me enough to watch it again. It’s pretty much the first non-news I’ve watched since Katrina. Excellent stuff. Gave me a stomach ache to watch—all that tension.
Anyway … Invasion began with a warning that due to recent events, people may be upset by the images of the fictional hurricane Eve. Jason was watching upstairs as I watched downstairs and we called out frustrations and discrepancies to each other. They’re letting the kids out of school in the middle of what looks like 50MPH wind? Look at all the cars on the road, what’s up with that!? A child Rose’s age would be old enough to know better not to go out in that weather.
And then finally, the most “upsetting” fictional image of hurricane Eve? Dawn breaks. Dad and Rosie are somehow alive and unscathed inside the truck after it flipped over at least once (in and of itself absurdly fictional). And what wakes them from their slumber? Help. Help in the form of the military. There. In the middle of the Everglades. Immediately.
Of course, this was Florida.
Truthfully, even without the lens of Katrina, the show was pretty lame. But it posits (I think; there was nothing conclusive in the first episode) that this particular hurricane Eve was not a weather-born event, but rather either something extraterrestrial or something constructed by the government.
And, you know, if today, as Rita became the third most powerful storm in US History, less than a month after Katrina clocked in at #4, you aren’t going “what the hell is going on here?”—WHY NOT?
No, I don’t think W and his cronies are manufacturing these storms to provide more no-bid contracts for Halliburton or to crank up oil prices so we have more excuses to drill in ANWAR. (After all, this storm seems poised to hit Texas). And the internet is full of religious zealots claiming that Katrina was God’s cleansing modern Sodom and Gomorrah of New Orleans—just in time to ruin Decadence Festival, New Orleans’s Gay Mardi Gras. (Again, I say, it looks like God hates Texas too). But Global Warming? Mother Nature, perhaps, not God, saying “No no no?”
Perhaps.
I’ll just say this—as I drove to the Circle K tonight, I had to swerve continually to avoid hitting the masses of frogs that carpeted the streets. Frogs. A—shall we say—plague of frogs?
Today I went to the Red Cross to see if I could volunteer. They took my name and number and added it to a massive list of potential volunteers. So, I swung by the Chamber of Commerce and was told that they hire a volunteer recruitment firm to provide them with free help. (Does seem odd to you, or what? Like I need to sign up at a temp agency just to find work that I can do for free?). Anyway, they directed me to Habitat for Humanity and an animal rescue shelter. I’ll give those a shot tomorrow.
In the meantime, I’ve been doing a whole lot of nothing, as usual. Watching the news, sleeping way too much. Aching to go home. Aching even more for something to do.
I’m not ready to sport a tin-foil yarmulke. Yet. But I’m pretty much of the “prove to me Bigfoot doesn’t exist” mindset.
I just finished watching Invasion, one of the few new dramas on TV that peaked my interest. From what I’d heard about it, it had two things going for it—alien invasion and Shaun Cassidy as a producer (he produced a forgotten exceptional TV show called American Gothic). Today, I realized it was also about a hurricane.
I never watched Lost last year until the last episode—and even that, I only watched the last 30 mins. But it intrigued me enough to watch it again. It’s pretty much the first non-news I’ve watched since Katrina. Excellent stuff. Gave me a stomach ache to watch—all that tension.
Anyway … Invasion began with a warning that due to recent events, people may be upset by the images of the fictional hurricane Eve. Jason was watching upstairs as I watched downstairs and we called out frustrations and discrepancies to each other. They’re letting the kids out of school in the middle of what looks like 50MPH wind? Look at all the cars on the road, what’s up with that!? A child Rose’s age would be old enough to know better not to go out in that weather.
And then finally, the most “upsetting” fictional image of hurricane Eve? Dawn breaks. Dad and Rosie are somehow alive and unscathed inside the truck after it flipped over at least once (in and of itself absurdly fictional). And what wakes them from their slumber? Help. Help in the form of the military. There. In the middle of the Everglades. Immediately.
Of course, this was Florida.
Truthfully, even without the lens of Katrina, the show was pretty lame. But it posits (I think; there was nothing conclusive in the first episode) that this particular hurricane Eve was not a weather-born event, but rather either something extraterrestrial or something constructed by the government.
And, you know, if today, as Rita became the third most powerful storm in US History, less than a month after Katrina clocked in at #4, you aren’t going “what the hell is going on here?”—WHY NOT?
No, I don’t think W and his cronies are manufacturing these storms to provide more no-bid contracts for Halliburton or to crank up oil prices so we have more excuses to drill in ANWAR. (After all, this storm seems poised to hit Texas). And the internet is full of religious zealots claiming that Katrina was God’s cleansing modern Sodom and Gomorrah of New Orleans—just in time to ruin Decadence Festival, New Orleans’s Gay Mardi Gras. (Again, I say, it looks like God hates Texas too). But Global Warming? Mother Nature, perhaps, not God, saying “No no no?”
Perhaps.
I’ll just say this—as I drove to the Circle K tonight, I had to swerve continually to avoid hitting the masses of frogs that carpeted the streets. Frogs. A—shall we say—plague of frogs?
Today I went to the Red Cross to see if I could volunteer. They took my name and number and added it to a massive list of potential volunteers. So, I swung by the Chamber of Commerce and was told that they hire a volunteer recruitment firm to provide them with free help. (Does seem odd to you, or what? Like I need to sign up at a temp agency just to find work that I can do for free?). Anyway, they directed me to Habitat for Humanity and an animal rescue shelter. I’ll give those a shot tomorrow.
In the meantime, I’ve been doing a whole lot of nothing, as usual. Watching the news, sleeping way too much. Aching to go home. Aching even more for something to do.
posted by M at 10:13 PM
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