Better Than Friday - 32 - The Apocalypse (Patreon)

Hello ladies and gentlemen, how are you? 

Getting up and running, about to finish 'The Rider on the White Horse' up here in the Northwest, took a little longer than I anticipated, hence the content delay due to moving and, well...The apocalypse. 

Time is a funny thing isn't it. 

There may be enough of it in one life, filled with anxiety and the feeling that it's far too long - so much that it feels like one should be tired of it.

But it's punctuated with moments of a dramatic feeling that there's never enough. 

1. In the mail The Stand by Stephen King 

Though I read 'It' maaaany years ago, and thought it was great, I have never read The Stand, and there probably isn't a better time to do so. 

The Stand is a dystopian novel about a plague that wipes out approximately 99% of humanity and the survivors merge into two different factions, wherein the story becomes one of good vs evil. 

I've had 'Don't Dream It's Over' by Crowded House in my head for the last week as I read updates about the virus. 

You know - from that scene in the TV Miniseries from the 90's adaptation of The Stand where the song plays over the images of corpses portraying the fact that nearly everyone is dead.  

It'll probably ruin the song for you. 

Goodreads:

This is the way the world ends: with a nanosecond of computer error in a Defense Department laboratory and a million casual contacts that form the links in a chain letter of death. And here is the bleak new world of the day after: a world stripped of its institutions and emptied of 99 percent of its people. A world in which a handful of panicky survivors choose sides -- or are chosen. 

2. My Favorite Post-Apocalyptic Film 

28 Days Later is one of my favorite films, and felt like the most realistic depiction, for me, of what an exhausting, anxiety-filled ordeal it would be to live through the end of the world. 

It wasn't the zombies that were so disturbing as much as the realistic portrayal of the fragile moments of human interaction, the plausibility of a virus being released in the manner it was, and the ever-present threat of everything slipping into chaos. 

Brendan Gleeson was fantastic. 

3. One More 'Plague' Book I'll Be Reading 

I know very little about this but I've seen that people are reading it, and some Camus is overdue. 

Goodreads:

A gripping tale of human unrelieved horror, of survival and resilience, and of the ways in which humankind confronts death, The Plague is at once a masterfully crafted novel, eloquently understated and epic in scope, and a parable of ageless moral resonance, profoundly relevant to our times. In Oran, a coastal town in North Africa, the plague begins as a series of portents, unheeded by the people. It gradually becomes an omnipresent reality, obliterating all traces of the past and driving its victims to almost unearthly extremes of suffering, madness, and compassion.

4. This Turkish song puts me in a great mood.   

It has this interesting jovial melancholy to it. 

I can't understand a word but think it's fantastic. 

5. Another great film with elements of the plague... 

Werner Herzog's Nosferatu is fantastic from what I remember. Isabelle Adjani is perfect for the role opposite the infamous Klaus Kinski as Nosferatu. The song in this scene is so beautiful and eerie. 

Also - it's free to watch right now on Amazon Prime.

How I'm spending time - Walking around and reading in Mt. Tabor Park.