Erin_swartz's List: apocalypse culture

• On and on, an endless variation on a singularly delicious theme: Baby, we love us some apocalypse. We love to fetishize and fantasize how it all might go down because, well, destruction is built into our very cells, it feels like a foregone conclusion anyway, and of course God is all about the wrath and the blood and the wild techno orgies at the end of time. I mean, isn't She?

• You do not wear shorts to the Apocalypse. You do not wear flipflops or capri pants or a kicky little pink halter from Betsy Johnson. You certainly don't wear skinny jeans or a nice pea coat and some Mary Janes. There are no Ugg boots at Judgment Day. Tasseled loafers? Please. Sweatpants are sort of tacky, but hoodies are widely accepted if you really must go the bleak oatmeal route. Then again, this is the apocalypse, sweetheart. Isn't it about time you got serious?  

  We're talking badass dusters and jet-black sunglasses and cool black boots, filthy fitted T-shirts and fingerless gloves and a few rugged industrial-strength duffel bags -- sorry hipsters, no Chrome Messengers at the Rapture -- to lug around your collection of giant sawed-off shotguns and/or enormous machetes, all of which you drive around in your mutant Hummer abomination thing -- a mammoth vehicle, by the way, that must be either black or gray or military green and never bright red or blue or in the shape of a Ford Festiva or Honda Accord or a Chrysler Town & Country. Hey, that's what Jesus drove to cart away all the slobbering faithful, and he's long gone, sucker.  
• Overall, Armageddon has one hell of an irresistible appeal. Sexy, dirty, dangerous, liberating, stripped to the raw, bare-bones morality of it all. Total bonus: You get to eat whatever you want, because there isn't much food left, and anything you can find/pillage/kill is yours to munch, unless the scary inbred hill/sewer people get to it first.

• Of course, none of that matters. The excuse for Armageddon doesn't matter. Hell, God doesn't even matter. What matters is the look and feel, the insane battle scenes, the killer weaponry, the brand of sunglasses. What matters is the big fight between heavily tattooed, badass white angel and the black-winged mace-wielding angel fighting like demented demons in a dusty highway truck stop.   

  In other words, what matters is how the Apocalypse is totally giving me some sexycool ideas for next year's Burning Man costume. Thank you, Jesus!   

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