By Beau Elliot
So a bunch of us were hanging out, joking around, discussing the price of beer and the coming apocalypse (featuring, but not limited to, the Red Sox pitching staff). You know, normal stuff for the times.
The good thing about playing Postapocalypse is that the Trumpster is president, and you just know anything could happen. No, really. Cruise missiles in the Syrian sky, U.S. fighter jets in the Syrian sky, Russian fighter jets in the Syrian sky, U.S. and Russian warships jockeying for position (though not in the Syrian sky).
The bad thing about playing Postapocalypse is that the Trumpster is president, and you just know …Meanwhile, back at playing Postapocalypse, Jake Barnes pointed out the joint we were in would be a good place to sweat out the postapocalypse. (Sweat being the operable word.) The joint has a deep, canvernous basement with stone walls and so much food stocked that it could last seven or eight years, even with bingers.
Robert Cohn said the place had even more booze and beer than food, probably good for 11 or 12 years, even with bingers, meaning we would all die of cirrhosis of the liver long before the radiation got us.
Brett, a lady of the sharp eye, said she noticed there were enough tobacco products to last three or four years, somewhat less if everyone chain-smoked. Robert objected, saying secondhand smoke was dangerous. So we all hooted and laughed for a good half hour, pointing out that the landscape was full of radiation, and that was going to get you before secondhand smoke had half a chance. Or a half life.
Well, yeah, sure, it’s gallows humor, but gallows humor is what you get when you’re just hanging. Not to mention playing Postapocalypse.
It’s a good way to spend a lazy afternoon, if a lazy afternoon is on your agenda (which sounds like a pretty fine agenda to me), and it sure beats discussing the Senate Republicans pulling out the nuclear option to get their Supreme Court nominee confirmed.
Everything’s coming up nuclear. Except families.
It also beats talking about the weather, especially when talking about the weather consists of people asking me why the weather forecasts are so off.
I don’t know; ask the National Weather Service.
The NWS is part of NOAA (not to go all abbreviations on you), and NOAA is part of NASA. Conservative Republicans in Congress (speaking of the apocalypse) have been squeezing the budgets of those agencies, partly because they don’t understand what all the letters stand for, but mostly because they don’t want the agencies to study global climate change.
So the agencies don’t get new satellites or new computers.
The Trumpster will probably make the words “global climate change” illegal to write or speak in the federal government. Pretty soon, the Trumpster will tell all the various news outlets that they’re not allowed to write or say “global climate change” under the penalty of losing all their federal funding. Somebody in the White House could probably tell Cauliflower Head that the various news outlets don’t receive any federal funding. (Of course, that somebody probably would like to keep her or his head attached to the body. People are funny that way.)
What about public radio and TV, you point out. Hah-hah-hah. Repeat. You obviously have never sat through a public radio/TV fundraising drive. What federal dollars public media get is probably enough to buy doughnuts for the staff some random morning.
Speaking of the postapocalypse. The Fake Sun Also Rises.
