DISASTER MOVIE

I wrote a whole blog yesterday about earthquake predictors. There's some guy somewhere, I think his name is Franks Hoogerbeets, who has predicted a mega-quake in California either today or tomorrow, based on... (1) the alignment of the planets, and (2) the fact that it's a full moon. I know, I don't understand it either.

Hoogerbeets reminded me so much of Woody Harrelson's character in 2012, madly broadcasting from a trailer in a forest, that I couldn't help thinking about all the silly science and impossible coincidences in that movie. Then, I remembered that my friend Sarah really loves that film, and in fact, most disaster movies. I understand why, I think, but I couldn't bring myself to write about it.

So, instead I put it into to a short poem. I tried to imagine how these things get made. This is called 'Disaster Movie':


Disaster Movie

On planning the apocalypse
They gather round the room
The writers and directors who
Bring dollars out of doom
With cataclysmic formulas,
They drink each other's health,
To catastrophic scripting which
They know will write itself.

"Aliens or earthquakes?
Will the President decide
That the citizens of Earth
Will take it on, or simply hide?"

"Will the scientist who figured out
What no-one else could know
Be believed by sneering, suited men
Who tell him where to go?"

"Hurricanes, volcanoes, or
A meteor from space?"

"Will the comet shimmy
Past the Earth
Or smack it in the face?"

"Will the plucky writer prove himself
A father after all?
Will the whinging kids stop moaning
And escape the fireball?"

"Giant monster? Dinosaur?"
"A countdown on a screen!"
"A giant eye!"
"Some CGI!"
"Like nothing ever seen!"

"Evacuate the city, get those people outta here!"
"And will the monster crush that kid
Who's frozen out of fear?"

"Climate change, neutrinos, or
Tsunamis from the deep?
Will humanity survive the day
Or somehow get to keep
On making terrible decisions that
Return us to the night?"

Well one thing's certain anyway:
The dog will be alright.