I noticed a vehicle in front of me at a stop light the other morning. It's was a totally rusted out SUV with an exterior finish that only an aerosol spray paint aficionado could appreciate and a hand-lettered advertisement on the back window for a local tattoo shop. Classy. I had considered trying my hand at the tattoo arts - not as a career, but more for gee whiz. That plus the fact that I've had Fallout 3 on the mind lately, especially with Fallout New Vegas coming out later this year, did I stumble upon a revelation - I have no post-apocalyptic career skills. Should my beloved little city succumb to a nuclear blast and an influx of pissed off mutant human inhabitants, I'm pretty much screwed. Let's face it - nobody needs a person who can create a pretty web page when everyone is fighting over food because raiders have taken over the newly renamed super duper (Wal-)mart. Yes, I believe in that environment I have a life expectancy of about say....2 seconds. *gulp*
Obviously, I don't feel society will collapse any day now, or no where in the near future. But, would it be stupid of me to NOT consider learning a secondary trade..you know, just in CASE something happened? A little advanced planning definitely paid off for the ant in Aesop's fable of the Ant and the Cricket. And the cricket learned a hard lesson for singing all summer when the ant collected grain for the winter - in true Tarantino fashion, the ant laughed in the face of the hungry cricket and let him starve....much like the new raider management of my old walmart will do when I most humbly request one, measly Twinkie. Oh, the humiliation.
Ok, so maybe working on another skill couldn't hurt. But what skill to learn? What would make me more marketable than say the next guy/gal who knows how to farm, fish, or rebuild a carburetor? Heck, even my co-workers, who haven't even considered working on a post apocalyptic career plan are 100% more prepared than me - one plays the clarinet and the other can make lumpia. Yeah, that's a 6-pack of haterade I'm drinking over that one.
So right now, my horizons are not looking so good. Or are they? As I did some channel surfing later that night did I find some inspiration:
"Do you know who I was? Nobody. Except on the day after, I was still alive. This nobody had a chance to be somebody. "
-Aunty Entity, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985)
Who ran Bartertown? No, not Master Blaster. Tina Turner! She was totally bad ass too. Aunty Entity didn't have a post apocalyptic career plan, and she ended up running the place. Who could keep me from building a menacing tower, donning huge metal springs as earrings and declaring myself ruler of my new town? No damn body, that's who! And once my population is high enough, we're totally taking back Walmart from those stupid raiders. And twinkies will be on the house! ...And then we'll have nothing left to do...maybe I'll just steal all that grain from that ant and learn to distill alcohol instead.
