Why Am I Awake?

I was supposed to sleep in this morning because I have to work tonight. Oh well, won't be the first 28 hour stretch I've done.

It's been a strange morning. Thor, who even for a cat, has supernatural hearing abilities, began meowling the moment my feet hit the bedroom floor. Meowling: verb, a combination of meow and howl, the resultant sound resembling a chain smoking, whiskey drinking truck stop waitress screaming at a poor tipper.

Loki tossed his cookies, well actually his breakfast, shreds, gravy and all on the floor and acted offended when I cleaned it up.

And then like some demonic Chatty-Cathy doll, I see from a headline that someone drug Ann Coulter out of whatever closet the Repubs store her in, dry cleaned her little black dress, gave her a B-12 shot and a liter of LR and pulled the string on her back.

And I'd give her some grudging respect for the courage she has to speak her mind, if she meant all those evil things she says, but she doesn't. She just says them because she knows they appeal to the lowest, vilest instincts of humans (to make someone, anyone, less than so you can feel superior), and she knows she can make money off the need to hate. She's like some left-over relic from another age now, I hope.

But to answer my own question, I suppose I'm awake so I can finish up all the errands I was going to do last Saturday before I got distracted. See, here is my very own dirty little secret, my guilty pleasure, if you will: I am addicted to cheesy disaster movies. The cheesier, the better. I supposed it goes back to Earthquake and The Towering Inferno being huge hits during my formative years.

I love the orderliness of disaster movies. No matter how stupid the plot, how bad the acting, how ridiculous the special effects, they are all the same. Hero scientist who knows "the truth" and is estranged from some family member is treated as an idiot, Evil scientist is a power-grubbing know-nothing (variant: Evil military person), Anguished President who yells a lot and bemoans the humanity, Rescue Dude Hero, who usually is a total screw-up but redeems himself by dying so that another might live. And of course, the Disaster itself. And in the end, Hero scientist is proven right, reunited with his loved one, humanity is saved and Evil scientist is either dead or humiliated.

And I've noticed that way back in the 50's when most disaster movies began to be made, the CAUSE was almost always some sort of nuclear/radiation accident. In a few recent disaster movies, a nuclear device was what SAVES the planet.

Makes you go, "hmmm".

Thor sez: I'm a natural disaster of epic cuteness!