Maybe it's got something to do with me standing on the cusp of manhood/being able to legally buy alcohol, but goddammit if the future doesn't seem a little uncertain. The economy is trying to eat its own chin, folks have been talking about Russia as if the cold war never ended, and the Swiss may or not be in the possession of a Black Hole Easy-Bake Oven. Shit is serious, and I'm ascared.
I don't even know what I would give to reside in some kind of Felicityesque J.J. Abrams creation with a healthy market, quirky but affable co-eds, and real fuckin' cosmopolitan parties with cool music. But the optimism of the 90s has drained out of even J.J's cool glasses, and he too, has boarded the bleak train.
Pop culture has been doing its part, preparing me over the past several years for a future where the Earth has been ravaged by aliens/robots/disease/war/environmental disaster, and turned into a burned-out wasteland where gangs of insane, immoral dispossessed roam the streets, killing people for canned goods. I know from movies and shit that canned goods will be very valuable in the future. So will, water, paper, sugar, and something called "spice." Or maybe I'm getting confused. It is hard to keep focus in our scary, brave, new world.
So, I basically know what to expect, but am I emotionally prepared for the apocalypse? I won't be surprised when they land, but will I blink in the face of our future alien-cyborg-nuclear-environmentalist overlords? Will I be broken in the work camps/ficitional radioactive element mines? How can I harden myself for the long battle ahead?
If humanity has any hope for surviving in a gray, bombed-out, ash-covered, uncertain dystopia, we will need direction on how to feel every hour of every day. So that we don't break down weeping in the middle of our canned good/"spice" raids, the apocalypse's has to have a kickin' playlist.
Tell me how to feel!!!!!!!!!!
And we're gonna party like it's two thousand and twelve:
I'm sure this one seems like a joke, but it's not. There's too much shitty hair metal retro-futurism on this song for me to take it seriously. Axl is fucking with all of us. All of us!
Perhaps another weird choice. I don't know, I just figure that in the lawless, dystopia to come, when you're bartering with the warlord who controls the major city that you're trying to gain access too/escape from, when you walk into his nightclub lair, the enchanting waif who sees you and thinks you might be her ticket out of being said warlord's concubine, will probably be singing this song. I don't know.
Humanity's grim struggle for survival will often require all of us to dig deep into our hearts to recover grim, obvious irony.
I don't know how many people actually consider shit like this, but one of the reasons why I like Crystal Castles so much is because I feel so fucking apathetic when I listen to them. There's nothing more apocalyptic than a bunch of young people thrashing dispassionately in a dark, strobe-lit room filled with their faceless peers to distorted vocals about anesthetized fucking through underwear. It's pretty easy to imagine a bunch of futureless apocalypse-babies bopping around to this in an abandoned warehouse or something.
