Climate Of Fear

I don’t wish to scare you all, but, yesterday I saw a documentary about H5n1. We’re all going to die. If that doesn’t get us then global warming will cook us like ducks in an oven. Or it will melt the ice caps and we’ll drown. Or it will melt the ice caps and dump fresh water into the North Atlantic, diluting the salinity of the sea water, which will in turn switch off the North Atlantic ‘conveyor belt’ that brings warmth from the mid Atlantic to Britain and we’ll all freeze to death.

Alternatively, the terrorists will poison us on the underground. Or they’ll blow us up. Or the over-zealous Metropolitan Police and their shoot-to-kill policy will put a couple of bullets in our heads for reading the Independent. Or they’ll just arrest us for wearing hoodies and we’ll be extradited to the US in an abuse of anti-terrorist laws, where we’ll be tortured to death in a secret CIA prison, shouting: “Yes…oh god yes…my real name is Susan and I did think about throwing strawberries at the President.”

However, there is equal chance that we will be savagely murdered in the street by gangs of yobs wearing hoodies, or gangs of black yobs, or gangs of Asian yobs, or, worse yet, gangs of black and Asian yobs wearing hoodies.

What could also happen is that we may accidentally turn on ITV and then uncontrollably slit our wrists on the realisation that the human race is capable of producing such soulless, dour, unimaginitive and unchallenging bullshit, and that so many of us are prepared to watch it. Or we could listen to too much Judas Priest and embark on a gun toting rampage before killing ourselves. Or we could watch too many violent films and embark on a gun toting rampage before killing ourselves. Or we could be in the wrong place in the wrong time when the local loner flips his troubled lid and embarks on a gun toting rampage – before killing himself.

Hell, we may even piss God off so much that we die painful and merciless apocolyptic deaths amid torrents of fire & brimstone.

Our houses could burn down because we don’t have smoke alarms. We may poison ourselves with carbon monoxide because we don’t have carbon monoxide detectors. We may drown in Morecambe Bay after having been forced to collect cockles for 10p a day by armies of Polish immigrants.

We may drive too fast and crash. We may be killed by others driving too fast. We may be driving at a reasonable speed but just a little too close to the old man in front when he sees a speed camera, breaks in fear (shitting himself), and we slam into the back of him, again dying.

One day, God forbid, we may push it too far or too hard and drink ourselves to death. If we don’t give up the green we’ll smoke ourselves to death. We may take the wrong pill and die in a dirty hospital bed with tubes sticking out of a number of orifices, natural and otherwise, riddled with MRSA for good measure and totally oblivious to our picture appearing on page 4 of the Daily Mail as some 2 bit hack spouts off about how wonderful we were, and how the nasty pill cruelly took our innocent little lives, and how they were right all along that all drugs are bad. In the corner of page 5 will be an advert for Laithwaites.

The sun could go super nova, the universe could experience the big bang reverse and collapse in on itself. Statistically speaking, the Earth is long overdue getting smacked by an asteroid, and historically speaking, we are long overdue an ice age. There is also a Caldera (or super volcano) bubbling away beneath the surface of the entire area of Yellowstone park, which, if it goes off, will cover the entire Northern hemisphere in thick ash. The Earth’s weather system will be fucked, we’ll have no sun, we’ll all die and, yes, you’ve guessed it, it’s overdue to shoot its load.

If that’s not enough we may have to end it all ourselves because we’ve got no pension to look forward to, or because we have to wait 15 years for an emergency blood transfusion on the NHS, or because none of us can find jobs anymore because Eastern European immigrants are working them for £3 a month and a packet of Fisherman’s Friend.

An army of Microsoft robots could turn bad and wipe us out, or genetic engineering could create a horde of mutants that kill us. Scientists could accidentally create a new cross between a cauliflower and a banana, which actually turns out to be quite nice, but in fact contains a deadly toxin. Before you know it Tesco & Asda are giving them away free with every pack of incontinence pads.

Did I forget to mention BSE/CJD, SARS, the HIV mutation, or being sued by our next door neighbours for having a type of grass that doesn’t match with their tastes, being ordered to pay £3m in compo and then being clubbed to death by an angry middle class mob because we can’t afford to pay it?

And if you escape all that, one day you’ll die of old age. Happy trails Boloites!