2012 and beyond

2011 is very nearly over, and I can't tell you how pleased I am. 2011 has been my annus horribilis, and feel free to mispronounce annus as anus, because it sums up much of the year in question. Don't get me wrong, there were some good times, such as working on GrayBurn's Whisky and Walking and our yet to be released sketch show, my holiday to Islay and taking up golf. But this was also the year of nearly quitting university, multiple driving test failures, crappy relationships, worsening hypochondriasis and getting overwhelmed by the prospect of a future of depressing mediocrity and failure after university. And this was the year that I swore to make the best of my life in my new year's resolution. I never thought I'd say it but I miss 2010.

As such, my resolution for 2012 is to immediately assume it's going to be insufferably bad, a quagmire in which I'd rather just drown than bother to wade all the way through to the end. That way, any positive development, no matter how tenuous, will be embraced wholeheartedly. I'm sure that will work out well enough. Although, there's all that end-of-the-world bullcrap to think about. If the apocalypse is really due in 2012, I'll not need to worry about my new resolution at all.

Well, part of me actually likes the notion of a post-apocalyptic nightmare world as shown in the likes of Mad Max and countless other films from the 1980s and beyond. Right now the only prospect facing me and a lot of my friends is a banal existence as either a wage slave, or on the dole. There just aren't enough jobs anymore, and the degree, once a sure a guarantee of a well paid job, won't save thousands of us from long term unemployment or doing a low paid job which utilises none of the skills our university courses have supposedly tought us. But in a post-apocalyptic nightmare world, such dull concerns are rendered moot, and we'll all go back to what we were supposed to do from the beginning: fight to survive.

Imagine a dark, dusty landscape ravaged by war and natural disasters. Towns and cities have been transformed into fortresses, where money has been replaced by simple bartering and trade for important resources. Sometimes, those resources are just taken by force by those strong enough to do so. People no longer hoard material goods or waste time writing stupid blogs on the internet or boring each other on facebook, because mass communication met its end with most other things back in 2012. There is no longer law to protect peoples rights; they protect their rights by arms. There are no nations and ideologies, just individuals out to survive. A horrible, yet primal and simple existence.

Imagine a lone hero, sitting on a motorbike, riding down long lonely roads. He's armed to the teeth with whatever guns and blades he has picked up in his countless battles, battles over the one commodity everyone is desperate for: oil. He doesn't dream about the future, his mind is firmly in the here and now. Short term survival is all that keeps him going since he has nothing else to fight for. And he's good at it. His reputation for badassery is well known in these parts, and he is often sought by those too weak to defend themselves in order to fight their battles for them. His price is their oil, so that he may keep travelling the long roads to better places.

Oh, did I mention that was supposed to be me, if you can believe I'd actually end up as cool as that post-2012. My apologies to you though. I was going to try and make a point about how, to a certain extent, there is something more meaningful in a primal struggle to survive than a banal existence in 21st century society, but I ended up shoehorning in my own ideas for a post-apocalyptic science fiction story into the narrative. If you liked that somewhat carbon copied idea though, give me some money and I'll make it into a motion picture. That really would make my 2012 something worth talking about.