Maine Bucket List

With our house nearly sold, we have formulated a Maine bucket list.  Ninety-nine days left...

First stop, Nubble Light in Cape Neddick.  It is a wonder how we've driven through York dozens of times and never stopped at this super famous lighthouse.  This lighthouse is so famous that aliens somewhere may have even seen a picture of it (a photograph of the lighthouse is one of the objects loaded onto NASA's Voyager II).  It is just as you would imagine a lighthouse - quaint, isolated - and it is totally surrounded by the moat of the Atlantic!  The best part of the lighthouse is the "bucket" for carrying supplies from the mainland to the light.  I was disappointed to see that the "bucket" is not used for human transport (although it did transport a child or two to school in the past).  There has not been a lighthouse keeper since the late 80's when the light was automated, which is too bad.  I just love the Anne-of-Green-Gables-esque romanticism of a family living out on small Nubble Rock.

Your Apocalypse Viewing Guide

I consider myself a slight aficionado (not an expert) of disaster movies.  From the overdone bravado, Independence Day, to the cheesy dialog, insert any made-for-tv disaster movie title here, nothing shows the ability of vastly different people to rise above natural human greed for the good of society like a disaster movie.  These cinema gems are really an anthem to socialism.

Therefore, in preparation for the impending end of the world, I offer this brief list of educational movies.  Some of these films are by no means what would be considered apocalyptic or post-apocalypitic cinema; however, they are all madly entertaining or informative for their own reasons.  While it may seem obvious to begin with Apocalypse Now, movies such as this one will only get you accustomed to the horror you may see in the post-apacalypic world, which is a good skill-set to have, but not completely useful in your early preparation for the apocalypse.  Instead, begin with WALL-E, the 2008 Disney feature about how humans destroyed the planet then went into space to get fat.  While a lazy obese human race does seem horrible, and at times horribly probable, the movie is light and will therefore give you a "toe in the water" entrance into your future doom.

Next, 2012 because it presents every possible natural disaster in the confines of 158 minutes and really shows you how the 1% will stick it to us all.  Similarly, The Day After Tomorrow is an epic natural disaster movie complete with terrible dialog but despite the sequence of events being rather compressed, the science seems quite probable.  These two movies won't really give you an idea of how to survive, unless you have billions of dollars to build some kind of crazy ark, but they will give you an idea of the signs of impending doom and how the unprepared will fall apart and most likely die in a fit of tears.  Most importantly, they will give you a taste of how to defy authority because most likely, see comment about the 1%, those in authority will not have your best interests at heart.

To be truly prepared, you can't only focus on typical catastrophic disasters be they natural or human encouraged; you must also look at those disasters that seem like nothing at all for as T.S. Eliot writes in The Hollow Men, "This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper."  For this preparation, we must look to Contagion and I am Legend both great movies about disease caused apocalypse.  In case the apocalypse has a more biblical foundation, you should also watch Shaun of the Dead, a 2004 gem about how to deal with a zombie attack.

Once you have grasped the actual ending of society as we know it, you now must prepare for how to survive in a post-apocalyptic world.  Forget about money and learn how to shoot a gun.  Start with The Book of Eli because while the violence and plot are a slight distraction from your goal of learning to survive, you will be able to pick up some good tidbits here and there.  The ultimate education will come from The Road.  While it may frustrate you to not know how the world ends in the movie, that is really secondary to what you will learn about topics such as avoiding cannibals, cooking can goods, and adapting shopping carts for long range travel.

And maybe the end is not near, but watching these movies will at least be entertaining and if the apocalypse does happen this year, consider yourself prepared!  In the meantime, stop wasting time.  Those famous attractions you have always wanted to see, they could be underwater next year!  That expensive fashionable item you have been eyeing, pretty soon we might all be wearing rags!  The extra piece of cheesecake you don't think you should have, you will wish you ate it if you are soon living off of canned beans!

New Year's Resolution

I always like to use the period excuse, especially when it is the twelfth month of disappointment, to eat as much chocolate as I like.  Today I had a most amazing mini chocolate bar. While it was cute and small, it packed a huge punch.  Lake Champlain Chocolates' Five Star Hazelnut Chocolate Bar.  Not only was the base chocolate flavorful perfection, but it contained a half inch of gooey pasty milk chocolate topped with more solid chocolate and hazelnuts.  Definitely made my day.

Because of my 33.3333% success rate at New Year's Resolutions last year, my 2012 resolutions are easy - drink more and always wear a seatbelt (both incredibly easy to accomplish especially since I have never not worn my seat belt).  But really, my resolution is to live my life more like a dog.  The cutest black lab mix in the world, my darling Clara, is a model of carpe diem.  Despite eating the same dry balls of meat substance every single day, to Clara, every last piece of kibble is like eating the most amazing dish at a five star restaurant.  Even the shortest walk to Clara is not just a walk, but the most exciting day of her life; oh all the wonderful things to smell!  The other day my friend gave Clara the tiniest bite of roast chicken, and as she gulped it down, I could tell it was the best, THE BEST, moment of her life.  That is until the next best moment of her life.  The great things about dogs is that almost every moment of the day is the BEST moment of their lives.  Oh, to live more like a dog.