The Last Man On Earth

A common insult used to be "the last man on earth" type thing, where a woman would tell a man "I wouldn't kiss you if you were the last man on earth!" But if I was the last man on earth, surely I would have my pick of the women? Assuming there are two or more left. And if there weren't, and there were only two people left alive on the whole planet, you would either have lots more important things to do than kissing, like scrounging for food, or you'd be so bored that eventually you'd probably wind up kissing anyway. So its really an empty insult and if anyone ever said it to me I might act insulted but deep down I'd be saying "suuuuuuuuure."

Another common expression is when your mother used to say "If everyone jumped off the Empire State Building, would you?" Well, if everyone jumped off the Empire State Building, the bodies would stack up pretty quickly so you could just climb down.

War Re-Enactors

People say that war is hell. In WWI men fought and bled in died in trenches that stank of sweat and death. In the Civil War they slaughtered each other over open fields that in peacetime would have been worthless. It must have seemed like it just went on and on, the killing and the death, with men just wading through it like some horrible, hellish nightmare.

To commemorate the sacrifices that these men made, and to honor their courage and commitment, there are people who now, for fun, re-enact battles. They dress like soldiers and go out and pretend to kill one another. They do everything they can to make the experience as authentic as possible, from their clothes to their gear to their speech. Everything, I mean, except actually kill one another.

I suppose actually fighting in a real war may have been kind of fun. Except for the death, I mean. You know, like watching your friends butchered right next to you or having to shoot and stab people you don't know, plus all the blood and the horror and the psychological scars that never heal. Aside from all that, I suppose war could be a barrel of monkeys.

People here in the South re-enact Civil War battles; in New England they re-enact battles of the Revolution. At least the New Englanders are pretending to fight in a war that they won. The Southerners I don't understand. They were beaten pretty badly during the Civil War and by all accounts their experiences in the field were particularly harsh.

Do Native Americans re-enact the Trail of Tears? Do Jewish people re-enact the ghettos of Lodz? Do French people re-enact at Waterloo, or English people at Dunkirk? I mean, its like bugs having a party around an empty can of Raid.