This is the way the world ends.
This is the way the world ends.
This is the way the world ends.
Not with a bang but with a wimper.

-T.S. Eliot

The conclusion of T.S. Eliot's 1925 poem "The Hollow Men" has been altered for satirical effect in Southland Tales, a comedic spin on the apocalypse, as it should occur in the great city of Los Angeles. Trust me on this one... if the end is indeed upon us (apparently 59% of Americans believe that it is*), it will happen in Los Angeles first.

I have always been obsessed with this whole apocalypse thing... and trying to decipher the encrypted symbolism in the Book of Revelation is enough to give anyone a headache. A friend once remarked that there is a legitimate debate among religious scholars that the Book of Revelation was written while the Apostle John was under the influence of hallucinatory mushrooms. Go figure.

Another friend sent me a very disturbing link to a story about something called American Hiroshima. Apparently this is one of many terrorist attacks that Al-Quaeda has in the works. This is the one where they smuggle nuclear weapons (purchased by Osama bin Laden from the Russian mafia) over the Mexican border into Texas with the aid of Mexican guerillas. They detonate the nukes in mid-size cities where there is little domestic counter-terrorism surveillance.

Sounds like the apocalypse to me. Where would we go from here?

These are the sordid tales of what happens next... how it all comes crashing down. In the alternate future of Southland Tales, the war machine is running out of gas, and there is no alternative. Alternative fuel, that is.

Global warming may indeed be the whimper that T.S. Eliot foretold. Perhaps our destiny is to slowly drown ourselves into oblivion.

Southland Tales will take you down that other road. The one that ends with a bang. What if there is a path to end all suffering, and hidden somewhere along the way there exists a primer? A primer that could help us extinguish this great big mess of a planet once and for all. Quick and painless.

Well, I shouldn't say quick. According to me it takes 2 hours and 24 minutes to explain how the world ends. I'm sorry that it isn't shorter, but it had to be this way.

There is no alternative. Alternative fuel that is.

Until one day... when a mysterious German corporation arrives in the Southland with a kick-ass new formula. A cure for our sickness...

-Richard Kelly

*A 2002 Time/CNN poll found that 59 percent of Americans believe that the prophecies found in the Book of Revelations are going to come true. Nearly one-quarter think that the Bible predicted the 9/11 attacks.

[Wie gesagt, Philip K Dick Territorium. Dass der Johannes der Johannesoffenbarung der Apostel Johannes ist, wird heute bezweifelt, und die Sache mit den Pilzen ist sehr interessant, trifft aber nicht nur auf die Johannesoffenbarung (wer auch immer sie geschrieben haben möge) zu, sondern auf das ganze frühe Christentum. John Allegro, einer der an der Erforschung der Schriftrollen von Qumran beteiligten Wissenschafter, kam im Laufe seiner Arbeit nämlich - neben vielen anderen Häresien - zu der Überzeugung, dass das Christentum ursprünglich ein mushroom cult war. //Philip K Dick hat das aufgegriffen und in seine nur leicht fiktionalisierte Totenklage über Bischof James Pike, seinen posthum erschienen letzten Roman The Transmigration of Timothy Archer eingebaut. In dem Buch ist nämlich der Grund dafür, dass der Bischof in das Heilige Land reist, der, dass er in den Höhlen rund um das Tote Meer nach dem Pilz suchen will.// Und American Hiroshima ... naja ...]