The Prophetic Power of Punk, with Selected Short Subjects

The Ice Age is coming, the sun is zooming in,
Engines stop running, the wheat is growing thin,
A nuclear era, but I have no fear
'Cause London is drowning and I -- I live by the river!

      -- The Clash, "London Calling" (1979)

Scary stuff, eh kids?

Now it must be granted that the likelihood of all of these conditions occurring at the same time is slim -- a colorful artifact of Reagan-Thatcher era paranoia, I suppose, not unlike The Handmaid's Tale -- but any one of the above calamities would be sufficient to ruin your afternoon and Messrs. Strummer and Jones might justly make claims of prescience for the last line of their chorus, at least if you believe what you read in the papers:

Via the London-based reinsurance weblog Re Risk, "a cheery article from the Telegraph about the effects on London of a 1m rise" in sea levels, accompanied by a map showing

. . . how Westminster Abbey, the Houses of Parliament and Canary Wharf will be among the areas at risk of flooding according to a new estimate of rising sea levels.   

Hip boots will be all the rage that year.

On a significantly lighter and more distracting note, and also found today at Re Risk, please welcome D.W. Griffith's [?] Silent Star Wars:

That in turn reminds me of another old film favorite -- The Lord of the Rings, directed by Howard Hawks from a screenplay by Raymond Chandler, and starring Humphrey Bogart as Frodo:

Comments

[Cowtown Pattie]

These are great clips! Some imaginations!

I love the Bogie/Frodo tale...

[Lettershaper]

I have much enjoyed my walk through your world today; as a poet and an avid reader, I found your site both enriching as well as enlightening...I thank you.