Reprinted from The Seed / UPS
YES FOLKS! NOW YOU CAN BE THE FIRST ON YOUR BLOCK TO EXPERIENCE THE ECOLOGICAL DISASTER.
WHY WAIT TILL 1980? DON’T LET THE FUTURE TAKE YOU BY SURPRISE.
PREPARE NOW FOR THE END OF CIVILIZATION.
REHEARSE FOR THE APOCALYPSE.
HERE ARE A FEW SUGGESTIONS:
Better start preparing your palette and stomach for the fare of the ’80s:
* Mix detergent with everything you eat and drink. There’s already quite a bit but there will be a lot more in the future.
* Learn how to digest grass and other common plants.
* Start fattening your dog, cat, parakeet and guppies for the main course of the future.
* Develop a taste for grubs and insects—your ancestors weren’t too proud to lift a rock for their dinner.
* Practice starving.
* Every night before bedtime drink a glass of industrial and organic waste on the rocks (with mixer if you prefer).
Appreciating that most services and products will disappear over the next ten to twenty years, we suggest this little dry run:
* Turn off your gas
* Turn off your water
* Turn off your telephone
* Turn off your heat
* Turn off your electricity
* Sit naked on the floor and repeat this chant:
PROGRESS IS OUR MOST IMPORTANT PRODUCT, PROGRESS IS OUR…
And as the final crisis approaches there’s no better time to start hoarding. Start buying things you’ll need after the Fall on credit—after the collapse no one will bother with collecting debts.
* While on the subject: start thinking about creative new uses for money since its present function will soon end. Remember, paper—particularly tissue—will be in short supply.
* Think about creative new uses for other potentially obsolete things like electric can openers, televisions, brassieres, toilets, alarm clocks, automobiles, etc.
* Accustom yourself to human body odor.
* Now is the time to learn a trade for the future—practice making arrowheads and other implements out of stone. Advanced students should start experimenting with bronze.
* For those of you who are investment minded, buy land, but you’d better leave enough bread to also buy a small arsenal to defend your property with.
* Remember Victory Gardens? Plant your Survival Garden now!
* Better quit smoking—or rip off a tobacco warehouse.
* Stockpile useful items like matches, safety pins, thread and needles, condoms, etc.
* Learn how to shoot a bow and arrow.
* Start preparing for the fashions of the future. You girls might take a hint from the heroines of monster films and start tearing your clothing in tasteful but strategically located tatters in order to create the Fay Wray look of tomorrow. Those less frivolous minded among you should start cultivating your body hair. (Remember a naked ape is a cold ape)
* You housewives had better learn how to maim and kill with a vegematic.
* Finally everyone should buy a boy scout manual—or in lieu of that, buy a boy scout.
SO IN FACING THE WORLD OF TOMORROW REMEMBER: BUILD FOR THE FUTURE AND CONTEMPLATE SUICIDE.