My husband Dennis was distinctly under the weather Monday and Tuesday, which translated into a Buffy the Vampire Slayer marathon. Over dinner, he passed along a few quotes he thought I'd find particularly funny, including high school Commencement speech in which the Mayor of Sunnyvale congratulates the class on having the highest survival rate in recent memory. (The congratulations--in inimical series fashion--immediately preceded him turning into a giant snake and eating Principal Snyder. Bummer, that: Snyder was a hoot.)
For context: If you're not a Buffy viewer, what you need to understand is that its locale, Sunnyvale, CA. is situated atop a "Hellmouth"--meaning a portal to the demon dimension. Despite the best efforts of The Slayer, her friends and her overeducated Watcher, people come to sticky ends. Often. (Now, if you can be seduced by scintillating writing--and have cynical and romantic streaks of equal breadth--you'll get past that. Trust me--Joss Whedon's good.)
But that's not to say this feature of the series isn't a perennial subject for mockery, and I'm certainly not immune: "You'd think that parents might pull their kids out of the school...maybe even, y'know, move away from Sunnyvale?" But a second later, a little epiphany hit: "Wait--what am I saying?! This is California we're talking about: People build on fault lines there!"
In other words, it isn't just fiction--nor is it confined to shaky--literally!--real estate. It's a very basic human tendency to use our "higher" brains to squelch the very sensible advice from our reptilian brains to fight and/or flee. Thus is the proverbial writing on the wall rationalized as statistical anomaly or freak accident--when it is not denied outright.
All of which makes me very glad I'm not working in a brand-name music, journalism, financial services or enterprise software shop just now. Because when your eyes are scrooged shut and you're chanting "Lalalalalalalalala!--I can't hear you!--Lalalalalalalalalala!" with your fingers stuck in your ears, that makes it awfully difficult to practice your roundhouse kicks or sharpen many stakes.
