Nuke the Fridge

After watching yesterday the movie Julie&Julia, which I loved even though I disliked Julie for being such a pansy (sorry, but she is), today I made a tad of research (which is definitively much better than doing research on Krycek and finding out that for each straight-cut-show-oriented site there are 10 dedicated to Mulder/Krycek), looking up the actual blog and reading into it. (The feeling of pansiness didn't wilter when reading the Real Julie Powell.) As I brownsed through her entries, most of them long after the project itself ended (the ones I read, mind you), I found this interesting expression: "jump the shark".

The first time I saw this expression was in Supernatural, and it was the title of an episode (#19, I believe) in the fourth season. I've kind of didn't get it then, but then again there's often nothing to get out of the titles of the episodes. So, when I saw it in Julie's entry, it came to me that it may have some meaning, so I looked it up, and I've got an interesting results. Jumping the Shark, also refered to as Nuke the Fridge (after that amazingly dumb scene in the fourth Indiana Jones movie where Indi escapes a nuclear blast by getting himself in a fridge) refers to that moment, that point in a TV show were it reaches it's climax, and after that it's all down hill. Brought this to the everyday life, this expression refers to that moment or that thing after which everything simply goes down the sewer, the attempt to "make something wow" but after which there are no plans, we run out of ideas the point and purpose of the whole thing is lost and gone for good.

This meaning, this discovery got to me, and though I am a Supernatural fan (but not a Super-fan, I mean, dude, that sucks worse than the monkey in the sun), I'm not fond of the "jump the shark" as much as of the "nuke the fridge", so that would be the expression I'd be using from now on. The reason why the expression got to me so deep was due to the fact that it suddenly gave me a phrase to express so many things that happen around me. Projects that are dragged for years, innefective managing that just can't go on but still pushes the same worn, obsolete line... nuked the fridge ages ago. The social club to which I had a some sort of indirect affiliation, and then others to which I was indeed affiliated, that after a given level of action started drifting more towards the gossip and the social teen-drama-queen-attention-whore awards rather than concentrating on the subject that had them all together in the first place... and I left as the fridge was nuked. The friendships that lost their magic, where there's nothing else to talk about, and I stepped out of them after it nuked the fridge. The relationships and acquintances abandoned before the nuking of the fridge, and those were you can see that the fridge will be nuked soon. It's the useless, tasteless, deceptioning aftermath of something that was good before, that was great and now lies spread open and hollow. It's the moment after the party with a sucky after party.

As we speak fridges are being nuked everywhere. Financial plans that won't foresee the long run, the project that doesn't calculate what will happen with the resources once it is over, the relationships that are build upon one flimsy piece of something, an ice cube that will melt and there is nothing built for what will be once the cube is gone. In no case, or none that I can think of, nuking the fridge is a positive thing. It is the start of the disaster, the start of the preanounced failure, the flimsy attempt at keeping a crown that no longer belongs, and so it must be avoided. But what can we do to avoid nuking the fridge? Well, let me put up a few ideas from the top of my head:

#1 Avoid nuking the fridge. That one is pretty obvious. If you've got to the point where you have to resource to that hidden stash of Uranium, or get some and that old grandma fridge in the basement, it is time to pull down the shades, close the door and walk away.

#2 Planificate-planificate-planificate. And here I don't mean l'art-pour-l'art planification many seem so fond of, but I mean to actually plan for something duable, realistic, consider all possible outcomes, interferences, and above all, what to do next. For instance, not only plan the business or the job, but what to do when it ends, what to do when you retire. Sure, not a day-by-day planning, but for instance, what will you do when you retire? Start a new business, go to the Bahamas, paint, write a book of all the gossip and stupid people you've met, pictures included... get a plan!

#3 ..oh, there's a movie at the office, so I'm leaving this here. Will tell you the rest later... if I remember. ^_^

Just remember: DO NOT NUKE THE FRIGDE!!!!