If It's Monday, We're In Hell

[from 1/12/10]

Here’s an expression I’m getting tired of hearing: “sign of the Apocalypse”. Now the End-Times are underway, do we really need to note that this, that, and everything else is a “sign of the Apocalypse”? Hey, it’s the End-Times, OK? If it’s morning, it’s a sign of the Apocalypse. If it’s on the internet, it’s a sign of the Apocalypse. If it’s Folgers, if it walks the walk, etc. Quit rubbing it in. We’ll all die and burn for eternity except the Christians (of the correct sect.) We get it, shut up.

I’m so over these End-Times. They started, as I’m sure you know, in the Summer of 1986, in the middle of Reagan’s second term. That was when the rapture occurred. My first thought, when Reagan and I weren’t rapted, was uh-oh, our lives are going to get way too interesting.

Well, they did. George Bush Sr., Iraq War I, Alzheimer’s, Clinton, Monica, Kosovo, Paul Schell, George Bush Jr., 9/11, Afghanistan War, Iraq War II, MySpace -- one daytime nightmare after another. Reagan didn’t survive it.

But now it’s just old. I’m sorry, I don’t have the attention span it takes to stay awake for this bore-fest. The real thing is as tedious as every end of the world movie I’ve ever walked out in the middle of.

The Bible totally over-hyped it. I thought birds were supposed to fall out of the sky everywhere at once. So far, what’s it been? Kentucky, Italy, and Sweden? That’s not everywhere. I’ve only been to one of those.

It turns out thousands of birds drop dead out of the sky, here and there, hill and dale, all the time, and have for hundreds of years. It just that before it didn’t get noticed as much as it does now that the world is ending.

A recently homeless man is now the spokesperson for Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, while Bernie Madoff sits in prison. OK, that sign is exceptionally interesting, but not enough to sustain me.

I was fortunate that I missed one major sign of the Apocalypse, the reading of the US Constitution, except for the naughty bits, 30 words at a time, into the Congressional Record by the one third of Representatives who are able. I was busy doing something important, so I wasn’t at home in a zombie trance, glued to C-Span. Had I been, my innards -- bones, brain, and all -- would have liquified and spilled out my orifices, ruining my day.

What matters is, with a huge federal deficit hanging over us all, the Republican Party decided it was important for taxpayers paying Congresspeople’s salaries to see them demonstrate that they know the document (or most of it) that is the basis for their jobs. This proves that US Congressbeasts are indeed human with at least 2nd grade educations, and not horses, as they were (well, one of them was) the last time end-times were rumored. Hooray.

Locally, the Highway 99 tunnel project was officially handed over to the Dragados Company. (Dragados = Spanish for “pertaining to seven heads, ten horns, and seven crowns,” an accurate description of a tunnel-borer.) This sign is simply annoying. Much like the collapse of the Minneapolis Metrodome. Ten years ago I might have cared. Now? Overdone. What isn’t collapsing, and what won’t be? Why should I have to keep track of every bit of it?

“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;/ Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,” blah, blah. We only wished it was that simple. We know how to deal with mere anarchy. We’re talking massive cost overruns here.

An exercise by which to wait for your fiery plunge to eternal agony:

List ten signs of the Apocalypse that you have witnessed since Monday. You can do it. Been on a bus? In traffic? Read a newspaper? Write them large on separate paper and arrange them chaotically at your feet. Stare at them, and contemplate the next two or three years of your life.