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.

Your Virtual Prozac

Lately yours truly has been in a lousy mood. This may have something to do with the fact that I can't afford the anti-depressants anymore, or it may be because the airing of Joe Millionaire has shown me that trust and honesty are no longer valued, or it may be because I'm writing this in Microsoft Word and I resent the hold Microsoft has on my life. Whatever it is, I need something to lift my mood. That's why I want to talk about death, destruction, and the end of the world. Nothing cheers me up more than contemplating apocalypse. It must be a misery-loves-company thing.

I speak of apocalypse with a small "a" because I am not one of those Apocalypse-enthusiasts who cares only about identifying the Beast or the Whore of Babylon or speculating about the nature of New Jerusalem. Those sorts of things are very good, but any end of the world interests me, not just that one.

It doesn't even have to be the end of the whole world. It could just be the end of this little part of it. That would be fine. For example the other day I learned that the Australian continent is on target to collide with us here in the Pacific Northwest sometime in the next couple hundred million years. That should pretty much finish the Space Needle, once and for all, and not a million years too soon. When you're in a bad mood, who needs revolving restaurants?

Don't get me wrong. I don't actually want global warming to melt the polar icecaps and inundate the coasts, for example. I want global warming and the depletion of the ozone layer and all those other slow-moving disasters to reverse themselves, like any good liberal should. But there's something exhilarating about being in a train wreck, even one that takes a century or millions of years to happen.

Of course, faster disasters are more compelling. I think a lot of the appeal of Revelations is that the disasters are so dramatic and sudden. One minute everyone is all right and then – BAM – locusts. (Like you can't eat locusts.) This represents a challenge to those of us who would like to visualize world destruction but don't want to be constrained to the Biblical model. Can we top John?

I believe that if we apply ourselves, we can. Pestilence and famine are great, but modern life has so much more to offer.

We could start with nuclear weapons. Suppose for instance that North Korea has those two A-bombs everybody has been saying they could have. And suppose that they really do have an ICBM capable of hitting San Francisco, like some people say they do. Well, we here in Seattle are much closer to North Korea than San Francisco, and we are a hell of a target. Whee, we could be a fireball! Now that's dramatic!

But, I'm a baby boomer, and consequently nuclear weapons are pretty much played out for me. I need new possibilities of annihilation, new reasons to duck and cover.

Smallpox is pretty good. It beats anthrax, as there is no way anyone is going to cover more than a city block with anthrax, but with smallpox you could wipe out millions. In theory. Better would be a brand new genetically engineered disease, one that no one is expecting. Something with the symptoms of ebola but with the contagion of the common cold. Don't think nobody is working on this. Good old American know-how will always find a way.

Look out for nano-robots. They're the next thing. You know all those bastards creating computer viruses now? In twenty years the exact same people will be making microscopic robots that fly through the air and up your nose to take up residence in your lungs for the purpose of deleting all your files, figuratively speaking. Just because they can.

One of the great things about dwelling on possible ends of the world is that it makes Saddam Hussein look like a fly on the wall. I hope that reading this column has cheered one or two of you up in that way. For the rest of you, I recommend anti-depressants.