Friday, June 10, 2011

Act Like Ya Got Some Sense

On a recent Sunday morning I started to sing a couple of hymns from my churchgoing days, before I turned 16. "The Prayer of St. Francis" was one:

Oh, Master grant that I may never seek

So much to be consoled as to conso-o-o-le,
To be understood as to understand,
To be loved as to love with all my so-o-o-ul...
Make me a channel of your peace...
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned...
And in dying that we're born to eternal life.

With respect to that eternal-life part, renowned physicist Stephen Hawking recently caused a stir by saying heaven is a fantasy. Apparently nobody told those Rapture people, or maybe somebody did and they said, "Fuck Stephen Hawking." For the 10 or 12 people out there who read this and don't know who the Rapture people are, they're the ones who believed that some kind of divine process was going to absorb the deserving among them into heaven on May 21. Didn't happen, by the way. Harold Camping, who spearheads that movement, now says the shit is really going to hit the fan on October 21. We'll be judged, rewarded or destroyed along with the rest of the world.
Color me mildly skeptical, but maybe they could persuade me to get on board. If so, though, I'd like some insurance. I would like Mr. Camping to guarantee that I'll receive compensation if, in fact, the world doesn't end in October. Because when I cross that line and have complete conviction that October is it, I'm going to quit my job. And I'm going to spend my money. And I'm going to eat what I want and drink what I want and stop exercising. You get the picture. Live every day like it's your last because pretty soon it's going to be. Unless it's not.
So when I get to October 21, at the ostensible tail end of my brief Bacchanalian existence, who's going to support me and my family? I bought a Blu-ray player and surround-sound system, man, and now I'm busted. You're telling me life goes on now? I don't get sucked into heaven or die some sort of horrible death (now, anyway)? You can't do that to a poor sot like me and just say, oops, the Rapture has been postponed. Where's the accountability here?
If the Rapture were to happen, YouTube would go ape shit, until it was destroyed. I mean, everyone has a cellphone video camera. I give that Rapture video four stars. It doesn't quite measure up to the Mentos-and-Coke geyser, but it's not bad. Speaking of cellphones, I have to believe all those people floating up into heaven would interfere with service. Some people would be more pissed about that than having been left behind. "OMG, my texting isn't working." FYI, I'd be RFLMAO, FWIW.
So instead of being marginalized and relegated to the lunatic fringe, these people get mainstream-media coverage. The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, etc. At least they did do some almost-tongue-in-cheek stuff. The WSJ published a piece about how people are making money off of the believers by, for example, saying they'll take care of the pets after the owners ascend to heaven. Not sure why the pets wouldn't go to heaven, too. Not a dog-friendly place, I suppose. Can't have St. Peter stepping in dog shit. But, aside from maybe a reference to it as a curiosity, why do these people receive press coverage at all? Because the media have to fill up TV channels and website and, still, even print in some cases? And here I am, culpable as well by writing about them, for the 10 or 12 of you out there. I get the irony. I still don't even understand the apparent contradiction between God being all-forgiving but some people not making it to heaven. Repent and you're saved, motherfucker. Or maybe not. I need one of those dummy books--"The Dummies Guide to Heaven." Yellow and black cover with flitting people.
This whole affair just calls to mind what the Metro security guy said to the throngs on the train platform in D.C. over the Easter/Cherry Blossom weekend a few years ago: "Act like ya got some sense."

Friday, June 3, 2011

Execute

On a radio show recently, the hosts were playing a game called "Who Should Be Arrested?" They came up with fat women in spandex, people texting and walking, groups of people taking up the whole sidewalk, people crossing the street who walk more slowly as your car approaches, etc. The people who walk more slowly crossing the road, what are they trying to prove, that I won't run them over? They make me want to run them over by doing so.
At an amusement park recently, my son saw a sign on the cable cars traversing the park that said people throwing stuff out of the cars, potentially onto unsuspecting passersby below, would be prosecuted. Except he mistook "prosecuted" for "executed." Then I considered and figured all right, I'll go with execute. So my version of the game is "Who Should Be Executed?"
To wit:
--People who cut in line at amusement parks. Or anywhere. The amusement-park cutters should be made to stay on that particular ride until they, well, die.
--People who are at the back of the line in the store, let's say Walmart, who don't afford the people in front of them the opportunity to go to a newly opened register first. In other words, the line is long, some people have been waiting for a while, the store finally decides to open another line, and the motherfuckers who just got in the back of the long line scurry over to be first in the new line.
--Aside from people walking and texting, people driving who are doing anything on the phone.
--People who have no apparent handicap who park in handicapped spaces. Maybe they shouldn't be executed, but they at least should be maimed and subsequently denied the right to park in handicap spaces.
--People who park in the fire lanes at convenience stores; in fact, anybody driving who only has consideration for himself and is willing to inconvenience anybody else.
--People who line up at the Academy Awards to watch the stars on the red carpet.
--The stars on the red carpet.
--Republicans.
--Democrats.
--People who don't pick up dog shit off my lawn.
--Anybody who hurts a kid, especially since I just read a story about a baby stuffed in a suitcase in Pennsylvania.
--Pedophiles, for sure, and any other sexual predator.
--Drivers who go 50 mph in 25-mph zones.
--Drivers who go 25 in 50-mph zones.
--People whose car stereos make the windows in my house vibrate when they pass.
--Adults who eat with their mouths open.
--Adults who make noise when they eat (they're usually the ones with their mouths open).
--The guy who sat behind me in the quiet car on the train and cracked his gum for an hour, blowing little bubbles or whatever.
--Litterbugs.
--People for whom you hold the door who don't acknowledge that you've held the door, as if you're meant to be their door holder. Maybe they're distracted. If so, they should get undistracted and say thanks for holding the fucking door.
--People who don't hold the door for you, even though you're four feet behind them.
--Kids who wear their pants halfway down their asses and their baseball caps cocked at an angle to their skulls. They should at least be marked with a red-hot branding iron right through the underwear that's showing.