I just saw a news article on how Barack Obama's bow to the king of Saudi Arabia constitutes the end of all life on earth. Not so, only the end of some reporters' careers, but this close call with eternal doom has got me thinking once again about the end of the world. My list of doomsday scenarios continues with:
12. American Idol. This hit television show will result in the downfall of western civilization. How? Well, ninety percent of the population watches the show and persists in voting for contestants using cellphones. This is why, on the night of the season finale, cell phone providers will suddenly increase texting rates to as much as twenty cents a message. The ensuing phone bill--perhaps in excess of 14 quadrillion (yes, 15 zeros, count 'em) dollars--will upset the rotation of the earth.
13. Modern dance. Modern dance is perceived as a quirky or strange but harmless form of "artistic expression." What no one but a few elite medical professionals (by which I mean myself and my sister's pet rabbit) has realized is that "modern dance" is actually a highly contagious neurological disorder cause by a deadly virus. The virus multiplies in the nervous system, resulting in disconnected and jarring body motions, often accompanied by voting Democrat and crying for no reason. I should point out that not all cases of modern dance are caused by this plague, but all the ones caught on film probably are. When the disease spreads it will reduce earth to a realm of artsy flouncers. Our only hope is to revive the jig and Celtic music worldwide. The virus is highly susceptible to the sound of bagpipes at short range. The vibrations cause it to simply disintegrate. I wish that bagpiping had the same effect on:
14. Build-a-Bear Workshops. Build-a-Bear is a store where, for a mere twenty-five or so smackers, you can put the teddy bear together yourself. You can also purchase clothing, hats, shoes, and other simpering accessories for your ursine friend. What consumers fail to realize is that the warning not to expose your Build-a-Bear to the light of the full moon should be taken seriously. In order to succeed, the founders of Build-a-Bear struck a Faustian bargain with evil forces: they would enjoy unparalleled economic success and consumer gullibility, but the bears would animate when exposed to moonlight during months containing a, e, i, o, or u. Why is this a problem, you ask? Surely these creatures are cuddly and lovable? Normally, you'd be right. But there is no way of identifying gender on a Build-a-Bear. Which means half of them have been forced to wear gender-inappropriate clothing and perhaps even named "George" when "Clarice" would have been more fitting. I know I'd be ticked off when finally freed from my paralysis. The bear is in the home of his/her tormentors with access to power tools and maybe even old Beatles albums. Guess how many million Build-a-Bears have been sold?
15. Badgersbadgersbadgers.com. This website features endlessly dancing badgers you can watch for free! Forever! Workplace productivity has fallen 1.2 percent per month ever since this website went operational. Do the math. Our economy is doomed even if Barack Obama wakes up and smells the Marxism.
The good news, I suppose, is that there will still be cockroaches no matter what happens...
Showing posts with label the end of the world. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the end of the world. Show all posts
Friday, April 10, 2009
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Apex
One common sentiment I often hear expressed (and admit to sometimes sharing) is the idea that human civilization somehow peaked a few decades ago and is now beginning an inexorable, horrific decline interrupted only by (a) the return of Christ or (b) the destruction of humanity.
This is nonsense for two reasons.
One: Egocentrism
The United States is in moral, political, and (largely for political reasons) economic decline. Unfortunate? Sure. The demise of all mankind? Hardly. India is on the rise. China (if democracy wins out) may be another great nation. Europe is falling apart but has been doing so for the last fifty years. The cold fact is this: change is not always decline. The Western world is diminishing; the Eastern is ascendant. We may as well get used to it and learn to live with the new order. We may even, through miraculous recovery, manage to slow the shift, but it's pretty hard to argue with population and nationalistic youth and vigor. Even if the United States falls clean off the world stage or embraces socialism (more) and is ruined economically, humanity will go on. Look at the decline of the British Empire. To the English it looked like the end of the world. Who even thinks about this today? It's amazing what a bit of perspective can do. The United States was waiting to fill the power vacuum and has, all in all, done fairly well. The world kept turning. The counter argument here is that the new rising nations are hardly supporters of human rights, freedom, and justice. Which brings us to reason two:
Two: Transience
Even if democracy and capitalism fall and the world is plunged into a new dark age, a new renaissance will follow it. Civilizations fall. How about them Romans, eh? The Roman Empire (and earlier the Roman Republic and earlier still Greece) was a truly amazing society, with knowledge and a passion for truth unmatched until the Enlightenment. What is left of the Romans today? The Coliseum (which actually is a symbol of decline and barbarism) and Little Caesar's Pizza. Life is tough. Countries are no more exempt to entropy than the people who comprise them. Everything dies, and sometimes death is painful. The fall of the Roman Empire triggered the Dark Ages. And guess what? We recovered. It took fifteen hundred years to reclaim some of the losses, but we recovered. Upheaval is not even truly death but rather slumber. Nigh all mistakes are reversible, any error healed by the passage of time. Is there pain, loss, turmoil? Yes. But there is no final end that we can bring about ourselves.
What is my point? Let's not get so enraptured by our own accomplishments and our own status and even our precious modern comforts that we lose track of the truth that matters. Life finds a way. The fall of the West is not the fall of humanity. Should we stave it off as long as possible? Sure. We can even mourn its passage on the day we fail. But we must do so because the fall is undesirable, not because it is the end of the world. The idea that we have reached the pinnacle of human history is unsupportable and distorts how we view the world. We all too easily forget that the only things that matter are eternal and universal. Our current civilization is neither.
This is nonsense for two reasons.
One: Egocentrism
The United States is in moral, political, and (largely for political reasons) economic decline. Unfortunate? Sure. The demise of all mankind? Hardly. India is on the rise. China (if democracy wins out) may be another great nation. Europe is falling apart but has been doing so for the last fifty years. The cold fact is this: change is not always decline. The Western world is diminishing; the Eastern is ascendant. We may as well get used to it and learn to live with the new order. We may even, through miraculous recovery, manage to slow the shift, but it's pretty hard to argue with population and nationalistic youth and vigor. Even if the United States falls clean off the world stage or embraces socialism (more) and is ruined economically, humanity will go on. Look at the decline of the British Empire. To the English it looked like the end of the world. Who even thinks about this today? It's amazing what a bit of perspective can do. The United States was waiting to fill the power vacuum and has, all in all, done fairly well. The world kept turning. The counter argument here is that the new rising nations are hardly supporters of human rights, freedom, and justice. Which brings us to reason two:
Two: Transience
Even if democracy and capitalism fall and the world is plunged into a new dark age, a new renaissance will follow it. Civilizations fall. How about them Romans, eh? The Roman Empire (and earlier the Roman Republic and earlier still Greece) was a truly amazing society, with knowledge and a passion for truth unmatched until the Enlightenment. What is left of the Romans today? The Coliseum (which actually is a symbol of decline and barbarism) and Little Caesar's Pizza. Life is tough. Countries are no more exempt to entropy than the people who comprise them. Everything dies, and sometimes death is painful. The fall of the Roman Empire triggered the Dark Ages. And guess what? We recovered. It took fifteen hundred years to reclaim some of the losses, but we recovered. Upheaval is not even truly death but rather slumber. Nigh all mistakes are reversible, any error healed by the passage of time. Is there pain, loss, turmoil? Yes. But there is no final end that we can bring about ourselves.
What is my point? Let's not get so enraptured by our own accomplishments and our own status and even our precious modern comforts that we lose track of the truth that matters. Life finds a way. The fall of the West is not the fall of humanity. Should we stave it off as long as possible? Sure. We can even mourn its passage on the day we fail. But we must do so because the fall is undesirable, not because it is the end of the world. The idea that we have reached the pinnacle of human history is unsupportable and distorts how we view the world. We all too easily forget that the only things that matter are eternal and universal. Our current civilization is neither.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Cell phones and the prospect of alien invasion
Everywhere I look, people are plugged into cell phones, iPods, PSPs and a multitude of other fascinating devices. Here we see the second phase of the alien plot. (For the first phase, read "Pets and prospect of alien invasion.") The sudden obsession with electronic means of communication and entertainment is no coincidence. Their original plan foiled by my perfectly timed blog post, the aliens will activate their Plan B. We face a three-pronged attack, some of it already in progress:
Prong One: Golden Brown and Delicious
Irradiate our brains. The constant use of a cell phone is like leaving your head in a microwave set on "defrost." The aliens have spliced into our power grids, put Sony batteries in our cell phones, stolen my aluminum foil hat and basically cranked the power up to "baked potato." This is causing the minds of everyone in the industrialized world to swiftly slide downhill. How else do you explain the popularity of 95% of celebrities? The inside of America's collective head is being reduced to I Can't Believe It's Not Butter. "But wait," you say, "what about all the smart people who use cell phones? They don't seem affected." You are correct. Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Ivan Seidenberg and others seem completely in possession of their mental faculties and business sense. But look at the list: all of these people are affiliated with the manufacture of cell phones and electronics. The sharpest minds are consistently funneled into propagating the very technologies that are depriving us of a future and frying our defenses. This reveals the frightening second prong:
Prong Two: Great Minds Think Alike
Mind control. If you have trouble believing this, turn off your Blackberry and try again. The aliens are using the electromagnetic fields emitted by many common gadgets to influence human behavior. This is the reason behind the recent upswing in "green" living. It will be almost a century before the first of the colony ships arrive, and the last thing the alien military wants to do is spend that time cleaning up after us. They want us to care about baby deer now so they have better hunting later. If you want to resist the alien horde, go shoot something furry from a helicopter and put your soda can in the trash instead of the recycling. I tried the latter the other day, and I felt proudly defiant until my left arm started smacking me in the side of the head until I promised not to do it again. The effects of the mind controlling fields can be escaped only by moving as far away from all modern electronics as possible. This is increasingly difficult because of phase three.
Prong Three: Withdrawal Symptoms
Addiction to technology. This implacable foe forms the basis of the final alien strike. In 2050, when the average person owns two cell phones, a game console, one and a half computers, and a Roomba the aliens detonate 64 EMPs hundreds of miles above the surface of the earth. All electronic equipment fails. Panic sets in as people are faced with the horrifying prospect of face-to-face social interaction. Floors go unvacuumed. Halo 26 collects dust on shelves around the world as consoles are silenced. People, tricked decades ago into switching to electric cars, are trapped in place, unable to flee as the alien vessels descend and spray the world's cities with amped-up Raid.
Fortunately, the alien plan cannot succeed, and not just because I have over fifty more aluminum foil hats. They have badly miscalculated human strength, ingenuity, and grumpiness. You see, we all talk on cell phones all the time but consider it rude, inconsiderate, and irritating when other people do it in front of us. I think that it will soon become socially acceptable to reach over and snap someone's cell phone in half when they take it out in front of you. Game console marketing is so bad that I won't even worry about that avenue.
What if these social advances do not come to pass? We will have to treat the root: Japan. The Japanese government has been in league with the aliens for years, flooding the world market with trendy, useful, and fun electronic products. The only solution is to detach California from our own coast, lug it across the Pacific, and attach it to Honshu. Californians and Japanese will freely mingle. Within weeks, surfing will be Japan's most popular sport, Arnold will be in charge of an entire country, and electronics manufacture will be banned by Berkeley lobbyists on the grounds that it kills baby deer. There will be compromise, of course. California rolls will be banned in favor of proper sushi and Tom Cruise will probably be dropped into an active volcano. I fail to see how either of these would be a problem.
Of course, facing the prospect of fusing with California, Japan may simply sink. I know I would. Maybe if we offered to remove Hollywood first. The rest of the state is really fine. But I digress. One thing remains clear: we must discard our electronics. If you are interested in resisting the alien horde, let me know and I'll provide you a mailing address so you can send me your Xboxes, iPhones, and other mortal dangers threatening you and your loved ones. I will dispose of them properly.
Prong One: Golden Brown and Delicious
Irradiate our brains. The constant use of a cell phone is like leaving your head in a microwave set on "defrost." The aliens have spliced into our power grids, put Sony batteries in our cell phones, stolen my aluminum foil hat and basically cranked the power up to "baked potato." This is causing the minds of everyone in the industrialized world to swiftly slide downhill. How else do you explain the popularity of 95% of celebrities? The inside of America's collective head is being reduced to I Can't Believe It's Not Butter. "But wait," you say, "what about all the smart people who use cell phones? They don't seem affected." You are correct. Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Ivan Seidenberg and others seem completely in possession of their mental faculties and business sense. But look at the list: all of these people are affiliated with the manufacture of cell phones and electronics. The sharpest minds are consistently funneled into propagating the very technologies that are depriving us of a future and frying our defenses. This reveals the frightening second prong:
Prong Two: Great Minds Think Alike
Mind control. If you have trouble believing this, turn off your Blackberry and try again. The aliens are using the electromagnetic fields emitted by many common gadgets to influence human behavior. This is the reason behind the recent upswing in "green" living. It will be almost a century before the first of the colony ships arrive, and the last thing the alien military wants to do is spend that time cleaning up after us. They want us to care about baby deer now so they have better hunting later. If you want to resist the alien horde, go shoot something furry from a helicopter and put your soda can in the trash instead of the recycling. I tried the latter the other day, and I felt proudly defiant until my left arm started smacking me in the side of the head until I promised not to do it again. The effects of the mind controlling fields can be escaped only by moving as far away from all modern electronics as possible. This is increasingly difficult because of phase three.
Prong Three: Withdrawal Symptoms
Addiction to technology. This implacable foe forms the basis of the final alien strike. In 2050, when the average person owns two cell phones, a game console, one and a half computers, and a Roomba the aliens detonate 64 EMPs hundreds of miles above the surface of the earth. All electronic equipment fails. Panic sets in as people are faced with the horrifying prospect of face-to-face social interaction. Floors go unvacuumed. Halo 26 collects dust on shelves around the world as consoles are silenced. People, tricked decades ago into switching to electric cars, are trapped in place, unable to flee as the alien vessels descend and spray the world's cities with amped-up Raid.
Fortunately, the alien plan cannot succeed, and not just because I have over fifty more aluminum foil hats. They have badly miscalculated human strength, ingenuity, and grumpiness. You see, we all talk on cell phones all the time but consider it rude, inconsiderate, and irritating when other people do it in front of us. I think that it will soon become socially acceptable to reach over and snap someone's cell phone in half when they take it out in front of you. Game console marketing is so bad that I won't even worry about that avenue.
What if these social advances do not come to pass? We will have to treat the root: Japan. The Japanese government has been in league with the aliens for years, flooding the world market with trendy, useful, and fun electronic products. The only solution is to detach California from our own coast, lug it across the Pacific, and attach it to Honshu. Californians and Japanese will freely mingle. Within weeks, surfing will be Japan's most popular sport, Arnold will be in charge of an entire country, and electronics manufacture will be banned by Berkeley lobbyists on the grounds that it kills baby deer. There will be compromise, of course. California rolls will be banned in favor of proper sushi and Tom Cruise will probably be dropped into an active volcano. I fail to see how either of these would be a problem.
Of course, facing the prospect of fusing with California, Japan may simply sink. I know I would. Maybe if we offered to remove Hollywood first. The rest of the state is really fine. But I digress. One thing remains clear: we must discard our electronics. If you are interested in resisting the alien horde, let me know and I'll provide you a mailing address so you can send me your Xboxes, iPhones, and other mortal dangers threatening you and your loved ones. I will dispose of them properly.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
It's the end of the world...tickets now on sale
I saw a History Channel program on the demise of Los Angeles by Killer Asteroid yesterday. This was the funniest thing I'd seen in weeks, and not just because I'm not a big fan of L.A. I have decided to puncture some of the Killer Asteroid hysteria with a list of seven things that will kill us first.
1) Global Warming. This is a serious issue, but not for the commonly perceived reason. People talking about global warming/climate change is releasing more carbon dioxide and hot air than industrialized China. The earth will erupt into a boiling kettle of human misery (and the polar bears will drown) unless everyone just shuts up.
2) Rap music. Rap music, when played backward, contains a message from Satan. Usually this message is slightly less subversive than the one you'll hear playing it forward. I am personally convinced that the recent upswing in seismic activity is due to the playing of rap. More disturbing still, rap causes pants to slide down men's legs to roughly the level of their knees. This renders us unattractive to the opposite sex. Reproduction ceases. Should rap ever go global, the human race will die out in one generation.
3) China. I am convinced that the Chinese government is eyeing America's natural resources, massive pharmaceutical industry, and folksy charm with intense envy. It is only a matter of time before they overwhelm our defenses and seize control. Our only hope is to become as repulsive as possible to render invading us unthinkable. Elton John, Anne Hathaway, and Rosie O'Donnell are making good progress in that particular arena; we should all emulate them.
4) Political Correctness. I kid you not. The rising tide of post-modernist appeal to everyone's taste simultaneously has disastrous implications. Expecting everyone to stop on red and go on green is so...limiting. Traffic fatalities are only one branch of this poison tree. What about hand washing? What if the infidel fourteen-second scrubbers are allowed have their way as opposed to the necessary fifteen seconds? We'd all be wiped of by a horrible plague!!!!!
5) Horrible Plague. Avian flu received so much attention from the media I'm sure it's killed the entire population of the earth by now. It just took the reporters with it, so no one has heard about it yet.
6) Yale. America's top schools have gone more Audrey II than Ivy League. This is seldom surprising. They tried on Communism in the 1920s-1960s. They rallied behind embryonic stem-cell research more recently even though it is one of the less promising options medically (never mind morally). They jump wildly on the next Big Idea and don't jump off until it has been tried in the real world and proven to kill millions of people. (i.e. Communism and arguably stem-cell research) Which is why, when I propose in this blog that nuclear war might not be so bad, inside twenty minutes riots will be occurring on the quads of Yale, demanding that Bush (or Obama, the fact that he's not President yet notwithstanding) hand over the keys to a few silos. Nuclear war might not be so bad. There. I said it. Start digging your shelter.
7) The Confederate States of America. Need I remind you that the South has enough armed pickup trucks to swarm every major city north of the Mason-Dixon Line? The North, one the other hand, mostly has cows and furniture stores. Once the South controls all of America, it will produce and export fried chicken, fried okra, fried steak, and fried Northerners in unprecedented quantities. The world will have a heart attack just smelling these delicacies.
Well, there you have it. Why even save for retirement?
1) Global Warming. This is a serious issue, but not for the commonly perceived reason. People talking about global warming/climate change is releasing more carbon dioxide and hot air than industrialized China. The earth will erupt into a boiling kettle of human misery (and the polar bears will drown) unless everyone just shuts up.
2) Rap music. Rap music, when played backward, contains a message from Satan. Usually this message is slightly less subversive than the one you'll hear playing it forward. I am personally convinced that the recent upswing in seismic activity is due to the playing of rap. More disturbing still, rap causes pants to slide down men's legs to roughly the level of their knees. This renders us unattractive to the opposite sex. Reproduction ceases. Should rap ever go global, the human race will die out in one generation.
3) China. I am convinced that the Chinese government is eyeing America's natural resources, massive pharmaceutical industry, and folksy charm with intense envy. It is only a matter of time before they overwhelm our defenses and seize control. Our only hope is to become as repulsive as possible to render invading us unthinkable. Elton John, Anne Hathaway, and Rosie O'Donnell are making good progress in that particular arena; we should all emulate them.
4) Political Correctness. I kid you not. The rising tide of post-modernist appeal to everyone's taste simultaneously has disastrous implications. Expecting everyone to stop on red and go on green is so...limiting. Traffic fatalities are only one branch of this poison tree. What about hand washing? What if the infidel fourteen-second scrubbers are allowed have their way as opposed to the necessary fifteen seconds? We'd all be wiped of by a horrible plague!!!!!
5) Horrible Plague. Avian flu received so much attention from the media I'm sure it's killed the entire population of the earth by now. It just took the reporters with it, so no one has heard about it yet.
6) Yale. America's top schools have gone more Audrey II than Ivy League. This is seldom surprising. They tried on Communism in the 1920s-1960s. They rallied behind embryonic stem-cell research more recently even though it is one of the less promising options medically (never mind morally). They jump wildly on the next Big Idea and don't jump off until it has been tried in the real world and proven to kill millions of people. (i.e. Communism and arguably stem-cell research) Which is why, when I propose in this blog that nuclear war might not be so bad, inside twenty minutes riots will be occurring on the quads of Yale, demanding that Bush (or Obama, the fact that he's not President yet notwithstanding) hand over the keys to a few silos. Nuclear war might not be so bad. There. I said it. Start digging your shelter.
7) The Confederate States of America. Need I remind you that the South has enough armed pickup trucks to swarm every major city north of the Mason-Dixon Line? The North, one the other hand, mostly has cows and furniture stores. Once the South controls all of America, it will produce and export fried chicken, fried okra, fried steak, and fried Northerners in unprecedented quantities. The world will have a heart attack just smelling these delicacies.
Well, there you have it. Why even save for retirement?
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