Friday, May 20, 2011

Apocalypse tomorrow

What you gonna do
When Death come creepin' in your room?
O my Lord what shall I do?
Gonna run, gonna hide,
Gonna fall on bended knee
O my Lord what shall I do?

Mance Lipscomb -Run sinner, run-

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The clock is ticking folks. What are you going to do? Duct tape and plastic sheeting? I don't think so. You need to be prepared for anything. The CDC, the Center for Disease Control thinks you're remiss if you haven't prepared for the Zombies who may well be roaming the streets after Saturday evening's apocalypse, looking for brains. (It you're a Teabagger, you can stop reading now. You won't have a problem there.) The CDC link will take you to a list of recommended supplies:
"So what do you need to do before zombies…or hurricanes or pandemics for example, actually happen? First of all, you should have an emergency kit in your house. This includes things like water, food, and other supplies to get you through the first couple of days before you can locate a zombie-free refugee camp (or in the event of a natural disaster, it will buy you some time until you are able to make your way to an evacuation shelter or utility lines are restored). . . . for a full list visit the CDC Emergency page."
LinkIn addition, I would certainly include firearms, at least one of which should be a shotgun ( and lots of shells) and always remember to aim for the head.

For those of you who are sure you're actually going to be raptured, I'd suggest you wear sky blue clothing since many of us will be down here with shotguns and itchy trigger fingers and not only Ted Nugent. Don't be an easy target. Don't dress like a duck or a zombie.

Here are a few tips:

1) Refrain from drinking liquids after 3:00 PM, there are no rest stops along the way
and God doesn't like to pull over.

2) Say goodbye to us sinners before leaving the atmosphere. In Space, no one can
hear you scream.

3) Bring a firearm. There will lots of traffic and that means road rage.

4) And behave yourself -- don't make God stop the car and come back there!

UPDATE:  Your Weekend Weather Forecast:

15 comments:

  1. Excellent list!

    I'm trying to get the word out on stuff Ive been wanting to buy, but would rather 'take care of' courtesy of the soon-to-be departed.

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  2. I may well be raptored come Saturday – you can never trust a raptor. I don’t know about raptured….

    Well, the following quotation ought to put the fear of God into some of our heathen hides; I remember studying the Puritan minister Michael Wigglesworth in graduate school as part of an early American literature seminar:

    The Day of Doom

    Michael Wigglesworth, 1662

    CXCV

    Friends stand aloof and make no proof
    what prayers or tears can do;
    your Godly friends are now more friends
    to Christ than unto you.

    CXCVI

    Where tender love men's hearts did move
    unto a sympathy,
    And bearing part of others' smart
    in their anxiety,
    Now such compassion is out of fashion,
    and wholly laid aside;
    No friends so near, but Saints to hear
    their Sentence can abide.

    CXCVII

    One natural Brother beholds another
    in his astonied fit,
    Yet sorrows not thereat a jot,
    nor pities him a whit.
    The godly Wife conceives no grief,
    nor can she shed a tear
    For the sad state of her dear Mate,
    when she his doom doth hear.

    Thus, and much, much more – in fact, the book was very popular; the quotation above is from the sixth edition, published in 1715.

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  3. Speaking of Puritan poets and evangelical ministers, there is also this chap, Jonathan Edwards, one of three founders of the school that later became known as Princeton University.

    Hurrah, Princeton. Rah-rah-rah, my old hometown. This weekend, I should have met my ignominious end in Princeton rather than here in torrid Horrida.

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  4. Octo,

    Yes, if Puritan ministers were available as trading cards, Jonathan Edwards would be just like Mickey Mantle or Lefty Grove. How about this mighty fine piece of rhetoric from "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God"?

    "You have offended him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince: and yet, it is nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment. It is to be ascribed to nothing else, that you did not go to hell the last night; that you were suffered to wake again in this world, after you closed your eyes to sleep. And there is no other reason to be given, why you have not dropped into hell since you arose in the morning, but that God's hand has held you up. There is no other reason to be given why you have not gone to hell, since you have sat here in the house of God, provoking his pure eyes by your sinful wicked manner of attending his solemn worship. Yea, there is nothing else that is to be given as a reason why you do not this very moment drop down into hell."

    Indeed, there probably isn't. But Edwards also wrote a wonderful treatise on spiders, if memory serves. Which makes me sort of fond of him....

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  5. With Christians like Edwards, nobody has the right to call the Quir'an an evil teaching.

    I actually had to read a little bit of Wigglesworth in High School as a prelude to reading the Scarlet Letter. I seem to recall a few words about unbaptized babies roasting in hell. I hadn't thought of that bastard since - thanks for reminding me - sort of.

    O O O O that Raptufarian Rag—
    It's so exotic
    So so psychotic
    "What shall I do now? What shall I do?"
    "I shall rush out as I am, and walk the street
    "With my hair down, so. What shall we do to-morrow?
    "What shall we ever do?"

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  6. Capt. Fogg,

    You’re most welcome. Of course, the only reason I’m snark-snouting so gleefully about all this is that my own dear pastor, the Very Reverend Damnible Huxster (Church of the Thrashing Tail and Gnashing Teeth), has assured me that the Day of Doom will fall not on May 21st but instead on July 17th. So we’ve got plenty of time left….

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  7. All,
    Get your rapture bumper stickers here ... before its too late!

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  8. My plan is to get my wonderful husband a new Harley for free... just waltz in while the "Rapture" is happening and drive one off the lot.

    OK, he can do that. I'm going to the jewelry store! Bling Bling for me!

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  9. Well, things aren't looking good for the Camping camp -- New Zealand is past the deadline and it hasn't turned into a pillar of salt or plummeted beneath the sea thanks to end-times earthquakes.

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  10. On behalf of my good friend Nostradamasaurus, who is much smarter than this lizard, let me offer the following prediction:

    On no account will the putters-forth of the recent end-times May 21st date admit that they really ought to stop telling us when the world will end.

    Millennialism is much like conspiratism in that any evidence contradicting the favored theory will be taken as further evidence of its correctness. The fact that a prophecy based on Books A and B of the Bible turned out to be inaccurate “proves” that Books C and D ought to have been factored in as well.

    What were we thinking? Yes, the failure of the current prediction is great news: it means we can cross this particular date off our list, which makes it all the more certain that one of the remaining “most likely” dates must be correct. We’re getting closer to the end all the time!

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  11. I don't know about you folks, but I just played capture the flag with the kids in the woods by the ocean, finished a honey brown ale and the baby is quietly sleeping in the big easy chair. The Rapture feels pretty good to me...

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  12. Well 6:00 PM came and went in Florida, like everywhere else. A rather warm day and sunny - just the sort of day one falls asleep in the hammock. . . .

    Maybe Camping meant to say Rupture or Rap Tour.

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  13. Some sort of rapture is happening right now in Fenway Park. The Cubs, playing for the first time in 93 years in Boston, are leading 9 to 3 in the 8th, despite Big Papi's sweet homerun. And I just let out a string of nonrapturous words.

    It may as well be the end of the world.

    Well, the night, anyway.

    Grrrrrrg.

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  14. Well, as the Marley song goes, "Woke up this mornin', with the rising sun...." No rapture divine but what the birds sang, and that's better than any preacher's cant: "All that ever was / Joyous and clear and fresh—thy music doth surpass," as Shelley says to his skylark.

    I read one melancholy article detailing the disillusionment of people who did all sorts of foolish things in preparation for the failed prophecy -- you know, selling everything, alienating themselves from family and friends, the usual end-of-times stuff. The producers of this hokum will go right on yapping, but in the wake of their old blather, they leave a wreckage strewn with others' despair.

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  15. We flew back from Hawaii a day early on Friday so we would avoid the pitfall of our pilots being "raptured" out of the cockpit while somewhere over the mid-Pacific. Turns out now we could have stayed that extra day - damn Bible!!

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