The Coming Armageddon

Thursday, August 12, 2010
The Coming Armageddon
Current mood: anxious
Category: Blogging

It seems that my attention span, like many things as I grow older, is not what it once was. I don’t read as much and the idea of watching a movie makes me feel as if I am going to be trapped for that two hours and will never get them back. I zone out halfway through conversations if they do not contain detailed descriptions of a shapely barmaid without any clothes on. I rarely make it to the seventh inning stretch when I watch a baseball game and I immediately turn the channel whenever I see Chris Berman. My attention wanes and I have no patience.

What this has done, is given me a “big picture” mentality. I skim the news, rarely reading enough to truly understand the issues at hand – and please understand that I am generally happier without total comprehension – just enough to panic. So when I read about a mudslide in China that has killed 700, or weather so hot in Russia that wildfires have threatened to release radioactive waste from Chernobyl into the air or that there is an oil leak spouting bazillions of gallons of toxins into our oceans, threatening to seriously unbalance our sea habitat and our worldwide ecosystem, I generally prefer to put my head firmly in the sand and listen to my Beatle albums. Huge slabs – islands – of ice four times the size of Manhattan shearing off of a glacier and making their way slowly through the sea, promising destruction on a massive scale? Simply put in Rubber Soul and have a peanut butter sandwich. Someone is bound to take care of this, right? Right?

But this is getting ridiculous. When a big-picture man such as myself sees all this stuff happening at one time, I cannot help but think that Armageddon is at hand. This is worse than any Bruce Willis thriller – Hollywood could not match this worldwide catastrophe with an entire pack of paranoid, nicotine-addled screenwriters. My question is this – what are we going to do? Should we wait for the politicians of our nation and the world to lead us as the skies rain fire and brimstone, or should we count on those in touch with God to point the way? I am at an impasse, because I trust neither fully and am a little uncomfortable with handholding in tight situations. I find it limits my abilities to bolt screaming in another direction when the shit really starts to fly.

I don’t know if I should start boning up (skimming, really) my history books to pick up handy hints from those who dealt with the plague and Noah’s flood and the business with Sodom and Gomorrah, or to begin preparing my Armageddon Kit and digging out a shelter, like the ones folks built in the fifties when the Russians were poised to send some nuclear bullshit our way.

I suppose I could write a letter to Al Gore – he seems to know what’s going on with the earth and all the global warming and stuff, or the people at Greenpeace – I just don’t know if a letter is going to do the trick and I’m nearly certain that if I receive a relpy, it won’t give me clear direction. I have found this to be true in the past when I have ordered manuals of instruction, I see no reason for this to be any different.

I’ll tell you what, though – if I see anyone turn into a pillar of salt right before my very eyes, I am going with the religious folks. Until then, I have Abbey Road locked and loaded on my IPod – everything is going to be okay, right? Right?



Read more: http://www.myspace.com/jerryfordbooks/blog?bID=538153360#ixzz0wOs6DSo4