C'mon Missouri!

“And the second beast required all people, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their forehead,”
 
I’ve done a lot of ruminating the last ten years or so, in this modern age of “dear God how is this happening” – spoken every generation, and no less true from one generation to the next, but perhaps never more true than now – a lot of ruminating over the hilarious notion of humanity actually barreling head first and ass backwards all at once toward the End of Times.
 
Now, what I call hilarious, others might call terrifying, absurd, unnecessary, but I’m kind of a jerk and a pragmatist so I’m going to call it hilarious. And if you question there being anything pragmatic about accepting a religious apocalyptic reality, well, I mean, I don’t know what to tell you. I’m agnostic. I don’t even believe in any of this shit, but if this is what y’all want…

Fine, call it stoic acceptance.



Anyway, what I’m trying to say is we are living this weird timeline where crazy, crazy ass Christians are supporting the destruction of a people to see Jewish folk reign supreme over a piece of land where they need to have a temple so they can have the first coming of their Messiah and Christians can have the second coming of the Jesus Messiah and…and…and…wait for it…this is the best part…the Muslims that the Christians want the Jewish folk to kill so the Jewish folk can have land and the temple and the Jewish and Christians can have their “comings,” the Muslims have their own Jesus second coming prophecy!!! 

It's truly glorious. I bet ol’ John the Revelator never saw this shit…coming.



Anyway, I’m pointing all of this out because I don’t religion and I don’t Bible or Koran or Torah, Tanakh, or Talmud, I don’t do any of that stuff, but I do believe there are signs of an oncoming apocalypse:
 
First, everybody wants one. Okay, maybe not everybody, but along with the three religious populi listed above we got the Zoros, the Hindus, and the Rastas all looking forward to a big, bad glorious final battle between good and evil. So, maybe not everybody, but according to census over 5.6 billion people attest to practicing these religions. That’s a lot. Oh, don’t let me forget the Mormons! They got the big battle coming too, only Jesus returns to Missouri (I wonder if it’s after him having just left Chicago), that’s right, Missouri, and honestly this is probably my favorite! I live close to Missouri.
 
Second, I believe humanity has reached its artistic pinnacle (and perhaps already surpassed it). There is more artistic content now than can be consumed. Dear lord, do you have any idea how many rappers there are? It’s insane. You can’t just put Lil’ in front of a name anymore. They’re all used up. Now its gotta be a sentence. Lil’ Gucci Flip da Scrip. And over a million books a year are published! And AI is on the way and eventually AI artist will definitely be a thing where your "art form" will be writing command props into ChatPCP. The point is, everyone’s making movies and writing and painting and crafting and while I believe everyone should create as an outlet for protecting their mental & spiritual health, hoooooooooooooly shit, there’s so much art now. This egregious proliferation of creativity must be sign of humanity’s oncoming doom. It must.



Third! That mark of the beast on the forehead thing. I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and I know I’m not the only one, but I wanted to have some fun writing about it. Red hat. Catchy slogan. Evil rat fuck charlatan false prophet leading people astray? Seriously. Those stupid red hats. And they’re all so cheaply made I wouldn’t be surprised if they leave red stains on the culty foreheads, if the culties ever actually took the stupid things off. For real though, the red-hat-with-slogan as forehead-beast-mark is honestly the impetus of this entire stupid essay. I just can’t shake how perfect the metaphor is. Wait, is it a metaphor? Whatever, the point is the orange one is the beast and the hats are the mark and it’s just so fucking obvious but I still bet you $5 ol’ John the Revelator didn’t see this shit coming.
 
I could go on with more apocalyptic signs ad nauseam, but I want this to be an approachable and quick read so I will begin the ending by circling back to art and prophecy, and specifically, the notion of self-fulfilling prophecy. I was recently struck by the notion that there is way too much dystopian fiction out there. Now, I believe it is a reflection of our constant underlying dread and a coping mechanism for said dread (hee hee Right Said Dread, I’m Too Angsty), to create dystopian content. But since life often follows art, specifically scientific advancement following science-fiction, have we driven ourselves toward an apocalypse by constantly creating apocalypse scenarios? Could burning the books save us! (Holy cow, there’s a fun one to play with..)
 
And even if we burn the books, how do we get rid of all the dystopian films!!!?
 
Okay, I’ve kind of written myself off a cliff here. Just…I don’t know…maybe layoff the dystopian shit. Create more utopian content and see if we can make that humanity’s fate.

 Either way, if you’re an agnostic sociopath like me, grab a real-sugar soda and some butter smothered popcorn and try to enjoy the horrific show. The first Act is underway, and eventually there’s going to be a big to-do over in the Middle East at some temple somewhere…or maybe Missouri. I’m not sure if that will be the second Act or the third Act. Either way it will be The Final Act (said in big booming voice).



I hope it’s in Missouri. I live close to Missouri.

Cheers,

tm