Harold Camping, an 89 year old crazy man who is receiving far more attention than he deserves, has predicted that tomorrow will be the beginning of the rapture, the time when Jesus Christ comes down to earth and takes away believers to heaven, leaving the rest of us doomed to die in a series of interesting and twisted ways. Essentially kind of like the Saw movies but with lower production values.
By the 21st of October we will apparantly all be dead, giving us a good 4 months to enjoy life with no ringing in our ears from being told we are going to hell for our sinful ways. A North Carolina atheist group is organising a "Rapture After Party" for atheists, which I encourage around the world for obligatory orgies and goat sacrifices once we're rid of our preachy do-gooding neighbours.
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| He thinks he's getting saved. Unfortunately statistics prove that there is a 9/10 chance that he has abused at least one child in his past. |
It seems that every year now we are getting predictions for the end of the world. Every single one of these lunatics get inordinate amounts of airtime from mainstream media (and even more from terrible and lazy bloggers like myself). Why do we even bother to pick up these stories any more? It's the news equivalent of going out onto the street and broadcasting the ramblings of a drunk homeless man on the evening news as a main headline. There are enough real problems in the world to keep us occupied for our entire lives. People are dying of famine all across the world, easily curable diseases are ravaging the lives of people across Africa. Hell, there's even plenty of cats stuck up trees and light bulbs that need changing. At least those problems are real and have any chance of actually happening.
It's just an example of terrible "water cooler" news. Stuff which terrible middle class people in offices who have nothing interesting to talk about can babble over while they get a coffee or while they should be doing their job. Everyone knows it is bollocks, even the people saying it probably know it's bollocks deep down, but we'll happily say to each other "So *chuckle chuckle* do you think the world is going to end on Saturday?" and then some office clown can turn around and say something like "Well if it does at least I won't have to pay back my mortgage!" or some equally inane and unfunny joke. Then they'll all chuckle heartily and go back to their desks, ready to keep on wasting their lives chained to a desk writing things which have no impact on anything except a number in a machine. Convincing themselves that hey, while they might have dreamt of being a singer or doing something meaningful in the world, at least they're paying the bills and sending little Jonny to private school. Sitting there, drudging their way through the days, they need this kind of possible-but-never-actually-going-to-happen excitement to keep themselves from realising that in their 70 years on earth they could be seeing the world, fornicating madly with anyone and everyone or sampling the pleasures of a thousand different joys that the world has to offer. Instead the file tax returns and cry gently into a pillow at night.
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| Hey Ted, did you know we're going to die cold and alone having done nothing of value? |
So maybe we do need these shitty news stories? Maybe the world really would fall apart and end if people got so depressed with the reality of life that they just stopped doing their worthless jobs. Maybe these apocalypse stories are the only thing between us and a real apocalypse. Or maybe it's just shit, lazy journalism made to shift newspapers and fill airtime because our media overlords know we're all the terrible kind of people who pay attention to this crap even though none of us believe it and most of us scoff at the idea of it. Clever bastards.
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