The Last Word on the End of All Things

We are now nearly a week out from the "end of the world" as predicted by Harold Camping, the 89-year old "prophet" who crunched a bunch of numbers based on Bizarro World math and came up with a bunch of dates that spelled out the world's destruction. As we know now, the world as we have known it has not ended. About the only thing that could qualify as apocalyptic that happened these last few days is the horrific tornado that swept through Joplin, MO that has killed an ever upwardly revised number of people. And that of course made me think about the need some people have to see the destruction of "them". They want to see "them" pay for their sins and be punished for their screw-ups. It makes this whole end times thing seem wrong-headed and a bit mean-spirited. I wonder if Mr. Camping is thinking about the souls of those poor folks in Joplin right now. Or the ones who bought his doomsday story and sold everything in hopes that they might be saved. They're going to have to rebuild their lives now from scratch. I doubt that Family Radio, Camping's ministry is going to help them. That would mean admitting he was completely wrong, and the hell he's doing that. In fact, he still holds out that Judgment Day still will occur on Oct 21, 2011. Same bat time. Same bat channel. Same batshit crazy non-event.

Stay Tuned. Or don't. I'm sure you have plenty of other things to do. God knows I do.

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KCD

It's After 6pm (local time)...No Apocalypse

Well, friends the time has come...and gone.
It's almost 6:20 EST (or is that EDT?). No earthquakes, no signs of dead people rising into the air to meet some light in a splitting sky. There's not even the zombie infestation that the CDC warned about. Of course, if the CDC is warning about zombies, someone in there is clearly having a belly laugh. You probably will not find a more straight-up organization than the Centers for Disease Control, and that's a good thing. After all, if you think about it, there are no doubt pathogens stored within their chambers, the names of which you can't pronounce, that can unleash plagues more ghastly and devastating than anything devised in Harold Camping's fevered imagination.

Simply put, if it's apocalypse you're looking for, you need look no further. The CDC is well able to oblige. Thank God that's not their mission.

Well, it's now 6:39 pm local time. Still no earthquakes. Having pondered where I would be when the rapture comes (or not), having sipped coffee during the non-proceedings, I must now turn my attention to the other question of eternal significance and ponder what thing I must do, what herculean feat must I accomplish...for a Klondike bar.

Perhaps I'll have a smoothie while I think this through.


More Later, since there will be a later.
KCD

P.S. Harold Camping, the mad prophet at the center of this non-event is at this moment, incommunicado. Curious. Do you suppose he was...No. Not possible.

Something to Ponder as We Await the End

For those of you who haven't been following recent news, the end of the world as we know it happens Saturday, May 21st, 2011. From the folks who brought you the last Judgment Day, this 21st Century iteration has all the bells and whistles. Earthquakes. Dead folks rising into the air. The door slamming on eternal salvation as tightly as the door slamming on Noah's Ark. And it's been raining rather a lot lately, have you noticed?
Anyway. Herewith, a slightly, well, maladjusted take on the impending doom that awaits us this weekend. I'll be sipping a cup of joe at the proceedings.

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KCD

The End Is Near

Well friends, apparently the end of all things is upon us. On May 21st, at around 6pm (?) local time, there will be a massive earthquake signaling what some have called "Judgment Day". I say some because for most of us, it'll be just another weekend. But it would seem that for a select few, the day of reckoning will at long last arrive. For those few, living and dead, it will be the time of "The Rapture". See, the earthquake is supposed to open up all these graves so that the "righteous dead" (because the "grateful dead" was already taken) can rise to meet the Lord in the air. After that, those that are alive will also rise to meet Jesus, and this is all supposed to happen Saturday while the rest of us do mundane things like, grocery shopping, meeting friends, or perhaps looking after elderly parents. You know. Normal stuff. Those of us that are left behind will face "tribulation such as the world has never seen." As if this latest winter in New England and the swelling Mississippi River this spring in the Midwest has been benign before now. Leave aside the tornadoes.

Now, you could say that I'm just going on about nothing, but no less a news outlet than NPR reported on this about two weeks ago. Others have picked up on it since then. There is a full-page ad in USA Today announcing this. People have really put a lot of store by this. They've quit their jobs, sold their houses, burned through their savings, and otherwise prepared for that great and dreadful day which just happens to come on a day when most of us are going to be sleeping in.
Of course, the end of the world has been predicted many times before by people who have it on "biblical authority" that they knew the exact date and time. The last such warning that I remember came in 1988. And...well, the sun rose the next day, and the next day, and the next, and...here we are. Harold Camping, the 89-year old former civil engineer and "prophet" who came up with this bit of news the last time (only to realize that he miscalculated) is sure he's got it right now. All the math lines up, he says.

If you're using the math of Bizarro World.
So...if you read this and you happen to believe the Judgment is in fact upon us, wait a minute....
IF you believe that, then you won't be reading this at all. You'll be waiting in secret for the day of God's wrath to be revealed, which if you believe the foregoing will be Saturday, May 21st, 2011.
Be there or be...well, you know.
I'll be tuned in to CNN in case the sky splits. I'll let you know how it turned out.

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KCD

Technical Issues Resolved

This is good. A day after being shut down with what they used to call in the old days of TV, "technical difficulties", we are back. Of course, they called it "maintenance issues", but it's the same thing. Either way, the problems are fixed and we're back live.
A good thing.

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KCD

To Illustrate My Point

Not to prolong the whole rant about how there are some things that you can't have an "app" for, but I just found this at popisms.com. You've all seen this. Of course they use this to sell yet ANOTHER phone, but I got the point, and I think so did a lot of folks.

Here's the link:
http://www.popisms.com/TelevisionCommercial/22962/Microsoft-Commercial-for-Windows-Phone-2010.aspx

Yeah, I know that this is primitive, but I haven't figured out uploading videos yet.


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KCD

No "App" For What Matters

Apparently, to my amazement, there is an "app" (application, for the rubes among us; see my hand raised?) for damned near everything you can imagine. Any piece of information your little heart might desire to have, there's an "app" for it, accessible on these little devices called iPhones (which Steve Jobs, founder and CEO of Apple invented), or iPads which connect you to the Cloud of Unknowing called the wireless internet. You can access TV shows, games, news, video, movies (of course, why anyone would want to watch "Avatar" on such a tiny device is beyond me), even your friends.

Of course if you don't have friends, there's not an app for that, is there?

What if you're inherently anti-social (which a shocking number of people are)? Is there an app for a personality? Does having your own app make you a better person? Donald Trump has his very own app, which shouldn't surprise anyone. What should surprise us is that it doesn't try to fire the other apps. Does anyone believe he's a better person for it? Did anyone sane believe he was much of anything when he was building casinos and naming them after himself?

I was thinking the other day about a USA Today article from back in November 2010. We now have more connectivity that ever, it said. But we're also less connected than ever. I thought it was a curious irony then. I still do. Now I'm not knocking technology even though it seems that I am here. Technology is an awe-inspiring thing. But like a lot of people, I worry about our technology getting the better of our humanity. Einstein worried about it. A good deal of sci-fi art and film and fiction is concerned with this, and not without reason. Because as I was reminded recently at a funeral, the things that matter can't be reduced to an icon on a computer, wireless or otherwise.
A man lost his wife at that funeral.
No app for that.
Two young men lost their mother.
No app for that.
A woman lost her sister.
No app for that.

All kinds of connectivity, but there's no app for connections, and no one can build it.
All of the marketing that says otherwise is not telling you the truth. I mean, seriously. Are you going to watch your kid being born on your iPad, or are you going to get thee to the hospital post haste? Or your granddaughter at her first dance recital? You want a text of that? Or are you going to find the school? We don't need another "phone to save us from our phones". There's no app for experience up close and personal of the things that matter. There's no app for the things that feed your soul. And thank God for that.

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KCD

Correction

My last post said that Osama bin Laden was taken out near the Pakistan border. Turns out that is not true. He was taken out at a compound near the capital, Islamabad, in a fairly affluent district. Can you imagine? A terrorist mastermind living in the suburbs!
That would play pretty poorly in say, Newton, MA. Can you imagine how that would go over with the residents on Martha's Vineyard?

Weird.

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KCD

By Way Of Contrast

Last night, major news outlets confirmed that master terrorist Osama bin Laden had been taken out by US forces in a raid on his compound near the border of Pakistan (I think). President Barack Obama delivered the news to the nation late on Sunday night in a televised address (interrupting "Brothers and Sisters", I might add).

A family mourns the passing of a daughter, sister, wife, mother, and friend, who by all accounts never sought to harm anyone.

A nation celebrates the passing of a deranged terrorist and murderer of thousands of people all over the world, including 3000 in one day in September 2001 in NYC. No one is sad that he is finally gone. Nobody cares that bullets took him out, not some disease, and no one, I assure you, gives a tinker's damn if he suffered.

Just goes to prove that some people make the world a better place by leaving it.

Osama bin Laden, terrorist and mass murderer.
Died May 1st, 2011, he leaves the world a fair bit better off by assuring that more people won't die at his hand.

Rest In Pieces.




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KCD

Death In the Family

My partner, my beloved Barbi lost her sister on Easter Sunday, the 24th of April. So as you might expect, there aint been no posting going on. Last week I flew down to MD for the funeral. Barbi had been down there a week before visiting with her sister in what turned out to be her final days on Earth. I brought her home with me on Thursday. We laid low this past weekend. She remembered her sister and grieved. She will for a good while to come. But no one wanted to see her sister suffer, and she did. She's in a better place now. I believe that, cliched as it sounds.

Jacki Randall
Born April 12, 1951
Died April 24, 2011
She leaves behind a beloved sister, three brothers, a husband who loved her and fought to take care of her, two sons, three grandchildren, one just arrived, and her parents, as well as many friends. She will be remembered often and missed always.

Rest in Peace


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KCD