Blowdart That Charging Rhino. Now, the Other One.

The End Times, we are assured by ancient, miserably edited texts and modern miniseries alike, will not come upon us suddenly. No. There will be signs - not that these signs will do you any good because those misdemeanors on your juvie record are sealed by the state and not Heaven, and you are probably getting a sentence there you hadn't counted on. You can read signs all you want but your underwear better be asbestos and your SPF about a million.

So say our evangelical friends. You know what? Have a look at anime. If you study Japanese cartoon art you can learn something worth considering: after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, some believe we have already lived through Armageddon. Everything blew up. The land was scoured by flames. Living creatures disappeared and their shadows were burned into walls. The Earth Game ended and we forgot to leave the stadium. It's a damn careless theology that doesn't take into account the notion that we may inflict the end of the world on others, rather than bring it on ourselves.

Miss Sasha, for instance, is getting married not this coming but next Friday afternoon. This means an entire wedding will be traveling five miles on Route 27 through New Brunswick during rush hour the day after Rutgers' main graduation. If there is a crowbar in the vehicle in which I'm a passenger, I bet it gets some use before the cocktail hour. There you go. Whore of Babylon sighting!

An afternoon wedding has other peculiar consequences, like that bridesmaids have 8 a.m. appointments at the hair salon. Parents and grandparents will be photographed hours before noon. The bride may have a 6 a.m. with a makeup artist. Staring at the itinerary at my desk, bashing my head on my keyboard to imprint QWERTY backwards on that subtle plane above my eyebrows and hollaring, "For the LOVE OF GOD, will SOMEONE please brew a vat of espresso and THROW ME IN!" I think I'm losing my mind. Trout summarizes this morning's jaunt through Penn Station:

Last week Elvis...this week cows! People dressed in cow suits handing out very small beverages. And 2 real, very young curled up sleeping calves.

Now I have seen cows on the streets of NYC.
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Demand a basic skills retest! Underemployed actors in cow costumes - complete with napping free-range veals - hand out miniature caffeinated drinks in Penn Station and it's NOT a SIGN OF THE APOCALYPSE? I am the mother of the bride, gently reminding people through clenched teeth to honor their damn obligations to a family event. Surely, God must be impatient, tapping her feet like a Greenwich Village PTA waiting for improved reading scores.



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5.13.05 Update: Last night, Blogger ate the last three paragraphs of this entry. Mamie and I reconstructed it (Thank you, Mamie!) but it just doesn't have the same ire I loved yesterday. It may take gifts and flowers to rouse me from this torpor...