Apocalypse Overkill: Our Small Worlds End, But Hearts Keep Beating

We’re all gonna die. The Earth and even love itself is melting like that Nazi’s face in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Screaming babies. The Apocalypse is raining men sometime tomorrow afternoon. Stay tuned.

Religious billboards predict the Rapture with the faithful consistency of the return of the McRib.

In all of history, there’s never been a generation that didn’t think they’d be the last – that they’re living through an apocalypse, that the world is going to end with them in it.

Actually, the whole concept of the Rapture was first coined by 15-year-old Scottish girl Margaret MacDonald, no known relation to Ronald McDonald, who experienced a prophetic vision in 1830 foretelling a 2-step return to Jesus: True believers would be “raptured into heaven” before the return of the Big Cheese Himself.

Since then, there have been hundreds of predictions of the Rapture, one of the most famous being Harold Camping, who predicted it would happen May 21, 2011. When those chips didn’t cash, he revised it to Oct. 21, 2011, blaming faulty math. Someone forgot to carry a 2 or move a decimal point enough places to the left. When that flopped, he gave up, but not before thousands of his followers spent their life savings and retirements on his billboards.

But then again maybe it wasn’t the carried 2 after all, and he just didn’t make the cut. Wipe that grin off your face – neither did you.

We’re stuck here until the world explodes – or our hearts give out. Whichever comes first. Godspeed.

It’s the End of the World as We Know It and R.E.M. Feels Fine

Now admittedly, things look bleak. In my lifetime, half of all the animals living in the world have died, literally. In the last 40 years, the Earth has lost half its wildlife in terms of population. By 2050, there could be more plastic in the ocean than fish.

Scientists think we’re currently waltzing into the 6th mass extinction – pegging the species extinction rate at 1,000 to 10,000 times higher than normal. But unlike previous die-offs, this one is on us and our addiction to fossil fuels.

So you could be forgiven for wondering if we’re living through an environmental apocalypse. By the math and science, we probably are.

But remember, Leave It to Beaver fans “ducked and covered” under their desks every third period, expecting commies to blow them high into the sky at any moment.

And their parents lived through the most destructive war of all time, killing 85 million people. Nearly 80% of males born in 1923 in the Soviet Union were dead by the end of World War II.

And that was just the sequel to the War to End All Wars, which nearly worked but needed a great follow-up in the same vein as The Empire Strikes Back or The Godfather Part II.

Throw in the Influenza Epidemic, which killed about 100 million, dancing cheek to cheek with World War I. Dial back the WayBack Machine even further to the Black Plague, which killed off over 30 to 50% of the European population.

The point is every generation thinks it’s the end of the world, when it’s really just the end of theirs.

We’re all going to die. That’s being human and part of this life contract we signed when we fought to crawl out of the womb.

A Soliloquy for Todd Snider

Last month, sipping coffee and scrolling through Facebook on a Saturday morning when I should have been nose deep in an Anne Rice novel, I was devastated to hear of the passing of Todd Snider, America’s troubadour stoner slinging the blues barefoot with a shit eating grin and the wit of a space pirate with a Millennium Falcon guitar.

Goddamnit. He had so much more to give, so many more stories to tell, and the vacuum of his leaving tugs at your soul and reminds you that all gravity is temporary.

As Snider’s Hardworking Americans song “Opening Statement” succinctly puts it:

“I may never know the road I’m on
The here-and-now or the gone
The coming home or the running away
You gonna miss my laugh someday
Somewhere along the way
Somewhere along the way.”

I missed that laugh immediately. Anyone who’s listened to his songs and rambling stories lost one hell of a friend, someone we could always talk to in our heads because his wit was human, like shit eating a grin with the best of someone you knew.

As an honorary wake, I threw on Todd Snider’s 2014 show at the The Buskirk-Chumley Theater in Bloomington, Indiana. In his song “The Last Laugh,” he kinda prophetically predicts his own death:

“I want a six-foot tombstone, two feet thick
With the words engraved ‘I tried to tell you all I was sick’
So you will know that I was right when you go walking on past
You tried to tell me I was well, but look who’s laughing last.”

And he’s still laughing up there in the Agnostic mystery. Now he finally knows the answer, which isn’t really an answer but a feeling, like the most glorious Monet of a sunset, the glimmer of fish deep in the water, the craters of the moon posing a shit eating smiley face from above and laughing his ass off.

It’s Who You Love and the Stories You Face

Life’s the blink of an eye – we’re here for a brief moment, a flash of light. The Apocalypse is coming for all of us. In the meantime, it’s all about who you love and the stories that happen along the way. Hold on to those around you, the troubadours of your own personal world, because this life is a gift of fish shimmering moments made up of seconds that burrow the minutes, minutes becoming years, and years fading into memories.

Be happy. Be gentle. Touch grass and feel your face in the sun. Kick back over a good herbal smoke and appreciate the moment. Chase life and know you’re good enough before you’re called back to the stars.

Smoke ‘em if you’ve got ‘em. Life is for the living. It’s a ride, a ramble, a barefoot journey into mystery and a troubadour’s rambling bullshit. And we won’t truly know the answer until we’re called back to the sky. No matter your take, we all know whose name we’ll be yelling when we’re clutching our chest. Stick to what you know, which is nothing you know, nothing for sure. God bless Agnostic wonderment.