FlamingText

Deus ex machina

  Well it's Monday and the cataclysm predicted by my conspiracy-theorist friend hasn't materialized, so I had to get up this morning and go to work like any other Monday. Not that I'm complaining. And the next time I talk to said friend I'm probably not going to rub it in that the latest vague and implausible threat to be issued via the internet (soon to be known as "the Ranternet") was, like so many others, probably concocted by a 45-year old "Alias" fan who likes to show up in chatrooms and brag about his work with "the Company."

  I may be practicing a bit of a double standard here based on my fondness for crackpot theories, because I definitely don't cut this much slack to everybody who cries wolf. I may have a tendency to gloat, for instance, when certain believers in an impending apocalypse set a date and that date comes and goes with nary an apocalypse in sight. People waiting for the Rapture to come and scoop them off to heaven remind me of a kid who doesn't do his homework because he hopes it might snow three feet tonight and school will be cancelled tomorrow. Plan for the future? No, thanks. Jesus is comin'!

  The collective effect of all this hopin' and wishin' and anticipatin' seems to be that a substantial and disproportionately well-represented portion of the population sees no point in thinking more than a year or two into the future. The ones who set a specific date always seem to set it right around the corner, never more than a few years off. It's never going to happen two hundred years from now ("We figured it out using Numerology!"). It has to hold the promise of happening within their lifetimes or it loses its motivational value, I guess.

  The year 2000 represented a unique convergence of several promised apocalypses as millenarian Christians, black-helicopter survivalist types, and WIRED-reading technophiles alike awaited their own particular forms of The End of Life As We Know It. Interestingly, although I saw plenty of mockery in the media for all the doomsayers who based their warnings on the computer glitch angle ("When the dial rolls over to double zeros THE MISSILES WILL ALL LAUNCH AT ONCE!!"), the Rapture-anticipators seem to have mostly gotten a free pass. I guess that while it's all in good fun to mock survivalists and computer nerds, it's considered unseemly to mock people who make stunningly inaccurate predictions based on deeply-held religious convictions. Unless they're "cultists."

  Also, while I saw a fair amount of sheepish "whoops!"-es in the press from the people who talked up Y2K beforehand, I never heard any talk of massive defections from evangelical churches when the aforementioned Rapture 2000 produced a big goose egg. So I'm assuming most of those people just pushed the date back again and remain poised for their imminent rescue from this world of misery. The Rapture's been postponed like this plenty of times before without any apparent impact on the church's credibility, and the Faithful remain as steadfast as Cubs fans, every year knowing in their heart of hearts that this could be the year.

  Of course, it's not as if Cubs fans believe that when the Cubs finally win the World Series all the fans who remained loyal to the Yankees or Red Sox or Cardinals (Hi Rae!) are going to roast in hell for all eternity and "serves 'em right anyhow." Or maybe they do. I don't pretend to understand Cubs fans.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  I had a full weekend of day-after-the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it fun activities, the highlight of which was going to see The French Project at the Vodvil Theatre. It was charming and weird. I made a mental note afterwards that matching outfits serve better than any other device I can think of to make a group of people playing instruments look like a band. And remember: Without a little French accent, lamé is just lame.

  On Sunday I saw a workshop produced by friends of mine called "Tits! the Musical" which was thoroughly enjoyable, if brief, and then afterwards there was a talkback where the director asked us all what we thought of it and what we didn't like and "what we'd like to see more of", and at this all the heterosexual males in the room sort of looked at our shoes and didn't really say anything.

Posted by flamingbanjo at August 22, 2005 12:53 PM