The End Will Come with an Exhausted Whimper

No. I shan't. Some livid ranting, I now heart-breakingly concede, is required in its place.

Why make this the least bit easy for you? The Truth is no longer spoken in hardly any avenue of human exchange -- and even when it is attempted, it's ignored by a global consensus that's done everything it can to mimic the behavior of just so many terrified-to-their-core ostriches.

You want the End of the World to go down painlessly? Well, that simply isn't going to happen. You want it, then, to go down at least ... you know, quickly? It won't do that, either. You want what's coming -- and we all kind of know on some level that something is coming, don't we? -- to just go away (and come again some other day)? Sorry 'bout that: It can't. It's already been invited, RSVPed and been welcomed with blaring trumpets, by most of us, with our arms spread really really wide open.

Like.................................this.

It's I'm Not Okay, You're Not Okay gone global. And it's anti-fun: which we adore!

We're ready. Beat us, bleed us, kill us, take us now: before we change our minds.

Har.

By the way: for those of you awaiting The Rapture -- boy, are you in for a Major Letdown. Did you really think you'd been awarded some Heavenly get-out-of-jail-free card? You weren't. No such Agreement with Jesus Christ exists. Jesus' name does not appear anywhere in The Book of Revelation -- and the word "rapture" doesn't even appear in your Bibles, no matter how lovingly King Jamesesque your clumsy translations of a heavily biased non-compendium from a long bygone era -- one that you have never, ever ever actually been privy to.

Forgive my bluntness -- but that's pretty much the truth of it.

Hubris blossoms as far as the eye can see nowadays.

* * * * *

We are all responsible on some level for the impending arrival of The End.

It's called Self-Fulfilling Prophecy -- a phenomenon whose existence has been backed up, repeated and supported by countless university social psychology trials that have demonstrated its consistency and absolutely-certain existence.

Do I want to scare you? No. I seek to flat-out shred your complacency -- to rip that Linus blanket from between your arthritic clutching finger joints, and either set fire to it, or shove the damned thing down the garbage disposal in your (far more likely than not) unwashed-dishes-and-countertops kitchens. Then I want to flip the wall switch: and watch your blanket shudder, skitter-thump and belch, twisting wildly and sloppily, spitting silverware and damp food bits all over white pristine floor tiles, as it gets shredded down the hidden-bacteria-infested drain in your fully modern, otherwise immaculate sin-of-gluttony alcove.

Do I sound, oh, what -- mildly pissed?

Bet I do. At the very least.

* * * * *

An online poll conducted by AOL on Sunday, January 14, 2007, produced the following partially-tallied results:

(Yes, yes - these poll results were not "scientific:")

How close are we to the end of human history?

Within 1,000 years................................57%
1,000 to 1,000,000 years.....................28%
Over 1,000,000 years...........................15%

Total Votes: 186,073

That's no mockup. This was an actual poll.

No one asked -- but of the 57 percent who figured our species would be gone "within 1,000 years" (the overwhelming majority, BTW -- more than 106,000 individuals), what percentage of those voting more likely believed humanity's extinction will occur within, say, 100 years? Or, how about closer to 50?

Is it safe to say, as well, that the majority of those voting believed that, for the first time in recorded human history, we're all on the verge of just "going away" -- and there's no point in even trying to do anything about it?

Something that might have prevented this?

C'mon. Is what I'm painting for you here such a stretch? Most of you have to know in your hearts that it isn't.

And The End isn't going to be very pretty, either.

* * * * *

You know those fictional films and books where people simply disappear (while their eye glasses, ball caps, earrings and artificial "body augmentations" all plop into their once-held seats, directly above their now-vacated shoes)?

Well, it ain't gonna go down like that.

Far more likely -- after the initial flurry of global murder-suicides run their course -- The End will lollygag in a miserable crawl: not with gunshots popped, and cries shouted, but rather with a death silence everywhere -- except for a few scattered and exhausted whimpers.

Most people in the world won't even begin to notice The End until some of their favorite television shows cease being broadcast (due to a lack of interest and funding, never mind absent producers and actors and camera people, who will have already walked off their sets to try to begin to settle their own unsettleable affairs).

Radios will fall silent, too. There will be no more snide and cynical insults on talk shows, no more defiant hip-hop rhymes backed by rumble woofers.

Dogs and cats are likely to be far more dramatically upset by this than we will be.

Listen for the wind, and you'll have no trouble at all hearing it.

Pin drops, either.

We are going to drag out our bird-peeping deaths, well past the point where we're still attempting to communicate with one another.

And really, what would be the point in talking, at such a stage?

Airy, dry, truncated coughs will be heard distantly in the hills -- every now and then, but no more than that.

Simpering, woeful whines will be whispered, ever so delicately, in the dells -- but that'll be about it there.

Then, finally -- finally -- comes our hard-earned, and well-deserved booty: filthy, careening, stomach-churned-and-blendered worldwide silence.

Oh, what a bunch of selfish, vicious, arrogant, stupid, useless twats human beings used to be --

Infants and young children had died along with everyone else. But what the hell -- urinate on 'em. Little buggers crapped like everybody else (or they used to).

* * * * *

Then, surprise,

surprise --

We accomplished our goal, at lo-ong last:

Bloody nothing.

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