The Revenge of Good King George

In the 1770s the American colonies revolted, thereby defying God, King and Country, changing the timeline of history forever and opening up a trajectory that would ultimately lead to hamburger franchises, conservative talk radio and reruns of The Beverly Hillbillies.  True patriots of the time, loyal to the Crown, were subsequently forced to flee across the border to His Majesty's Dominion of Canada, where they reestablished themselves in villages like Pugwash, Nova Scotia.

Since then the story has been a dismal one, particularly from the perspective of the Queen's English.  Spelling terrorist Noah Webster willfully attempted to turn the language upside down with devilish perversities and infelicities which were then exported back to bastardise the Mother Tongue.  Even the Australians, ever a nation of star spangled suck-ups, were carried away with the dastardly plot, and dropped the anointed letter 'u' from colour and labour, as even a cursory check of the Macquarie Dictionary clearly demonstrates.

But now there's a reverse trend underway, according to a reserved but cautiously gleeful report from the BBC.  It seems Americans are warming - and not before time - to "Britishisms."  Metrosexuals and gingers are meeting on weekends in trendy gastropubs for a bit of a chat up and even perhaps indulge in an occasional spot of snogging.  Spot on!

Resistance would be gormless.

Behemoth unveiled

There's nothing like a good science story, and that notable science journal, The Philadelphia Trumpet, seems to have a scoop in its latest issue.

Esteemed science writer Robert Morley has uncovered the identity of the Job 40 behemoth!

Forget whatever you might have heard about such candidates as dinosaurs, crocs, elephants and modern rhinos; the behemoth was a baluchitherium.

Masterful logic leads to this conclusion, and only Mr Morley's article could do full justice to the case he makes.  I know I feel much edified by this information, having been long tormented by the mystery. 

According to Robert Morley, baluchitherium was wandering around the post-Edenic world, and was thus contemporary with humankind.  Job 40:19 however "implies that it was too big for people living in Job's day to kill."

Wielding scientific methodology with razor-sharp acumen, Morley asks the question that dominates the minds of seasoned paleontologists everywhere - "But why would God have created such an impressive animal?"  You know, of course, that he will provide his own erudite response...

If you were alone next to an angry African elephant, surely you would feel quite small and helpless.  How much punier and more terrified would you feel, though,  if a behemoth were charging you?  Would you not be inclined to seek God for protection?  Would you not hurriedly repent of any wrongs?

The profundity is breathtaking!  Yes, of course.  Rather than running like the clappers, any normal person would certainly fall on their knees in front of the charging behemoth and beseech the Eternal for forgiveness and divine intervention (hopefully the list of repentable items wouldn't be too long given the circumstances!)

My only question would be exactly how Adam, Job and other Old Testament worthies could have encountered this beast given that, while it certainly lived on our side of the Cretaceous extinction (something that our meticulous prehistory scholar takes pains to point out) the last baluchitherium is still supposed to have passed over into extinction more than twenty million years ago.

But that's small potatoes given the huge credibility of The Philadelphia Trumpet (and clearly this article was thoroughly peer reviewed prior to publication), so we can only but wait for lesser journals, such as Scientific American and New Scientist, to catch up with Mr Morley's cutting-edge analysis. 

The Lord is late

Here I am, perched atop a cowshed roof in Rongotea, dressed in my white ascension robes and ready to go. It's 6.45. The Lord is late. Not as much as a tremor from passing cattle trucks.

Could it be a 1 Kings 18:27 moment? The prophets of Baal have been beseeching the deity to come down, but it's a no-show. Elijah, showing a singular lack of ecumenical compassion, begins to "take the Mickey."

At noon Elijah mocked them, saying, "Cry aloud! Surely he is a god; either he is meditating, or he has wandered away, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep and must be awakened." (NRSV)

A note in my New Oxford Annotated Bible reveals that "he has wandered away" is a euphemism for Baal having been, um, "caught short." Harold Camping's god seems likewise indisposed. Nasty!

The prophets of Baal, of course, met a sticky end in the Wadi Kishon. Camping's fate will be less gruesome, no doubt. A mere byword for fanaticism and self delusion. Less pleasant will be the consequences for those folk who were sucked in by Camping. There'll be a lot of impoverished people with ruined lives and reputations after tonight, and they - unlike Camping - can probably do without the additional burden of ridicule.

What will be done with all those posters and billboards? What will Harold tell the faithful? Probably not "I've been a jerk and will gladly reimburse you all for the losses I've caused you."

Oh well, I'll give it another half-hour before climbing back down. Too chilly to stay up much longer...

Disappointment? What disappointment?

Here in Rongotea, where I'm "camping out," it's approaching 10 AM on Judgment Day, hallelujah! News is already coming in of an early sighting of Jesus over Dunedin. (Personally, I'd avoid Dunedin like the plague today, full as it is of the damnable relics of pestiferous Presbyterianism.) New Zealand is the first major country up on the timetable of wrath, so those of you lucky beggars in the USA should have a clear 'heads up' - and an opportunity for last-minute knees-down, hands-upraised repenting as the wave of destruction begins its inexorable march across the planet.

To aid you in coming to terms with the great event, why not zip across to the Everything Dies blog. Yeah, I know the title is a bit of a downer, but let's face it, it's a good day for sobriety. There you'll learn about Harold Camping's more successful forerunner, William Miller, and what happened when his predictions kept coming up empty. To add to the motivation, the tale is told in comic strip format. Brilliant. I mean, would you have time to read an academic treatise on the subject today before you get "caught up" (or "put down".)

Last Tango in Rongotea

The bustling centre of Rongotea

Well folks, it's almost the end... or more precisely The End. Harold Camping has crunched the numbers and he has no "Plan B," so I guess that settles it. I've been digging through my old files to find an ancient Jack Chick tract - you know, the ones with the "sign on the dotted line and be instantly saved" form - but no luck so far. Just in case the Lord overlooks me on the 21st, being so busy and all, I've been looking for a safe bolt-hole to avoid the worst of the cataclysm that begins at about 6 o'clock Saturday evening. I daresay there'll be tsunamis and volcanic eruptions just as the Camping Christians are raptured upwards, so a celebratory beach barbeque is probably out. My little town is perched far too close to the fleshpots of Auckland to feel secure... it seems obvious that the fire and brimstone will be particularly heavy over the top half of the North Island and, well, I'd put good money on an extra-thorough pounding of the Laidlaw College campus, and even worse at that Baptist joint where Tim Bulkeley teaches...

So, where to go? I'm thinking of heading to Rongotea (Ron-go-tee-uh), where the maternal grandparents once lived. It's a fairly long drive, but I should be comfortably ensconsed by 6pm. Why Rongotea? Well, nothing much has happened there since about 1937, and most New Zealanders - even those who live in Palmerston North - have never heard of it, so hopefully it's low on the Wrath priority list. Plus, there are no nearby fault lines, volcanoes or vulnerable coastline. I've hired an abandoned cowshed, and have a survival kit ready (Pepsi Max cans, peanut butter, the complete DVD collection of Babylon 5, a copy of the The Message Bible, and a battered Windows XP laptop to follow the global catastrophe.)

So I don't expect you'll be hearing from me on the 22nd, what with you lot all being knocked off by the Armies of Heaven (with the possible exception of Larry and Velvet) and me being either ruptured raptured, or incommunicado in the town that time forgot.

Either way, have a nice weekend...