In case you have not been paying attention (which is likely given your short attention span), there will be an eclipse on Monday.  For those non-scientific types, an eclipse is when a god gets angry and blots out the sun for a while.  In the middle of the day.  Yikes!  Gods really know how to get your attention.  I guess that is why they are gods and not mere mortals.

Anyway, I am giving you this heads-up so that you have time to repent from whatever bad things you have been doing since the last eclipse.  I am figuring this repentance could take a while.  Just trying to help.  Of course, there are no guarantees that the sun will come back out again.  In which case, buckle up your motorcycle helmet.  The End of Days is upon you.  On the bright side, no more taxes.  That should make a lot of people happy.  Corporations, mostly.  Then again, corporations are people, too.  Imagine the repentance some of them will have to undertake.  It will probably be less work to just go to Hades and take their medicine.

If I had it my way, the powers-that-be wouldn’t tell the general public about eclipses.  Just let it be a surprise.  You are going to get a sub for lunch and then Bam!!  Sun’s out.  Hahahaha.  Imagine the mirth of astronomers and other like minded geeks.

“Didn’t see that one coming, did you?”  they would say as people scrambled to make sense of it all.  By “make sense,” I mean searching for a virgin to sacrifice in exchange for continued daylight.

One thing I will guarantee, it would be good to sell short the day before a surprise eclipse.

Anyway, these same scientists say you should not look directly at an eclipse.  Apparently, it can blind you.  Like masturbation but without the payoff.  That being written, I wonder how many people will sneak a peek.  After all, these same scientists are the ones who are pushing the Climate Change thing.  Maybe they are wrong.

Optometrists rejoice!  Business is going to pick up in 96 hours.

In all seriousness, imagine the panic that will ensue when actual Armageddon comes.  I hear it is right around the corner.  I heard that from a guy on one of the Jesus channels.  He had really nice hair.  And a Southern accent.  Not to make generalizations.  Anyway, for a few bucks you can get more information if you are interested.  This guy takes credit cards.

I understand that a lot of people will be traveling to Southwest Iowa/Southeast Nebraska as that is where totality of the eclipse will be achieved.  Apparently, hotels in this area are charging up to a thousand dollars a night.  After all, if the world is going to end you might as well make a few bucks.  In fairness, it will be awhile until the next time there is a total eclipse in Nebraska.  And, without it, nobody really wants to go there.  I know I don’t.  Corn and pigs, corn and pigs, far as the eye can see.

You talk about the end of the world.

Yesterday, the chance of storms was 100 percent at this location- according to the local weather service.  But, it didn’t rain.  Or as Blind Melon might put it, “No ra-aa-aaaainnn.”  I figured this would be my first and probably only chance to allude to Blind Melon.  So I took it.   Fortune favors the bold.

I guess it did rain all around us.  Maybe the meterologists can be content with the fact that it did rain somewhere.  It is good to not to be too hard on yourself.  But it makes me wonder.  Do weathermen and weatherwomen secretly pray for storms after they have made a prediction?

I can see the weather guy now, in his underwear and wearing a foil hat, chanting in his backyard in an effort to conjure up a good cumulonimbus.

“Hahahahahaha,” he shrieks.  “Tornado at the trailer park.  I told you!  I told all of youuuuuuuu!!!!”

If this sounds unlikely- or even a bit immature- consider that people continually say (or write or send) nasty things to weather people if they get the prediction wrong.  Imagine how it feels to be looking over the squash in the grocery store when up rolls some red-faced old lady.  She points a pale, bony finger in your face.

“You said it would be nice on Sunday.  We planned the church picnic.  And then it rained and it was all ruined.  I lost my potato salad in the flood!”

“Hey, I said there was a 30 percent chance.  Plus, nobody really likes your potato salad.  At least as much as they like Hazel’s.”

I’m kidding, of course.  Weathermen just take the abuse.  They do not administer it.  It is one of the downsides to serving the unreasonable public.  No matter what you predict, even if you are right, at least some of the people will be disappointed in the results.  My solution?  Mind control.  The next day, just pretend that it didn’t rain on Sunday.

“What a beautiful day we had on Sunday.  A great day for a family outing or to go fishing or for a church picnic down at St. Luke’s on Third and Main.  I don’t think it gets better than that.”

I guarantee at least some of the people will be fooled.  Old people, especially.  They either have memory problems or are seriously worried that they do.  What is the harm?  At least this way you can get your shopping done in peace.

If you are right about the forecast, make sure that no one forgets about your accurate prediction.  Ever.

“Remember last week, folks.  I predicted two to three inches of sloppy snow.  And what did we get?  Two point seven inches here at the station.  It doesn’t get any better than that.  I will bet you wish you had a stock analyst as good as I am.  Speaking of that, if you want to send a few bucks I can help you out with that, too.  After all, once you have predicted one volatile phenomenon with dozens of not very well known variables, you have predicted them all.”

Flash to commercial for financial services company.

Diversification.  That is the key.

In the meantime, the weatherman can practice.

“Well, it looks like there will be storms.  In fact, every weather station is saying that there is a one hundred percent chance of a violent outbreak, including possible tornadoes.  Now, I’m not telling you not to prepare for a tornado, I am just saying that it could be a nice day.  You never know.  If it was me, I would just schedule that church picnic for a longer time frame- say 1 to 6.  That why, if it does rain, which it may or may not, you will still have time for horseshoes.”

“Also, I wouldn’t worry about that stock.  It looks like it will go down.  On the other hand, what goes down has to go up.  Generally speaking.”

Listen up.  I get a little tired of your short, little attention spans.  What would you have done in the Victorian Era?  Besides lie back and think of England.  One wonders if that advice applied to the Poofs as well as the rest?  Likely not.  The English Bulldog does not condone sodomy of any kind.  Doggy style, presumably, is still okay.  Good show, old chap.

Are you still paying attention?  Doubtful.  It is probably the time for WAGS or the Real Housewives of Atlanta.  Just record the show.  After all, the theme for every episode is the same.  In the land of fake boobies, nothing is sacred.  Honestly, they could save themselves some money and shoot the show in the trailer park.  Call it The Real Baby’s Mommas of MountainGlen (trailer park).  Spring for some breast augmentation and some bling and nobody would know the difference.  Plus, it would distribute the wealth a little, thus appealing to the socialist demographic.  Then again, who cares about those dirty, pinko, flag-hatin’ bastards?  I sure don’t.

If you are a government agent, please take special note of the above.  The MO does not care, explicitly or implicitly, about any socialist entities, either living or dead and he burned his Che Guevara t-shirt long ago when he realized just how far from reality he had really strayed. 

Just making sure that I don’t get caught up in any Purges.

Speaking of purging, you don’t hear as much about bulimia as you used to.  Is that not a thing anymore?  In my day, young women were sticking their fingers down their throats on a pretty consistent basis.  At least they weren’t fat.  You don’t see a lot of bulemics with diabetes.  Or muffin tops.

I have never really liked muffins (I’m speaking literally).  I also don’t care for the group Alice in Chains much.  Cool band name, very few good songs.  Other than Man in the Box and Rooster.  Those are good.  Apparently, sometimes the blind squirrel finds two nuts.  But that is how he made himself blind in the first place.  Hahahahahaha.  Masturbation jokes never grow old.  But masturbators do.  Such is the cycle of living.

On that note, I hear that scientists are still trying to figure out how to make us live longer.  Much longer.  Like hundreds of years longer.  That is a terrible idea.  Can you imagine teaching six grade English for three hundred and seventy-seven years?  How about working in the produce section of the grocery store for four centuries?  I shiver to think about it.  And the thing is, somebody would have to keep doing those jobs.  Additionally, if nobody is dying then there has to be a moratorium on having babies.  That means everybody stays where they are.  Indefinitely.

The very concept of extremely long life is obviously the product of people who are not familiar with drudgery.

“Can I get a price check on asparagus, please?” Mina says, for the sixteenth million time.  Her customer nods and grumbles under his breath.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know where my manager is.  Price check on Twelve, please.”  Five minutes pass.

Bang!  Bang!  Mina shoots herself twice to make sure.

“Cleanup on Twelve, please,” Alice says.  “Sir, you can come over here if you like.  That aisle is closed for now.”

The customer looks down and shakes his head.  One day, he figures, scientists will find a way to bring back people from the dead.  Maybe then he could get back home on time for the Real Housewives of Central Asia.  Those Mongolian women have some truly substantial whammers.

Whammers.  The man laughs.  He can remember when back to when everyone just called them Titties.  Those were the days.

He looks at his watch/phone/tv/ ATM.  He hates his wife for making him get asparagus.  He wishes she would die.

But that is going to be awhile.

“And the world would be beset on all sides by Reality TV and Baby Daddy’s and there would be Fake News and Rumors of Fake News.  And an Orange Man would start a great war between the West and the East.  And it would be a huge war.  And also very sad.  But still the best war, the very beautiful, best war.  Loweth the bar and the bar loweth ever further until pestilence and Maury Povich lay heavy over the land.”

As told to by the FSM to the prophet MO in a dream after eating spicier than usual tacos

Guess what?  Scientists think that we are currently in the middle of the sixth great extinction.  Pow!  Pow Pow Pow!!!!  No more Australian pupfishes left.  Whatever the hell they were in the first place.  Some bats also have left the building recently.  Exterminated for good.  Most people don’t really like bats, anyway.

Despite this seemingly gloomy bit of news from some killjoy scientists (Don’t they every have anything positive to say?  Lighten up, Poindexters.  Scientists are entirely the reason that I don’t want to read anything.  Too depressing.), there is hope.  The Rapture is coming soon.  God means it this time.  Did you ever see how many homosexuals are running around?  A clear indicator of Armageddon if ever I have seen one.  I suppose I have probably seen many indicators of Armageddon, but I just didn’t know what I was looking at.

Anyway, with the approach of the Rapture, it might be nice to take stock and list all of the accomplishments of mankind.  Imagine one of those graduation montages from high school.  The music in the background is The Way We Were.  On a loop because this might take a while.

Look there, our most distant terrestrial ancestor is climbing out of the ooze to breed.  And then he gets eaten by a frightening dinosaur.  But not before spreading his all-important seed.  Pow!  The line of mankind is assured.  In your face, dinosaurs.  Actually, there is an asteroid coming that truly will be in your face.   At least the ash thrown into the atmosphere will be in your face.  It was your own fault, really.  You had millions of years to figure out some sort of underground bunker system and you failed miserably.  No opposable thumbs.  Gee, you were dumbs.

Moving forward in our video, we see the first mammal worth noting.  It is a small shrew/squirrel/monkey thing.  Not much to look at.  Kind of like Chris Kattan.  But funnier.  Much funnier.  Look out, grandpa!  He was taken away by a giant flying eagle thing.  Now, he is being fed to the young of that giant flying eagle thing.  Luckily, his female was in heat the previous week.  Lucky for us, not him.  He is being disemboweled while still alive by screeching adolescent birds.  The joke is on them, though.  Our ancestor was infected with a virus.  All of those birds will be dead within a fortnight.  Score one for the mammals!

Fire.  Wahoo!  Botulism deaths take a tumble.  We also learn to burn large swaths of forest.  This is a valuable lesson that ultimately leads to ethanol.  Which is clogging up the carburetors in every small engine that I own.  Thanks, Iowa.  Another reason to hate your state.  That and it is flat and conservative and smells like pig shit.  Why would anyone even live there?  I wouldn’t.  My wife also says Iowans are terrible drivers.  Probably because they are distracted by the despair of living in Iowa.  It is just a theory.

What’s going on now?  How come the screen is black?  Where is the AV kid at?

I don’t know.  I can never figure out why in the hell this thing stops working.  It shouldn’t for what we paid for it.  We were just getting to the good parts.  I have that video where Bruce Jenner wins the Decathlon.  That was awesome.

Can somebody please shut off that idiot song?  I don’t know.  I didn’t pick it.  Probably somebody from the 70’s.  Nice decade, by the way.  Nixon, the Vietnam War, and bell bottoms.  Way to contribute.

Yeah.  At least the 80’s had Hair bands.  And the rise of the 49ers.  You ever heard of Joe Montana?  Idiot.  Ok.  I’ll give you the beer commercial thing.  But that’s it.

I would have done a dry run of this slideshow.  But I thought the world would be over by now.  My bad.  You know, I was just trying to do something nice.  It’s not the end of the world.

Hahahahaha.  Not the end of the world.  And then the horns start blaring.

I am just kidding.

I find life a lot more palatable if we can joke about things once in a while.

I do admit, however, that the whole Bruce Jenner thing disturbs me a bit.  I even asked my mom to buy Wheaties.  But she bought Rice Krispies instead.

Snap, Crackle, Pop.

 

 

 

So, there was a picture of Amelia Earhart supposedly showing that she had been captured by the Japanese in 1937.  It was quickly debunked.  However, despite this debunking, the interest in Amelia Earhart disappearance theories remains high.  Did I mention that the last time anybody say or heard from Amelia was 80 years ago?  No matter.  Apparently everybody is very worried about her.  Assuming she is alive, she would be 120 years old.  This means that she wouldn’t be even know where she is.  Anyway, I digress.  She’s dead as a stone.

As mentioned, there are multiple theories concerning Amelia’s disappearance.  The first is called “Crash and Splash.”  Even conspiracy theorists try to be literary once in a while.  They fail miserably, but it is the thought that counts.  This theory, as you might have assumed, says that Amelia and her navigator went down someplace in the Pacific Ocean never to be seen again.  To me, this is the most plausible explanation.  Occam’s razor and all that.  But, the universe abhors plausible explanations.  At least the human beings inhabiting the universe do.  I’m talking about the human  beings on this planet, not the ones on the seed planets who dropped off their progeny thousands of years ago.  Who knows what those people think?  And who cares?  Deadbeat parents to be sure.

Are they even coming back for us?  It doesn’t look good.

Another theory is that Amelia landed on a small spit of land named Gardner Island.  There, she and her navigator lived an idyllic island life (think middle-aged Blue Lagoon).  At least until they starved to death.  Or died of their injuries from a brutal crash landing.  Either way, they lived briefly on the island before expiring.

I admit to making up the part about the idyllic island life.  Artistic license.

As already mentioned, a third group of theorists subscribe to the Japanese abduction idea.  The dirty Japs found Amelia and, for reasons unknown, kept her.  I am not entirely sure why they would do this.  However, there is another theory that says that Amelia was actually a spy.  If this is to be believed, then the Japanese may have put Amelia before a firing squad (after torturing her relentlessly) and buried her in a shallow, island grave.  Perhaps beneath a shady palm tree.

Or they just fed her to the turtles, which sounds brutal.  Unless you are a turtle.  Then it sounds like breakfast.

According to some, all of these theories are complete baloney.  Amelia actually survived her world flight and moved to New Jersey (to punish herself for some heretofore unknown sin).  Once in Jersey, she changed her name to Irene Bolam and remarried.  A guy actually wrote a book claiming this was true.  This book was pulled off the market when Irene Bolam threatened to sue.  Or should I say Amelia?  Anyway, Irene is also dead as a stone, thus returning us to our starting point.

Of course, all of these theories are beyond asinine and I am shocked that so much time and energy has been spent on a woman who has been most likely dead for 80 years.  What actually happened is that Amelia never even left the United States.  The entire plane trip was a hoax, initiated by the Masons in concert with aliens of an unknown planetary origin.  Their reasons for perpetrating this hoax are not entirely clear.  However, you can read more about it in my book, Amelia, the Masons, and their Alien Masters.

Available soon at a bookstore near you.

 

In response to an audio trivia question the other night, I wrote “Nobody Knows” by the Beach Boys.  This was stupid.  The song’s title is “God Only Knows.”  In fairness, Nobody and God are pretty much interchangeable, but I have made a promise to myself to avoid both politics and religion in the future.  Unless I hear a really good joke about Donald Trump, a rabbi, and a Buddhist monk.  Then all bets are off.  Nothing is cast in stone around here.

The reason I missed the question is because from childhood I actually thought the song was titled “Nobody Knows.”  Oh, how I would sing in those naive days of youth.

“Nobody knows what I think about you.”  I could have been Brian Wilson’s illegitimate son.

Regardless, despite learning the real name of the song, my brain went back to what I had learned as a child.  There is probably some sort of scientific name for this psychological phenomenon.  But I am too lazy to Google it right now.  Let’s just call it Phuchupasteria; defined as the inability to  differentiate real song lyrics from those that you have created in your own mind.

“Wrapped up like a douche,” anyone?

“Your money for nothing and your chicks for free.”  It’s “checks.”  I did Google that.  I’m not always lazy.  Only when it is easier to make up psed0-scientific words.

Photogenesis.  Myostochomotomy.  Creationism.

I lasted just under 200 words.  I have no self control.  It is probably something to do with my diet.  Victualmetaphysicalspasmosis.  Spell that, you little Indian children.

I know it’s not a real word.  Yet.  You know what shouldn’t be real?  Semi-colons.  I used one above just to show how ridiculous they are.  That is known as punctuation satire.  Who in the hell invented a damn semi-colon?  Whoever it was, they were truly a pedantic asshole.  Probably someone with a Dickensian name and a rheumatic constitution.  Mr. Withcherpicketts.  Of Worcestershire Lane.  In Dickering Dale.

Well, Mr. Witcherpicketts, your punctuation mark is a fraud.  Either use a period.  Stop.  Or a comma.  Pause.  Not stop/pause.  One sentence or two.  Make up your damn mind.  Mr. Witchpicketts is a clear case of what I like to call Vacillationary Dysfunctional Syndrome.  Or VDS.

Nevertheless, as long as I live I will not forget that the Beach Boys have a song called “God Only Knows.”

It was on the album with “Goat Vibrations.”

I am only kidding.  Hahahahahaha.  Get it?  Kid-ding.

It’s a baby goat, genius.

Goat Vibrations would also make a good band title.  Or name a syndrome often seen in rural areas of Appalachia.

Woooeeeeeewooooo-oooooo!  Woooeeeeeeeeewooooo-000000!

I was watching one of the Resident Evil movies the other day.  It doesn’t matter which.  The plot is pretty static.  Milla Jovovich fights zombies and corrupt corporate zombie-makers.  Anyway, while watching I noticed that the Resident Evil zombies are very fast.  At least as fast as living humans.  Certainly, they are much faster than the “brains, brains” zombies of my youth.  To be fair, everything moved slower in those days.  Take Jason Vorhees, for example.  He only fast-walked his victims down.  His strides were very long, but still he was a creature who knew how to smell the roses while he massacred people.

The thing with zombies (be they fast or slow) is that they really shouldn’t be that much of a problem.  I know, some are more frightening than others (like those teeth clacking zombies in the Tom Cruise movie).  Even so, they are pretty much single-minded automatons.  How difficult would it be to round them up and then obliterate thousands at a time?  The answer is not difficult at all.  In fact, in many zombie worlds they are already milling around in mass quantities.  Just bomb the hell out of them or take a tank and mash them to pieces.  I watched Fury.

“Guten tag, zombie bastards.”

A good zombie eradicator could probably destroy a thousand zombies a day.  And maybe there are hundreds of millions of zombies, but they still have a finite number.  Moreover, one can assume that zombies who cannot find brains will, after a time, fall over from malnutrition.  At the very least, their legs will become so damaged that they will become, for all intents and purposes, inert as carrots.  If carrots had rotting flesh and could make simple, guttural utterances.

“I taste much better with peas,” says the zombie carrot.  I’ll name him Howard.  Howard, the zombie carrot.  Also a good band name.  And, if there is one thing the world needs right now, it is some good band names.  Come on, Millenials.  How hard is it?  Where is the next “Toad the Wet Sprocket?”  I’ll even settle for a “Flock of Seagulls” at this point.

So, you get rid of all the zombies concentrated in the cities and 90 percent of your problem is eliminated.  The stragglers could be phased out over time by squads led by zombie-sniffing dogs.  Dogs can learn to sniff anything.  Really, the zombie is a pretty pedestrian threat.  Low tech, disorganized, single-minded.  Kind of like Evangelicals without the bad hair and make-up.

Conversely, alien invaders are a much more sinister potential threat.  In fact, if a real alien invasion took place we would quickly become slaves or food (depending on the flavor of the alien).  If you think technological superiority isn’t important, ask the American Indian.  Ghost dances and arrows wouldn’t do much against laser beams shot from twenty miles away.  On the other hand, if we were able to make friends with the aliens (we could be the Lenny to the alien George), a death ray would come in mighty handy in dealing with loose zombies.

This should not get your hopes up, however.  If aliens are anything like human beings, their intentions will be purely selfish and unlikely to bode well for our future.  And, as I mentioned, we would be powerless to stop them.  Movies like Independence Day are the psychological equivalent of whistling past the graveyard.  If you look up one day and see the Mothership, it is curtains for all of us.

There will be nothing we can do or say to save ourselves.  My personal last words?

“I taste much better with peas.”

Leave those alien bastards laughing, if nothing else.

The other day, a Wisconsin state senator said that the world is 6000 years old.  “That’s a fact.”  In fairness, this man was raised by a pastor and he has no college education, but even so this seems a fairly ignorant thing to say.  Later, he complained that he was being unfairly picked on for a difference of opinion.

Unfortunately, this senator does not understand the difference between opinions, fiction and facts.  For example, if I say that Ryan Seacrest is a snappy dresser, that is an opinion.  If I say Ryan Seacrest is a hermaphroditic walrus, that is a fiction.  Similarly, if I say a man once lost his strength from a haircut, that is a fiction.  Your hair doesn’t make you strong.  Otherwise, Mr. Clean would be feeble and helpless, like a giant baby.

The root of this issue, of course, lies in one of the great failings of human existence.  Stupid people often don’t understand that they are stupid.  If you doubt this, observe the behaviors of drivers at four way stops.  People clearly do not know the rules of the four way stop.  Yet, that does not prohibit them from flying the bird at people whose turn it is to go.

Anyway, I would like to point out some issues with the world only being 6,000 years old, if only to fly my own metaphorical bird at the ignorance of such a statement.

1- Dinosaurs are off the table.  Those fossils must have been planted there.  Probably by Satan.  Or Loki.  One of those guys, anyway.

2- Everything we have learned about DNA is wrong.  Back to the drawing board on that one.  No wonder OJ got off.

3- Petrified wood is an illusion, most likely planted by Communist heathens.

4- Atomic theory is a sham.  Especially that stuff about half life.  If they only are reduced by half a life, how will they ever die?  Dumb.  My computer is the work of tiny little angels, transmitting my messages to the rest of the world.

5- Fossils of early hominids are a sham.  There were never any Neanderthals or Homo Habilis or those little Hobbit people in Java.  More plants.  Satan is never idle.

6- Plate tectonic theory is a sham.  The continents can’t move.  Earthquakes are also a sham.  I’ve never experienced one here in Wisconsin.

7- Stars don’t exist.  They are merely jewels placed on a velvet background.  Who placed these jewels?  Angels, of course.  There are also no blackholes (sham), no neutron stars (heresy), and the Earth is actually the center of the universe.  I don’t want to hear about red shift and blue shift.

8- There was no big bang.  As there are no other galaxies, it should be obvious that there was no need for a big bang.  Simple as that.

9- Woolly mammoths don’t exist.  I don’t care what they find up there in Siberia.  Those are just hairy elephants.  If they are even real.  Which they probably aren’t.  Like earthquakes.

10- The fossils in the walls of the Grand Canyon are actually pictures drawn by angels.  Or Satan.  Though Satan is technically an angel, so I am right either way.

11- There is no evolution.  Flu shots are a sham.  There aren’t little unseen pathogens.  People who get sick are merely possessed by the devil.  How could a fish turn into a frog?  Fish can’t breathe air.

Lungfish aren’t real.  No.  Mudskippers aren’t real, either.  Fact and fact.

12-Mr. Clean is an insidious character designed to dupe the public into accepting homosexuality.  What real man cleans the house?  That is work for a woman.  It is their punishment for Eve’s wrongdoing.

Of course, that is only my opinion.

 

 

 

 

 

I was riding home last night and saw a strange sight.  A woman was mowing her lawn on a Z-Turn mower.  At the woman’s feet, sitting cross-legged, was the woman’s daughter- I’d say the girl was nine-ish.  Did I mention the woman was mowing on a hillside?  I thought about stopping and giving the woman a lesson in logic.  Clearly, she does not understand the relationship between mower blades and the limbs of children.  However, I drove on.  I was hungry and I am sure the logic would not have been appreciated.

This episode did get me thinking about the history of man.  When you think about it, our existence is extraordinary.  For most of human history we were not only stupid enough to risk chopping off our daughter’s hands (or the prehistoric equivalent of said act), we were also woefully ignorant of all the dangers surrounding us.  To whit:

Caveman A (we will call him George) picks up a dead animal.  He sniffs it and notices it is only slightly rank.  Before anyone can stop him, George gobbles up the dead animal.

Caveman B (we will call him Todd) looks at George in alarm.  “George, dead animals are possessed of a bad spirit.  You will surely die.”

George waves Todd off.  “Quit being such a worry wart.  I’ve done this dozens of times.”  He rubs his hands over his stomach.  “Good eatin’.”

In this scenario, George does not get sick and die.  Instead, he teaches everyone in the clan that eating rancid meat is fine.  He also sows the first seeds of doubt about religion.

Two years later, George and the clan eat a dead mammoth that they have found.  It smells a little bad and it has a few flies, but what the hell.  A week later, three quarters of the clan has died of botulism.  George, who is one of the lucky survivors, has a religious epiphany.  He whips himself with a willow branch to show his fealty to the gods.  Three weeks later he succumbs to sepsis, brought on by the festering wounds on his back.  The remainder of the clan interprets George’s demise as punishment from these same gods for teaching the clan to eat rancid meat.

In the next scenario, Prehistoric Man J (we shall call him Woody) wants to cross the river that is swollen from the flood.  Woody thinks there might be more game on the other side.  He is also looking for a new woman.  His last woman died in childbirth at the age of 14.  That made three in a row.

Prehistoric Man T (we will call him Todd 2) thinks the river crossing is utter foolishness.  “Woody, just wait a week or so and the river will not be so high.”

Woody is undeterred.  He is also in a breeding mood.  “Screw that.  I can make it.”  And he does.  The rest of the clan follows his lead.  One child almost is lost in the river, but is saved by an act of heroism that will become an oral tale for the ages.  Todd 2 stubbornly refuses to cross.  Todd’s balls were long ago crushed in a rock-throwing incident gone wrong, so he feels no compunction to chase women.

The clan crosses the river and finds a world of plenty.  They also find another clan.  This clan is warlike and has overwhelming numbers.  The second clan kills all the males in the first clan, including Woody, and enslaves all the women.  Unfortunately for the second clan, one of the women in the first clan is carrying syphilis.  Over the course of the next eighteen months, all but one of the adults in clan 2 dies from venereal disease.  The children who remain die of starvation during the winter.  The one remaining adult lives by cannibalizing the bodies of the dead children (cannibalism again?!) until she dies of botulism brought on by the warm temperatures of spring.

Back on the other side of the river, Todd 2 survives until he is 87 years old.  Todd 2 is clever and intelligent and appropriately cautious.  But, due to the ball crushing of his youth, Todd 2 is unable to breed and pass along these desirable genes.  In his old age, Todd 2 develops writing and draws up elaborate plans for the wheel, fire, and a water sanitation system.

Ten years after Todd 2’s death, another clan comes across his writings.  Unable to make heads nor tails of Todd 2’s instructions, the clan uses the found scrolls as crude toilet paper.

One man in the clan abrades his rectum terribly.  He had contracted dysentery from drinking tainted water.  He dies a horrible death a month later, but not before impregnating several teenage girls in the clan.  Twenty five thousand years later, a descendant of Abraded Rectum Man starts her mower and motions to her daughter.

“Wanna ride?” she asks.

It’s raining.  Again.  Oh, no.  Anyway, we have had a lot of rain lately.  On a fundamental level, rain is a good thing.  Without water all biological activity would cease.  That would be bad.  The earth would not quit turning, however.  Cruel world and all that.

For those of you for whom religion is a thing, there is a biblical story concerning some serious rain.  Forty days and forty nights straight.  Flooded the whole damn planet- or so the story goes.  Of course, these are the same people who said that snakes and donkeys can talk, so take the flood story with a grain of salt.  Perhaps a grain chipped off from Lot’s wife.  That’s what she gets for not listening to her husband.  Take heed, women.  Obey your man.  Just like Tammy Wynette.  She was a famous Christian woman.

Tall tales aside, it could actually rain for several weeks on end.  I know that it hasn’t really ever happened in recorded history (at least in this locale).  But it theoretically could happen.  I saw Waterworld.  And we all know how much life imitates art.

For example, there are Jawas everywhere around here.  Those little bastards hate the rain.  You would think they would move to Arizona or some place like that.  We ought to build a wall.  It would only need to be about four feet high or so.  And C3PO could stand behind the wall taunting them.

“Your odds of getting over this wall are 13,282 to 1.”

Speaking of Waterworld, it is a far underrated movie.  It isn’t any more hokey that Dances with Wolves or Field of Dreams.   Plus, Dennis Hopper is in it.  I was in a college class once where my professor showed Blue Velvet.  It is a very disturbing movie for rural, Christian girls to watch, I will tell you that.  I will never forget their faces when Dennis Hopper goes full on sex pervert.  That is the problem with higher education these days.  Dennis Hopper.

A flooded world wouldn’t be that bad.  We could all float around eating ducks and growing plants on our rafts.  If you didn’t like someone, you could just put some floaties on their arms and give them a little push with the Pole of Justice.  Voted off the island, if you will.  Someone would probably pick them up.  If nothing else, they would be good to eat.  Post-apocalyptic worlds are rife with cannibalism.  (I know, everything always goes back to cannibalism.  Maybe I don’t have enough iron in my diet.  Who knows?  I’m not a doctor.)

I wonder if there would be any cats in a flooded world.  Most of them hate water, you know.  Perhaps there would be a mass cat suicide.  I’m not sure how cats would accomplish this, but where there is a will, there is a way.  Feline innovation is, like Waterworld, also underrated.

Did you know that Dennis Hopper is still alive?  I wouldn’t have figured that.  He doesn’t seem like somebody who would live a long time.  Then again, Keith Richards continues to defy the odds.  Maybe both of them took some sort of experimental preservation drug in the late 60’s.  Now, they are IMMORTAL.

Here’s a postapocalyptic world that will make you shudder.  Only Dennis Hopper and Keith Richards are left.  But there can by only one.  So, they are massing their cockroach armies in a final battle for supremacy.  The winner gets all the cockroach concubines he wants.

If you think Keith Richards buggering a cockroach is a disturbing image, watch Blue Velvet.  I’m telling you, Dennis Hopper is pretty convincing.  And not in a good way.

The guy from Dune is in the movie Blue Velvet as well.  Yes, the main character who passes the witch test and kills Sting in the end.  “I will kill him!” says Sting’s character.

But then he doesn’t.  Spoiler alert- one sentence too late.

On a sidenote, are those big worms in Dune some sort of Phallic symbol?  Like if a man can control his penis, then he can rule the universe?

At least he can use his voice to blow things up.  That would be useful.

Sting used to be an English teacher named Gordon.  He probably got fired for showing Dennis Hopper movies.