Rapture wrap-up

Well, it’s looking bad for the Rapture predicted for today. I mean—only 0830 PDT and that’s not quite ten hours from local H-Hour, as specified by the now universally ridiculed Harold Camping. But I’m combing the media and not finding that New Zealand has been knocked off its pins by the earthquake that was to have triggered the global Judgment Day.

You may be thinking, “Harold, ju got some essplainin’ to doo,” around this time. But he’s gone through this before (1994) and like all the best practitioners of the art of propaganda (political, religious, commercial, whatever) he didn’t miss a beat, didn’t apologize, didn’t justify; just moved on to the next prediction. That was scheduling the Rapture for 21 May 2011 at 1800. So stay tuned for his next prophesy.

And he found an audience. A small serious one as well as the vast legions of scoffers and even entrepreneurs (e.g., the service that, for a pre-paid fee—will care for pets left behind when their humans were sucked up to Heaven). God bless America.

Dunno what the believers are going to do when 1801 passes them by and they find themselves in much the same condition as they were at 1759. But the ridiculers and the simply dumbfounded will be partying all weekend.

So come Monday, I think employers should be a little understanding when their staff comes to work in somewhat bedraggled condition—either from overindulgence or disappointment.

But on a similar note, all the Bay Area public radio stations—from KQED down to the ones that have about 52 watts of broadcast power out of Oakland or Campbell—have ended their concurrent spring fundraising drives. So it’s feeling a lot more like heaven on this part of the earth.

Rapture rap

This may have escaped your notice—it certainly did mine—but it seems that the End of Times begins tomorrow at 1800 in whatever time zone you’re in. Apparently it’s a rolling doom.

According to Harold Camping, a civil engineer who started a broadcast ministry and thus is eminently qualified to pontificate on matters theological and moral, 21 May 2011 is Der Tag. Those who are saved (not entirely sure of the definition, but it seems limited to Camping’s followers and presumably some other categories of mostly evangelical Christians) will be sucked up into heaven. Everyone else will—well, again I’m not clear on the specifics, but obviously the good times will no longer roll.

The world won’t end, though—that’ll happen six months hence, on 21 October.

Look—I’m not making this stuff up, I’m just reporting it.

Of course, predicting the end-of-the-world/second-coming is a bit of a cottage industry. So far the predictors have, well, got it wrong. Every time. Time after time.

And this includes Camping. He last predicted that Judgment Day would occur in 1994. Evidently his direct pipeline to the Almighty was clogged with some sewage, but he swears he’s got it right this time.

I’m a bit confused as to the 1800 timestamp, though. I mean—God is eternal, right? What does a particular hour matter to him/her? Days, years—those are human structures; arbitrary ones, when it comes down to it. Could God be arbitrary?

And why the staggered implementation? We’re not talking about introducing a new app—first iPhone, then Droid, then Blackberry. Why not instantaneous for all the world?

And how come the Kiwis get to be the vanguard? We in California have to wait something like 17 hours after it starts in New Zealand. Maybe God’s taking the godliest first? From 2300 tonight we have to stand around and…well, I don’t know what we’re supposed to do…while pretty much the rest of the world gets the best seats in the heavenly stadium?

There don’t seem to be any guidelines as to what the non-enraptured are supposed to do. No mention of rending of clothes or gnashing of teeth. Naturally there are plans for parties—a lot of folks ready to celebrate regardless whether it’s the end of the world or a really, really big egg in the face for Camping.

Well—I think it’s at least worth a glass of bubbly.

Enron again

Andrew Fastow, once CFO at Enron, got out of stir this week. He’s entered a halfway house in his home town & scene of his crimes, Houston.

Fastow was behind Enron’s complex financial shell games, which resulted in the collapse of the company (once the seventh largest in the US) & the ruin of tens of thousands of employees & investors. There’s no question about that, & he was convicted of massive fraud, but because he cut a deal with prosecutors & ratted out his fellow executive fraudsters Kenneth Lay (CEO) & Jeffrey Skilling (president), he got a mere six years at Club Fed.

He’s now in a halfway house that’s seen a couple other Enron ex-cons, & apparently might (like others) be able to serve the last of his time in “home confinement”. Picture, if you will, the sentence your average embezzler would get & imagine that person getting the option of home confinement.

I have no words to express my contempt for Fastow & his crooked corporate cronies. I’m also disgusted that we the people learned nothing from the Enron incident & sailed head on into the economic meltdown of the past few years.

& Congress? Congress learned to label their largest political supporters “too big to fail” & to think it a much better investment to bail out the corporations so designated to the tune of tens of billions of dollars, but cut back or out social programs that support healthcare, housing, education & pensions to the mass of working & middle class Americans.

Across the Irish Sea

I wonder if I’m the only person a little freaked out to hear “God Save the Queen” at the Garden of Remembrance in Dublin?

Queen Elizabeth II is making an historic visit to the Republic of Ireland, and all. And that’s a swell thing—first British monarch to set foot trip in 100 years (and when the last one, George V, did, there was no Republic); it’s very symbolic. Ireland, after all, was England’s first colony (courtesy of Henry II in the 12^th Century); until Ulster is reunited with the other three provinces of Ireland, it’ll be the last one.

Her Majesty is making a point of visiting Irish sites rural and urban, historical and aimed at the future. Naturally, given how she just loves those ponies, she’s going to have a poke round a couple of studs (that’s farms, not muffins). And there’s a state dinner.

But the huge significance comes from her paying official respects to the past, laying a wreath to the fallen at the Garden of Remembrance. The “fallen” in this case are the men and women who died in the fight to free Ireland from British rule, from the rebellion of 1798 to the civil war of 1919-21. For the reigning monarch of the UK to honor them is extraordinary.

(Iain Paisley is probably rolling over in his grave. Oh, wait—he’s not dead; he only resembles a corpse both physically and morally.)

And it can’t be all that easy for her given that she’s suffered personal losses in the ongoing struggle for the hearts and minds and territory. Her husband’s uncle Louis Mountbatten was assassinated by an IRA bomb just 32 years ago.

No, I give her major props for this.

It’s the British national anthem in that particular place that creeps me out. It just seems really wrong.

The Garden of Remembrance is rather like a cathedral. The statue before which the Queen laid the wreath is a representation of the Children of Lir. In Irish legend, the four children of a king; his wife, wracked by jealousy, turned the children into swans, in which form they remained for 900 years. The curse was finally broken by a Christian monk, and the children were returned to their human form. The bronze figures in the Garden of Remembrance are in the process of turning from swans into people.

Rather like the Irish themselves after nearly 900 years of living the British curse.

Well, it’s gracious of the Irish to play GSTQ, And gracious of HM to make the gesture. Now—is she going to Bewley’s for a coffee? It’s only a stone’s throw from the Book of Kells.

The election next time

Newt Gingrich has announced officially that he’s running for President in the 2012 election. President of the United States.

I’m not going to get into his political history, or the disconnect between his assertion that everyone has to adhere to family values except his own self.

I’m just going to say that I don’t think I can take seriously “President Newt”.

On a similar, politics-makes-even-weirder-bedfellows-than-business, note, Donald Trump has dropped out of the race. This is sad news for comedians because The Donald is an even bigger joke than little Newtie, although I believe they’re about even in the wife count.

Given that Trump would have to spend his entire presidential salary of $400K on hair stylists, gel & spray, I’m also thinking he wouldn’t like to take the pay cut. 

Footloose & dry

You know, you just gotta love San Francisco. Boston, NYC, the Marines—they have their marathons. SF has the Bay to Breakers run.

Okay, it’s not 26 miles of grueling endurance; just 7.5 miles. But it did get tougher this year. As of the race yesterday, you could still run naked, but you could only drink what you carry. Mobile alcohol-dispensing carts were banned.

Talk about a buzz kill. I mean—this is California and all, but there are some naked bodies that you need to be lit to view running through the streets.