03 November 2009

What I Learned While Watching TV Last Night

We are all going to die. The Mayan Calendar ends, abruptly, on December 21, 2012. Apparently, the Hopi Indians also foresaw great calamities and the End Time happening around this same date. I figure that gives us all a little under four years to smoke 'em if we've got 'em, get ourselves right with the Lord and kiss humanity's collective asses goodbye.

While I was freaking out in my Archie Bunker Chair, imagining all the things I won't be doing, FOW #1 was busy, pointing and laughing at me. He wanted to know what, if anything, I could possibly do to guard against an apocalypse. The truth is -- I got nothing. See, this whole thing is bigger than the lot of us, and if the polarity of the earth changes (Edgar Cayce's prediction,) well... we are totally fucked. All manner of Nasty occurs then. I don't remember all the details, but I would recommend visiting Florida ASAP if you've got any desire to at all.

If the Blue Star comes (The Hopi,) we begin the Fifth Age and I have to be honest: I'm not really clear on what happens then. There was a hieroglyph of two groups of stickmen. One set was happy, and had some Stick-Corn, and the other set was walking up a set of "W"s. I think it might have something to do with divorcing ourselves from agriculture, and that is a big no-no according to the Hopi. I should have paid more attention, but my friend, M., was having boy-trouble so I was in the middle of a flurry of text messages. I suppose I might seriously rethink my priorities when it all goes to Hell (literally and figuratively,) but again -- the History Channel was not exactly offering me a primer on what to do in case of Rapture. I did get a giggle when the overall, ending message was one of hope and an insinuation that we have the proverbial snowball's chance. I think that only happened because The History Channel didn't want to be mentioned in multiple suicide notes.

By the way... my abject fear of the End is not a new thing. I clearly remember a day in junior high school when the world was supposed to end. It was a day filled with terror and panic. Of course, the sick, sadistic bastards in Administration thought this was the perfect day to throw a Fire Drill, too. Was it any wonder that I broke down in Home Ec, my tears soaking the cheap polyester of my day-glo, skateboard pillow that actually ended up looking more like a deformed, irradiated hot dog, due to my questionable-at-best embroidering skills? I had everything to live for, then. Or, at least, I thought I did; Journey and REO Speedwagon hadn't begun clogging the airwaves yet, and life still seemed to hold some hope and promise.

Of course, I lived through that day and the many days after that were predicted as being the "end." After confiding in my grandmother that I truly feared the death of the time, she told me that people had been insisting that mayhem and destruction were just around the corner since she was a girl. This gave me a small slice of comfort but, see -- my grandma probably didn't know about the Mayan Calendar. I keep trying to convince myself that they just didn't get around to finishing it or their Alien Phone rang and when they were done with the call, there were Conquistadors at the door and the calendar was abandoned.

Wait. It wasn't the Mayans with the Conquistadors, was it? Well, whatever -- maybe the Incas invited them to go bowling or something. Or the Hopi needed to borrow a cup a sugar. I don't know, but I do prefer to think that there's a really good (if unknown reason) why their timekeeping just stops and it has nothing to do with fire raining out of the sky and incinerating me.

I also tried to watch a true-crime show about Madelyn Murray O'Hare, but I dozed off ten minutes into it and when I woke up, I found out that there are ShamWOW imitators out there and that I should "beware" of them. I can't imagine that imitating a super-chamois is all that lucrative (especially since, if you call within thirty minutes of seeing the commercial, you can get eight ShamWOWs for the cost of one,) but -- hey! I never thought a fat guy pretending to be Elvis would go over well, either. I'm short-sighted that way.

And so, I started wondering... how serious is this threat of Imitator ShamWOWs? Are they stealing my identity? Shilling real estate pyramid schemes? Washing my car when I'm not looking? See, there's a problem: I can't think of another use for a chamois except for washing my car. The ShamWOW people claim you should keep on in the bathroom. This led to some... interesting conjecture on my part. Should I towel off with a ShamWOW for that lustrous, high gloss shine? Thumb my nose at the Cottonelle Folks? Please don't suggest that I wipe the tiles down after a shower. That would be like preventative cleaning or something, and would rob me of my way-cool, weekly Tilex high. I cannot, for the life of me, imagine a bathroom scenario involving a chamois, but I promise to be vigilant in making sure no imposters show up there. In case you are worried too, the genuine ShamWOWs are German. If your chamois isn't yelling, "Achtung!" or attempting to take over Europe, you've probably got an imitator.

If I didn't have enough to worry about with Armageddon and fake ShamWOWS, I watched The Rock Of Love Bus, too. I have to ask -- I can't help myself: Brett Michaels, really -- what the fuck?! What is your fascination with empty-headed skanks? And I have to wonder why young girls with fake breasts seem to favor clothing that is mammogram-tight. Where do these chicks come from? What do their moms think? I'd be horrified if FOW #2 had a head injury four years down the road and decided to be a drunken whore on television. Speaking of drinking, I really feel much better about mine, having watched this show. I was already smart enough to know ingesting anything with tequila and/or Red Bull is sort of the same as asking Satan if you could have a little nip of his urine, but it turns out that as long as I don't end up on VH1, I'm probably still able to call myself "functional."

[Author's NOTE: In copying and pasting from Word, Gather saw fit to ignore my italics and bolding. I'm pretty pissed... what, pray tell, is the sense in having the "ease" that function within the editor if it's just going to fuck everything all up, anyway?!]

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