I was surfing the Internet when I came across an article about a guy named Harold Camping who claims the world is coming to an end. According to good ‘ol Harry, May 21, 2011 will be Judgment Day and the rapture (The taking up into heaven of God’s elect people) will occur. Then the whole place goes to shit on October 21.

Luckily for me the rapture will occur a few days after my birthday. It would suck if my potential gift givers were suddenly swept up into heaven. Then again, some of my friends won’t be among the elect. Hell, I’ll probably have my feet on terra firma too. On the bright side, if the world is destroyed by fire in October, I won’t have to buy any Christmas presents. That’ll save me a few bucks. And when Visa sends me my monthly bill (Which they will do Apocalypse or not.) I won’t be around to pay it. Sweet.

Of course the news has been squawking about the portents of impending doom that seem to be happening all around us. Multitudes of birds and fish have died all over the world in the past few weeks. Five thousand birds fell from the sky in Arkansas. Personally I think they died because they went, “Oh shit! We’re in Arkansas!” But scientists think these die offs might be caused by magnetic north moving towards Russia and screwing up these creatures’ navigation systems. Just imagine all the GPS satellites going offline and you’ll get a sense of what’s happening. Livery drivers in New York can’t get to JFK without them. But the movement of magnetic north is a natural process that has occurred many times. And massive animal die offs? Nothing new. But, as I mentioned in an earlier post, wackjobs all over the world will use these events to promote some kind of self-serving eschatological agenda.

Human beings are egocentric by nature so it’s no surprise that some people think that the world has to end in their lifetimes. It gives them a misguided sense of drama and purpose but hey, everybody likes a good ending. But the world’s not going to end until the sun runs out of hydrogen and expands to gobble us up. Of course another planet might hit us or a gamma ray burst fry our ass, but the odds of that happening are infinitesimal. Put quite simply, doomsayers are lazy bastards. If you know the world’s going to end then you don’t have to plan ahead! Help the poor and downtrodden? Try and make the world a better place? Screw ‘em. They’re gonna die anyway. But not me! I know better. I’m going to be singing Leaving on a Jet Plane when Jesus levitates me into the clouds!

But another article caught my eye as well. It seems some moronic publishers are replacing the 200 uses of the word “nigger” in Samuel Clemens’s classic novel Huckleberry Finn and replacing it with the word “slave.” Now with the exception of idiots, crackers, Klansmen and a few rappers, most of us don’t like the “N-Word.” But Clemens used the word over and over again not because he was a racist, but because he wanted to show his readers how stupid racism was. But in our politically correct world a select few have decided it would be too dangerous to let children read Clemens’ book as it was originally written and have an honest discussion about race and it’s place in American History. I guess they think our students are not up to the challenge -that they’re too fragile and stupid to figure out what Clemens was really saying.

Like Harry and all those other doomsayers, these revisionists are egocentric lazy bastards. God forbid they have to teach children about the tough stuff. And just like crazed religious nuts, they are a minority who feel that the great masses are somehow unworthy. They like to live in their little fantasy worlds, smug in the knowledge that they somehow know better. I know how the world will end. I know I’m righteous and will be saved. I know better than Samuel Clemens. This all sound familiar? Didn’t some absolutists with narrow, ego-stroking and self-righteous triumphalist views attack us on September 11th? They thought they knew better than the rest of us too.

So yes, I’m saying Harry and these literary revisionists are like terrorists. Why? Because they all use fear as their modus operandi. Religious wackjobs try scaring you into thinking the world’s ending and these mind numbingly stupid publishers are telling us to be terrified of words because they might screw up our kids. And of course, they know what’s best for us. At one end of the spectrum these people are just annoying. But at the other end they turn into Pol Pots.

But attempts to censor Samuel Clemens have failed before and crazy Harry also thought the world was going to end in 1994. Oops. Regardless of their lunacy, I take great comfort in the fact that the world will keep chugging along and reading Huckleberry Finn centuries after these dipshits have turned into compost.

I guess I’m still going to have to pay that Visa bill after all.

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