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October 14, 2005
Alaskan in Exile
by Neil Zawicki

     Late last night, as I curled up in my favorite chair with a cup of Earl Grey tea, with a blanket across my lap and my baby daughter snuggled up and sleeping on my chest, I began to think about the Apocalypse.

     Generally speaking, the Apocalypse is a cruel and violent time when earth-born catastrophes mingle with war, and disease spreads like angry fog across an economically fragile globe. The very notion of fairness does not exist during the Apocalypse, but is replaced by a reason vacuum, generated by intolerant and rigid social changes brought about by corrupt world leaders from which arises a superstar called the Anti-Christ.

     The Anti-Christ is the central figure of the Apocalypse. This person rises to power through promises of peace and unity, but in fact brings hunger, war and chaos.
That’s the deal. They don’t call it the Apocalypse for nothing.

     There are some in our modern society that are quick to draw comparisons between the Apocalypse and the present day. Indeed, every time somebody bombs somebody or people die in a flood or lightning blows little black holes through the rooftops of a small village in the Sudan, some religious scholar gets around to calling it the Apocalypse.

     I like to imagine that I’m a little more tempered than that.

     If nothing else, our present time is doing a wonderful job of simulating the Apocalypse. If I were a world leader or a military commander, I think I would feel a little silly right now. And what about the soldiers? If I were running around with a helmet and a rifle, throwing .223 rounds through doorways and whipping grenades through windows while chasing a pack of wiley, masked bandits with rocket-propelled grenade launchers and Nike T-shirts, it would get my attention when the earth started leveling entire centers of civilization on every populated continent except Australia. I think I would feel a bit inadequate if I were busy driving a Bradley fighting vehicle though a mud wall in some back warren in Kabul when I learned that India and Pakistan had to shelve their hostilities in order to dig dead children out of earthquake-shattered schools.

     Jesus. Jesus?

     Let’s take a tally: There’s the 911 attack and subsequent global warfare, then the tsunami in Southeast Asia. Then there was the famine in Niger, with a happy mix of civil war to complicate matters. Next up was Hurricane Katrina and then Rita. Then Central America got hit with a volcano and then mudslides after Tropical Storm Stan, which received a sort of phoned in, tired-eyed coverage from the press, even though 90 villages are now isolated and starving. And now the big earthquake in Pakistan, which can only confuse anyone rooting for the wrath of the Muslim god over the Western one.

     It’s all happening so quickly that we barely have time to keep track of this Bird Flu idea, which threatens to taint the globe with bitter death for the next decade. All of these events have killed more than a million people over the past four years.
Does anybody remember when George W. Bush cited Christ as his primary influence during his televised debate with Al Gore in 2000? I do. He said it because he knew every Christian voter in the country would be sold right there.

     He also said he’d made an altar call in front of the Rev. Jerry Falwell at the White House while his dad was president, and at that point became a born-again Christian.
Jerry Falwell said he doesn’t remember any such event. I think if I were Jerry Falwell, I would remember if the president’s son fell to his knees and made an altar call.
So, Bush rides under a fake Christian banner, and has declared that he is “a uniter, not a divider.”

     Clever.

     In the meantime, the world is covered with war and natural disaster and economic imbalance and possible epidemic. The circumstances seem to resemble, well, the Apocalypse.

     While it seems like the Apocalypse, it may not necessarily be the Apocalypse. The way I see it, we have several options here, and all of them have no bearing on the inevitable.

Option 1: The earth is dying.
     If you believe the earth is dying, then you need to embrace modern biological and geological science, which holds that global warming and overpopulation, coupled with the impending extinction of several species are all events that are killing our planet. For support, you might want to visit www.earthmeanders.blogspot.com.

Option 2: Jesus really is coming, and the Apocalypse is at hand.
     If you believe Jesus really is coming and the Apocalypse is at hand, you’re in good company, or at least ample company. A logical place to start would be www.apocalypsesoon.org.

Option 3: President Bush is creating his own vision of the Apocalypse.
     If you believe our president is creating his own vision of the Apocalypse, then you’ll probably be successful in combining this belief with option 2.

Option 4: Nothing is wrong.
     If you feel nothing is wrong, then you’re fine. Some sites to consider would be www.foxnews.com, or any site that involves large trucks and women in bikinis setting off explosions. A quick Google search for “women in bikinis setting off explosions in large trucks,” produced favorable results, not the least of which was a review of “The Island,” which is either a TV show or a movie, I’m not entirely sure and really don’t think it makes a difference. The review states, “…several women wear bikinis or skimpy, cleavage revealing tops, and a truck broadsides a police car at full speed.”
The site also mentions fireballs and gunplay, so it is probably a safe bet if you feel nothing is wrong.

     Yes. These are strange days. The GOP has robot servants, and our global security is coming apart at the seams while the earth itself is convulsing and weather severity is increasing as the world heats up.  I’m not going to reveal which option I favor, because I must maintain a certain journalistic objectivity (satire). I will say, however, that I’m going to spend as much time as I can showing my daughter our wonderful world, and seeing it through her eyes.


 

Neil Zawicki, exiled Alaskan, is Editor at Large for Insurgent49, a former reporter for the Alaska Star, and winner of the Alaska Press Club's 'Best Columnist' award. He is now living out the rest of his days in an undisclosed location in Oregon. He can be contacted at -  neil@insurgent49.com
- Columnists -

Editor's Desk
by Aaron Selbig

Red Alert
by Soren Wuerth

Alaskan In Exile
by Neil Zawicki

The
Bramble Bush
by Kevin Morford





- also by this writer -
Copyright 2005 Insurgent Media. All Rights Reserved.
in-sur-gent (in sur'jent), n. 1. a member of a group which revolts against the policies of its leadership.