WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!!!

Big storm crashed into the city last night, lots of rain and wild wind. It’s still hitting us hard and Sacramento , being a floodplain, is filling up like a big basin. It happens every year, but still local drivers lose their heads. Collisions, spinouts and backups are the rule of the day.

When it’s like this I trade my regular bike ride to work for a light rail ticket. It keeps me dry and sometimes I find a little bit of god.

This morning I had a rather lengthy “stranger waiting for the train” conversation with a Jehovah’s Witness. I must admit his opening was pretty good.

Him: Going to work?
Me: Yup.
Him: While you’re waiting…

At this point he handed me a small brochure. On the front there is an illustration of a smiling man and woman in an idyllic mountain field. They’re surrounded by plump pumpkins, bright red apples and flowers. Behind them is a two story log cabin and a large moose. Yes, a moose. The moose really draws the eye because he’s right smack dab in the middle and he’s the biggest thing in the picture.
Anyway enough with the moose, the top of the brochure reads “All Suffering SOON TO END!”

Him: What do you think about that?
Me: That be great!
Him: Wouldn’t it be. What do you think causes all the suffering in the world?
Me: Greed.
Him: Funny you should say that, in chapter so and so of so and so…(flips open a well worn bible protected in a spiffy black leather case.)

He goes on to tell me that greed is one of the reasons the world, as we know it, is going to end in the very near future.

Okay…Wait, what? The world is going to end!!!! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

I mean come on, the end of the world is a scary thing. It seems odd to sell a religion like you would sell a fallout shelter.

Salesman: Nuclear war is right around the corner my friend.
Me: Really? Wow, umm…how can you be so sure?
Salesman: You don’t want your family to die an agonizingly painful irradiated death, cooked flesh hanging from their bleached white bones, do you?
Me: HOLY CRAP! Give me 10 of those shelters and throw in a couple of those water purification systems.

Great strategy for getting someone to buy something, but it’s dirty pool. I guess that’s another reason I’ve never been turned on to religion, the fearmongering.

Anywho, saw “Zombieland” the other day, fun movie. It doesn’t try to imitate the masterful “Shaun of the Dead” which everyone seemed worried about. Instead it does its own thing and has fun with it.

I leave you with a Paul Krugman essay, a little ditty that illustrates how the GOP is going batshit fucking crazy.