{"id":1368,"date":"2011-05-17T07:07:43","date_gmt":"2011-05-17T11:07:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/?p=1368"},"modified":"2011-05-17T07:17:15","modified_gmt":"2011-05-17T11:17:15","slug":"countdown-to-the-rapture-ngm-edition-%e2%80%93-day-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/?p=1368","title":{"rendered":"Countdown to the Rapture, NGM Edition \u2013 Day 4"},"content":{"rendered":"
[Ed. Note: \u00a0This morning’s Countdown is dedicated to M-Bone Talbert<\/a>, whose world got ended for him<\/a> Sunday night. \u00a0RIP M-Bone.]<\/h6>\n

Hurry!\u00a0 Hurry!\u00a0 This week only – and I mean that!\u00a0 There are only 4 shopping days left \u2019til the end of the world.\u00a0 In case you’ve been living under a rock – and I would not blame you one minute if you had been – I\u2019m\u00a0highlighting a different thing each day that I\u2019m NOT GONNA MISS come the Rapture, and I\u2019m counting on YOU to comment if you haven\u2019t yet with your own NGM thoughts as well \u2013 I\u2019m keeping the list, and I\u2019ll tally them up and see what we\u2019re all least likely to miss at the end of all things.<\/p>\n

Number 10:\u00a0 Donald Trump\u2019s Hair<\/a>.
\nNumber 9:\u00a0 People who can\u2019t drive in bad weather<\/a>.
\nNumber 8:\u00a0 Annoying Facebook status update memes<\/a>.
\nNumber 7:\u00a0 Cheap Beer<\/a>.
\nNumber 6:\u00a0 Natural Disasters<\/a>.
\nNumber 5:\u00a0 Prophesies about the End of the World that turn out to be wrong<\/a>.
\nNumber 4:\u00a0 Organized religions<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

There are some really, really smart people out there.\u00a0 Many of them think that the smartest guy alive is a wheelchair-bound dude who needs speech-translation software to talk to us; yes, Stephen Hawking.\u00a0 It turns out that Stephen Hawking, when he’s not expounding on Time, the Universe, and All The Things, is an avid reader of the Big Ugly Man Doll.\u00a0 I believe this is a perfectly logical conclusion, and I base it on the fact that while he didn’t actually mention it in a recent interview, he was obviously rebutting my recent assertion that In Heaven, There Is No Beer.<\/p>\n

Stephen Hawking believes in beer.\u00a0 He just doesn’t believe in heaven<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And that’s ok<\/strong>.\u00a0 But there are people – millions of them – who think he’s not just wrong, but so wrong that he should be censured and perhaps punished for saying that sort of thing in public.\u00a0 Many of these people, it turns out, tend to make their livelihoods by getting other people to give them money in exchange for telling them not only that is there a heaven, but also that they personally will be allowed to go there.<\/p>\n

In return for this kind of public display of assurance, people have been known to commit more and bloodier atrocities than for nearly any other reason I can think of.\u00a0 Deus Vult!\u00a0 “God Wills It” was the rallying\u00a0cry for the crusades – a bloody-minded fool’s errand\u00a0for which\u00a0the world continues to pay the price to this very day.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Allahu Akbar!\u00a0 God is indeed great.\u00a0 If He’s that all-fired great, you would think He could just kill off His enemies without your help – and perhaps there’s a reason He hasn’t yet.\u00a0 Perhaps He’d prefer you stop meddling in His affairs for a few minutes so He can sort things out.<\/p>\n

People who are divinely inspired to do really crazy stuff in the name of the god of their choice, out there by themselves – I have no problem with that.\u00a0 Sting sang it more succinctly <\/a>than I can:\u00a0 “Men go crazy in congregations \/ They only get better one by one.”\u00a0\u00a0 It’s the people who get together only with others of their own closeminded philosophies and decide that everyone else is wrong that worry me.\u00a0 The older I get, the more I lean toward Militant Agnosticism:\u00a0 “I Don’t Know, and You Don’t Either.”\u00a0 Really, soon enough we’re all going to find out – why rush things?<\/p>\n

So please Lord, because I’m Not Gonna Miss\u00a0your more vocal, vehement,\u00a0violent followers – call the Rapture on May 21st.\u00a0 My buddy Stephen Hawking and I will\u00a0expect our\u00a072 virgins when we arrive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Countdown to the Rapture: So please Lord, because I’m Not Gonna Miss your more vocal, vehement, violent followers – call the Rapture on May 21st. My buddy Stephen Hawking and I will expect our 72 virgins when we arrive. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[22,51,16,14,43],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1368"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1368"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1368\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1378,"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1368\/revisions\/1378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}