Wacko


Early Morning Wacko

Who subscribed me to this email newsletter that arrives every so often, I have no way of knowing:
http://secondcomingherald.com/  To my view in the realm of nut fringe, the author evidently appreciates apocalyptic novels that open with a serial buildup of seemingly isolated minor hostile events around the globe, though he hasn’t yet added the element of separated and doomed lovers. His publication has the standard “unsubscribe” feature, which I may click, but there are cautions about alerting scammers to your existence by clicking “unsubscribe,” so for now I either click the select box and then the garbage can icon or scan the message first and then tap the cute little garbage can. Some are more clever than others: I can’t remember whether my Google mail garbage can opens its little lid or not.

Apocalypticists of the New Testament Age had a limited view in which earth was the center of creation and its apocalypse easy to visualize. But it isn’t clear whether current day apocalypticists visualize the end of the earth (thus, DW3’s piece “Solar storms could cause the end of the world”) or the end of the universe, an ambitious undertaking for any but Word; and also seemingly for anyone but the author of Noah, a quite radical response to the sins of earthlings. Lent is at hand with its buildup to Easter, so DW3 may feel timely; but his topic is even better suited to Advent with its lectionary buildup to the eschaton. Or, perhaps more likely, DW3 never heard of Advent and Lent, just out there as a self-anointed Latter Day Daniel and who’s never been into astronomy. To his credit, he does seem open to eschatalogical action either through human hatreds or by incoming from the heavens. At any rate, comes to mind J. B. Phillips’ book title Your God Is Too Small.

But it is not to scoff.  

Couple other topics, one this morning’s NYT op-ed, “When May I Shoot a Student?”  


Professor Hampikian might consider that other states have already solved his dilemma, a solution that could work for Idaho as well. In Florida, Hampikian could start shooting the instant a student reached for his backpack, if he felt threatened. Or claimed in court that he had.

Last evening I watched The Great Gatsby by downloading it for instant viewing on my laptop. George Washington would have been amazed that you no longer have to go downtown to the Ritz Theatre. This was the 1974 version with Robert Redford. I watched because of a friend’s love for the story, which I did not know except the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock, and had never read or viewed. Its astonishing evil could have left me distraught except that Linda was here to help me out of it. A story of selfishness beyond comprehension. For whom do I feel saddest? Not Nick, whose horror in realization is my own. Not Jimmy Gatz, who never realizes, is delusional in his obsession to the end. Pammy.