postapocalyptic

Antigovernment forces blamed as Venezuela runs out of toilet paper. Bill Gates reclaims title of world’s richest man. Explosion seen from earth as meteoroid hits the moon at 56,000 mph. Crime and punishment.

Reading The Road, a postapocalyptic novel by Cormac McCarthy, a can’t-put-down. Best line so far, the man about the sleeping boy, If he is not the word of God God never spoke. As a reviewer said, must keep reading because not putting it down seems the only way to keep the man and boy alive. Fifty one pages and reading this morning, and their situs is horrifying, hopeless. Started The Road because finished reading Revelation to John and Decline and Fall, and both other Evelyn Waugh novels are upstairs where Linda is asleep, Vile Bodies and Scoop, Scoop funnier. Bought The Road at $.01 plus $3.99 because years ago our book club in Apalachicola liked All the Pretty Horses. The Road -- where the punishment is the crime and apocalypse is our doing, not God's.

Although the same, Revelation to John is different: horrifying apocalypse, but postapocalyptically not horrifying because John’s story has promise and hope. However, John's horrendous punishments are worse than the crime (cultic disobediences like the OT prophecies of John’s orientation). Cormac's crime and punishment are inseparable. John's punishment is the crime.  

Signs of the apocalypse: Venezuela running out of toilet paper, spreading globally. As stacks of old newspapers and magazines are used up, Porta-Potties start appearing next to ATM machines. Not for spending money because there's nothing to buy, but for paper because the corncobs were all used to make ethanol and now it really matters who is richest. 

Incoming.

W