The Second Coming

This is my 21st article. It is the 21st century since the birth of the baby Jesus. Just seven days ago, it was the 21st of February. And 21 is three times seven. Coincidence? I think not.

So let us explore the concept that Jeebus is coming back. There were signs in the book of Revelations, and some bloke called Daniel (possibly the one in the Elton John song "whoah, Daniel, my brother/you were more of a prophet than me/do you still predict stuff?/with the fire, and whatnot/your eyes have died/but you see the end of days more than I/Daniel you're a star/in the flames of the rapture...") and come hell or high water (and they are both coming, hell because the rapture nutters say so, high water because the global warming nutters say so) we can make those look like they apply to shit that is happening right about now. It's more fun that way. Rather than just bodding around watching the Cleveland Show even though it sucks and going to work, we can believe we are part of the most important generation that ever lived. The last generation. The generation that will bear witness to the rapture. And also, coincidentally, the Pepsi Generation. I hate Pepsi, its the only Cola competing with Virgin Cola for being the biggest affront to human tastebuds. But anyway.

The internet is top full of people who can match the signs in t'bible, as they call it in Yorkshire, to stuff that is happening now. I only noticed this because someone told me that The Antichrist with Willem de Foe was the most disturbing movie ever made, so I Googled it in an effort to find out what happens in it so I could see why it was disturbing without actually watching it and becoming disturbed. I'm kind of a pussy - I would never go in that live action Saw maze they have at Alton Towers. I'd probably cry and wet myself. Still, when I Googled the words "The Antichrist" I couldn't find anything about the movie, just stuff about the Antichrist what the god botherers believe in, and how it is coming or is already here or some shit.

Candidates for being the actual Antichrist, according to the web, include:

Barrack Obama (US president)
The Pope (Pope)
King Arthur (legendary king of England)
Oprah Winfrey (unaccountably wealthy TV annoyance)
Saddam Hussein (dead dictator)
"Someone with the star sign Aquarius" (so, er, me)
Prince Hassan (former Crown Prince of Jordan)
Olly Murs (runner up in 2009 season of the X Factor. No, not really, but it's only a matter of fucking time).

Apparently, when the antichrist comes there will also be a revival of the Roman Empire, which from everything I know about the Roman Empire sounds kind of fun. They had a god of wine, and orgies. They built the Pantheon, for all their cool gods of cool shit. It's rubbish now, mind - I've been there. You think it's going to be a temple for cool Roman gods of cool shit, but now it's a Catholic church. Bor-or-or-ring. The word "Pantheon" literally means it's for all the gods. Not for the one boring Christian one who doesn't like sex or sodomy or anything fun. Fuck that guy, give me Bacchus!

I think maybe, if I was so inclined, I could make out that Silvio Berlusconi's bunga bunga parties were the revival of the Roman Empire. Italy is bloody mad right now, what with that and the fact that according to today's Sunday Times one of their princes has confessed on camera to murdering a 19 year old German tourist as he slept back in the seventies. Caligula would have been proud. But the rapture people have skipped over that shit - they reckon it's the EU that is the new Roman Empire. Which is run by Brussels, in Belgium, not Rome, in Italy, but hey, to a right wing Sarah Palin loving freak who has never left the town they were born in that's probably close enough. It's not an Empire, it's a bunch of arse where people like Peter Mandleson get to tell you what shape a banana can be, or the exact criteria under which a food item can be called a Cornish Pasty. But shit as it is, it's probably not a harbinger of the apocalypse.

When the rapture comes, apparently the followers of the baby Jeebus will know about it but the rest of the people - me, Terry Pratchett, Philip Pullman, George Michael, Olly Murs, you, you know, everyone - won't realise until we suddenly find all the Christians are gone. And make no mistake, this is going to be a bad sign. It's not like, oh, well, they're all gone, so I guess all the wars will stop and we can live in peace. It's more like, oh, well they were right all along and now our kidneys will be wrenched from our bodies and eaten by crows.

Happily, those who will be saved have populated our very own interweb with guides to surviving if you get left behind. I'm not making this up. Here is a link to one of the many available to prove I'm serious: http://www.raptureready.com/rr-survival-guide.html - thank me later at the end of days, kids. Kurt Seland, the author of this particular one, seems especially keen that none of us take the "mark of the beast" on our hands, because it hurts as much as a mouth ulcer. Good Lord, not a mouth ulcer! Anything but that! Damn my wicked life, if only I had repented and didn't have to know this agony! Fucking hell. Would this guy actually kill himself if he got a cold sore, were it not an abomination unto God to kill yourself when he's gearing up to kill you himself any day now.

A lot of these sites seem to just use the idea of the "signs" to combine the two top pass times of scaremongering and saying Jews and Muslims are evil, but you know, it does bother me a bit that these people are wasting their lives worrying about this complete Shitty the Bull brand bullshit and also feeling really, really bad for us because they think we're going to suffer horribly. We're not, so don't worry. For one thing, none of it will ever happen, but for another, we're rock 'n' roll - we'd enjoy it.