The End is Near, and other things you don't care to read about.

I suppose this should not bother me—I’m a big boy now, after all, and on a scale of one to ten of life’s little annoyances this should not even register as a blip—but I am not sure when Christian eschatology became an appropriate subject for men’s room graffiti. I am a firm advocate of the First Amendment’s guarantees of freedom of speech and religion, but I also believe that there is a time and a place for everything, and reading that ‘THE END IS NEAR’ while I am standing in front of a urinal relieving myself is, to my mind, neither the time nor the place for such a message. At such a time, I do not want to think deep thoughts about the Day of Judgment nor do I wish to pass the time it takes to pass water contemplating my sins; I simply want to finish the business at hand and get out of the men’s room, especially the men’s room that is the star of this particular screed, which is unnecessarily noisome, even by the very low standards that most people judge rest rooms by.  If I didn’t absolutely positively no—two—ways—about—it did not need to use this rest room, I wouldn’t, but nature has its own purposes, as it is wont to do, and while I am attending to those purposes I do not wish to think about eschatology or the soteriological train of thought that inevitably arises from it.

This was not always the case, of course. In the history of Christianity, there are any number of great theologians who have thought their greatest thoughts while attending to the necessary. The great fourth century heresiarch Arius, unless he was the great fifth century heresiarch Arius—I’m not sure if I’ve got the right dates here—first thought that Jesus was not consubstantial with the Father while sitting in the men’s room, and no, I don’t have any idea what Arius was talking about, either. Understanding the details of his theology was apparently not a requirement, as Arianism became wildly popular without anyone really knowing what Arius was going on about. Arius was sort of like the Stephen Hawking of the fourth (or fifth) century; everyone bought his books but no one really read them. But fashion rules all, as someone much smarter than me once said, and back in the day everyone who was anyone wanted to be an Arian, and so Arius started spending a lot of time in the men’s room trying to think of the next big theological thing.  This was unfortunate, because one day while Arius sat doing his business and thinking deep thoughts about the nature of the Trinity, some non-Arian Christian—I have not ascertained whether this person was Orthodox, Catholic, miaphysite, or Nestorian in his theological orientation—ventilated Arius’ guts from below with a sword. Besides being an extremely painful and more than a little embarrassing way to die, one cannot help but wonder how the assassin knew which of the rumps above his head belonged to Arius. All human faces are different, but everyone’s backside looks pretty much the same. There are differences in size and shape, of course, but the basics don’t really vary that much. Butts are butts.

Martin Luther was another habitué of the theological outhouse, a man who suffered from such severe chronic constipation that he tore Western Christendom apart trying to relieve the gastrointestinal pressure on his body and soul.  Why Luther suffered from such chronic constipation is lost now to medical science: as an Augustinian friar he may have suffered from the poor monastic diet—bread, water, and wine do not a balanced diet make, no matter how positively biblical this trinity might otherwise appear—and so it is not difficult to imagine that Luther’s guts revolted when confronted with the occasional bratwurst.  Indeed, given the vehemence of Luther’s denunciations, it is not difficult to imagine that Luther found Johann Tetzel’s selling papal get out of purgatory bubble gum cards less objectionable than Tetzel’s lack of laxatives in his peddler’s sack. Getting out of purgatory is all well and good, but it is sometimes difficult to contemplate the mysteries of the divine when your guts are in a knot. Something had to give, and in 1517, something finally did; Luther posted the 95 Theses, beginning the Protestant Reformation. Whether the Reformation did anything for Luther’s need to relieve himself is unknown.

Still, the most interesting of the plumbing theologians was, to my mind, St. Edwin of Nobbish, an English saint who wanted to be a desert hermit like Simeon Stylites, an Egyptian saint who lived on top of a pillar for forty years. This posed a bit of a problem for St. Edwin, given the lack of suitable pillars, posts, and deserts in his native England, but not one to give up easily, Edwin compensated by standing on top of a chamber pot on one foot while he contemplated the nature of free will.  St. Edwin, an otherwise orthodox Catholic theologian, held the view that God must exist simultaneously at all levels of possibility, in what happened and what did not happen, reconciling, he thought, the question of free will with the omniscience of God. The Church found his theory more than vaguely heretical, but could not come out and say so without denying the omnipotence of God, which is not vaguely heretical at all; it’s the real thing. People who know about such things tell me that while St. Edwin of Nobbish’s theory may not be entirely orthodox theology, it is fairly good string theory, and that the story that he died because he turned an ankle and fell off the chamber pot he’d stood on for fifty-two years and cracked his skull is exactly that, a story. St. Edwin died in the late 1340's, yet another victim of the Black Death that killed nearly half of the population of Europe.

It also occurs to me that the graffito ‘The End is Near’—remember ‘The End is Near’, it’s what I was complaining about before I wandered off into the tangles of Christian theological history, for which digression, I must beg your pardon; I know I shouldn’t go off-topic but sometimes I can’t help myself—that this might mean that the user’s end is near the urinal, in which case they are standing in the wrong stall. They should be sitting on the commode in the stall next to the urinal. This, though, sounds as farfetched as St. Edwin of Nobbish’s theory of simultaneous ubiquity. Why would someone who knows what a urinal is for attempt to use it while facing away from it? Even a woman compelled by necessity to use the men’s room would know better than to use a urinal in this fashion. So, whose end is near and why is this end in this particular urinal? I don’t know. What I do know is that there is a reason why tradition limits the subjects on men’s room walls to scatology, obscenity, profanity, slander, and sports, and this is it. No one wants to think about ultimate things while they are attending to the necessary. We just want to go.

Interesting times we live in, aren't they?

Well, it has certainly been an interesting few weeks, as few weeks go, I think.  You don’t generally see the President of the United States of America or his Secretary of State make complete asses of themselves on live television, to be sure, and you certainly don’t see both of them make complete asses of themselves on live television in the same week.  You also don’t find the President of the Russian Federation writing op-ed pieces for the New York Times every week, especially op-ed pieces in which he chides the President of the United States of America for calling America exceptional, invokes the blesses of the Lord upon us all, and makes it clear that he is laughing up his sleeve at America and the putative leader of the Free World. The former junior senator from Illinois probably does not recognize the fact that Tsar Vladimir II is laughing at him, of course; a man of Senator Whilom’s monumental self-regard cannot process the idea that he might be the object of fun, or worse yet, mockery, and if the idea did penetrate the mental screen somehow He would ascribe the cause to racism. Racism is The One’s security blanket, the all-purpose reason for everything that might conceivably go wrong, although He will to make it clear that nothing has gone wrong.  It would be racist to think something like that, you see.

The month began with our erstwhile Illinois Incitatus doing His impression of Lewis Carroll’s Humpty-Dumpty, which I thought was very good, followed by His impression of Chico Marx telling us all who are we going to believe, me or your own eyes, an imitation I thought less than credible, but then few people can do Chico Marx well these days.  There was no red line, you see, when it came to the deployment of chemical weapons in Syria, none whatsoever, or maybe there was a little red line, but it had nothing to do with anything of any importance.  This brought up an interesting discussion of what exactly a red line actually was, with various and sundry spokespeople pointing out that red lines are not red lines when soaked first in lemon vinegar and a nice wine sauce, and then washed with a detergent with bluing for extra whiteness. This was a wonderful discussion, far more interesting than the discussion of whether or not the IRS should investigate asparagus farmers for the right-wing political proclivities of their produce. And then…someone in the media, oddly enough, produced the videotape of our prairie solon using the words red line in a sentence that had nothing to do with college basketball and everything to do with what this our Great Republic would do if the Assad thugocracy used chemical weapons against its enemies. Faced with the evidence that He had, however inadvertently, drawn an actual red line, He then said that he did not build that red line, it was Congress’ red line, although no one had asked the Congress about red lines one way or the other, and it was the world’s red line as well, even if no one had consulted the world about the matter.  In fact, it was everybody’s red line, yes it was, just as long as it wasn’t His red line.  This argument flew in much the same way that a side of beef pitched out of a twelfth story window does not, and yes, I did shoplift that bit from Douglas Adams, who lifted it from P.G. Wodehouse, and thank you for noticing. So the former junior senator from Illinois began to lay his case for military action against Syria, recycling President Bush’s arguments about going to war with Iraq in an apparent attempt to achieve a sustainable green war environment in the Middle East without anyone noticing that He was using President Bush’s arguments about going to war with Iraq. I’m not sure why He did that; perhaps He thought no one would remember a time before He blessed us with His numinous Presence. It’s as good an explanation as any, I guess.

As is His wont, however, He did mention that He did not need Congress’ permission to bomb Syria; bombing Syria is one of the perks of being the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, like unlimited golf time and free drinks at the White House canteen.  The Congress, suitably surprised that The One was even deigning to notice that they existed, said this interpretation of the Constitution might not be the case and that they might want to have a chat about it amongst themselves before committing to anything one way or the other.  His Elective Majesty then declared that He did not need Congress’ permission to bomb anyone He felt like bombing and permitted his Secretary of State to make the case for His bombing anyone He felt like bombing to those parts of the world He does not choose to bomb at this time.  His Secretary of State, a man borne to the purple heart and married to a ketchup bottle, thereby decreed that yes, the Leader of the Free World, which is not an amusement park in Edison, New Jersey, but is a strip club/auto repair shop in Spokane, Washington, or so I hear, did not need Congress’ authorization to bomb whoever He felt like bombing. The Secretary delivered this bit of bilious Botoxed bombast, a Secretarial specialty for those of you not paying attention, even as His Kumquat in Chief was strolling around the White House grounds ignoring the Do Not Walk on the Grass signs and deciding that instead of not going to Congress to get their unnecessary authorization to bomb anyone He felt like bombing, He would go to Congress for their unnecessary authorization to bomb anyone He felt like bombing.  And all of God’s children would say, Amen, but to do that everyone would have to be on the same page in the missal, which doesn’t seem to be the case here.

Well, the Secretary of the untaxed swift boats, which sounds a bit Homeric, now that I give it some thought, disguised his nonplussment, if that’s even a word, and began to make the case for Congressional authorization without so much as batting an eyelash, an act that may well be impossible for the Secretary to perform until the shots wear off. In addition to this, the avatar of Jake Lingle proclaimed on one of the Sunday morning chat shows that the former junior senator from Illinois had wrought a political miracle by making the Republicans responsible for another war if they voted yes and responsible for mass slaughter if they voted no.  Mr. Lingle’s avatar, a greasy Chicago political hack who would give greasy Chicago political hackery a bad name if such a thing were possible, rubbed his hands with glee at the prospect I've just mentioned, or he did, until it became apparent that the Democrats in Congress wouldn’t support Senator Whilom’s urge to bomb Syria either. Such an outright repudiation would be an outrage—everyone who was anyone in the Democratic leadership said so—a massive political calamity that would undermine The One’s credibility throughout the world, as if He hadn’t done that Himself by selling Twizzlers to everyone involved and then claiming that the item in question was cotton candy. Oh, what to do, what to do, boys and girls?!  Illinois Jones is about to fall into a vast pit of GOP snakes! How will He make His escape?  The audience cowers in fear as Our Hero dangles at the edge of the abyss, trying to think of a way out of His predicament.

And then, miracle of miracles, the cavalry comes riding over the hill to save the day…well, okay, if you want to be technical about this, it’s not the US Cavalry, God bless every man jack of them, it’s the Cossack cavalry, with a shirtless Tsar Vladimir II in the lead. I wonder why Vladimir Vladimirovich hates shirts so much. You’d think a Russian would love shirts, what with the Russian winter lasting for fourteen months out of the year. Well, there’s no accounting for tastes, I suppose.  In any case, Vlad comes sweeping in and offers Illinois Jones a deal: Syria will eliminate the chemical weapons it used to say it didn’t have, young Bashar Assad will not face a war crimes tribunal, the United States will not have to bomb anyone, and the United Nations will come in and do something suitably vague and high-minded.  Our erstwhile Illinois Incitatus gives the deal the cold once over and immediately accepts, as it gets Him away from the snake pit with His swash, His buckle, and His backside intact, in a sideways sort of fashion. Of course, the downside to the deal is that Vlad looks like the Man on the Strong Horse, the Iranians think that our Elective Majesty is a weak sister, and all those Syrian rebels attending English as a Second Language classes now know the meaning of the expression, getting the shaft. On the upside, though, after years in reruns the Not Ready for Prime Time Players are back on live television and Our Leader, the Duke of Plaza-Toro, can go back to perfecting his golf game. Makes you feel all warm and mushy inside, don’t it?