For more than 20 years, Sports Illustrated has run a short feature called “Signs the Apocalypse Is Upon Us” that detailed crazy events and statements that seemed beyond even the pale of the sports world. Now, it seems that I have been bombarded by a million of these moments in just the last couple of years.
However, I don’t want to be enshrined in the Dinosaur Hall of Fame or sound like a member of the whiny older generation from the Roman Empire, Renaissance Europe, early America, or just last week who complain that the world is going to hell in a handbasket. Plus, the Apocalypse can have seriously negative connotations related to those deadly Four Horsemen. So in the process of laughing to keep from crying, I’ll just settle for the idea that I glanced away for a moment and when I looked back, I realized that SOMEONE STOLE MY UNIVERSE! It has been replaced by an alternate one, which I am trying not to see as dark and dystopian. Here are just a few alternate universe observations and a few suggestions to adjust to them:
As noted in several recent news stories, the latest smart TVs (connected to the Internet) are capable of gathering information about you and selling it to others or using it in other clandestine, and possibly nefarious, business or political ways.
Suggestions: To prevent effective spying by your TV, wear inventive disguises while watching so that even if your TV is stacking up personal data, it won’t recognize you. You may also want to use aliases in conversation to create more misdirection: “What do you think we should watch now, Violet (or Maude or Agnes)?” “Well, Biff (or Buster or Bode), everyone else is binge-watching watching ‘The Throne’ or ‘Everything Sucks,’ so let’s try one of them.”
The radical-right Koch brothers recently announced they would invest $400 million in efforts to move the country even further toward a plutocracy that serves themselves and their closest 550 donors. Their group represents not 1 percent of the population, or one-tenth of 1 percent, or one-hundredth of 1 percent, or one-thousandth of 1 percent, but about 2 ten-thousandths of 1 percent; that’s .0002 percent or 2 people out of 1 million. I wish it was a number so small that it couldn’t be seen with the naked eye, but sadly, no. That $400 million includes $20 million earmarked specifically to make the recent tax cut/gift to the wealthy more popular.
Suggestions: Go to the ATM and withdraw $400 million from your savings account and invest it in far-left causes to try to steer the country back toward the middle. Also, keep your hand on your wallet or in your purse at all times when the beautiful tax reform is discussed. Possibly smile to fool them into thinking you approve so we can be spared the $20 million onslaught of ads and talking points. (On second thought, don’t smile, and throw rotten tomatoes instead.)
The current U.S Cabinet includes at least three Department heads (Education, HUD, EPA) who have pledged support for programs that would essentially destroy the work and mission of their departments that has been built during decades of Republican and Democratic leadership.
Suggestions: Use a decoder ring from a cereal box that will help you switch letters so you can decode “Secretary” and “Administrator” to reveal their hidden meaning of “Destroyer” in titles, such as Destroyer of Department of Education. If the letters don’t match up exactly, look for a different ring, or if one isn’t available, find a YouTube clip that demonstrates how to make one.
(Or talking out of both sides of your mouth).
Just one recent example: The White House supports victims of domestic violence. The White House praises a man who warranted a court protection order for his second wife and took photos of the black eye of his first wife.
Suggestions: Stop listening to administration statements with any expectation of accuracy or truth. Observe the facial speech patterns of Press Secretary Sanders closely to see if she is actually saying two different things at the same time, one from each side of her mouth.
Sorry, no laughter here, only tears. Our glorious country has a near monopoly on this form of terrorism.
This may truly be a sign of a dying society, an apocalypse mounting in our churches meant for worship, our clubs and concerts meant for celebration, our schools and colleges meant for learning.
I wish someone could explain it to me, but more importantly, make it stop. It isn’t a universe I want to live in.
Suggestions: Continue to push Congress for reasonable regulations for firearms that do not allow military equipment to be used by civilians. Remind the NRA and elected representatives that it isn’t guns by themselves that kill groups of people, and it isn’t unarmed people that kill large groups of people, but it is PEOPLE WITH GUNS that do, and that further restrictions are absolutely necessary.
Allen Woods is a freelance writer and author living in Greenfield.