Two Seconds Before Midnight...

Just two seconds before midnight songs like this were heard echoing in the streets of Poosah City:

As I read the story of what we’ve done and do,

my heart breaks with sorrow,

my head bows for shame.

We have killed all our yesterdays and tomorrows

and today is busting into flame…

Just two seconds before midnight and the air was filled with the stink of the rotting seas of garbage in the streets.

Just two seconds before midnight and as muffled screams waft up from the Chambers of Secrecy buried far below the clicking relays, the finely manicured middle-finger of Ronald Rexona was poised above the Red Button.

Just two seconds before midnight and Ronald Rexona is muttering to himself, “Will this really start “Operation Total Cleansing”, or has old Dick Face been putting me on like he sometimes does – it’s hard to tell. Sometimes I get the feeling he thinks it’s him who’s running this show. Dammit, I’m the Supreme Hole and I can Wipe the Slate Clean if I want to – hope he’s not in one of his “secret locations”, ‘cause I’d really enjoy not seeing his crooked grin anymore – yeah, I’m gonna do it! One, tw…”

Just two seconds before midnight and the rain-sobbing clouds which had covered their poor polluted and ravaged earth in a death shawl since the Reestablishment of World Peace – those clouds suddenly parted!

Just two seconds before midnight and the strange ships of the Alien Veggies, ships of Cucumber and Squash, Eggplant and Rutabaga and all the rest of the Horticulture Crew suddenly filled the skies of their earth and the infernal machines of death and insane destruction were, in an instant, rendered useless…

The skies parted and a true cleansing began. Soon, new songs were heard in the streets of Poosah City:

Between the dawn and day

there is a place where I would stay,

rosy granite rocks are softly washed

by salty spray.

But you won’t find it on a map

or in the words I say.

As Dr. Seuss says in “Horatio the Elephant” (who was faithful 100%!), “…if only things were like that”. But no! As terrible as things were in the Third Galaxy, as fantastic the way all things turned for the better, as unlikely as a Ronald Rexona in our world will ever become Supreme Hole – just as unlikely are the very real problems and crisis in our world likely to be resolved in a flash of Intervention, supernatural or otherwise.

The best we can do, I suppose, is light a candle whenever the opportunity presents itself, attend the sick, visit those in prison, comfort the wounded in body and spirit as the Master told us we should.

It’s not two seconds to midnight in our world, not yet, but it’s much closer than the quaintly optimistic seven minutes the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists places it, closer than two minutes. Closer because the tick and tock goes largely unnoticed by the new media which dis-informs us. Closer as our leaders fight over hills of small beans as our common humanity drifts closer to perdition and hell.

Two seconds to midnight…