Author Richard Cahill's Website--Living By Our Motto:"There Are No Stupid Questions, Just Stupid People Asking Questions Everybody else already knows the answer to."

Author's Note: This column was composed on the morning of the 23rd and was scheduled to be my Monday offering but, you know, Trump.

It is the morning of the scheduled Apocalypse, or possibly the Rapture, as I sit here, and so far, the doom planet Niburu has not appeared beyond the clouds to smush our earthly home to bits.

Nor has anyone been Raptured, as far as I know, but it is only 8 AM and I have not yet left the house. Possibly in other dwellings someone has awakened and found their spouse or children gone, slurped up into Heaven by the siphon-tube of God’s mercy, while they are left to endure the Final Days in sinful solitude, but not here. That’s no surprise, really—I am a rotten old bastard. I am even wearing my “Marinated in Sin” t-shirt just to make sure some archangel doesn’t come by and mistakenly swoop me into eternal bliss.

And my girl is not going anywhere, because she’s Jewish.

So I can’t be sure about the Rapture, but I suspect strongly it is not going on. Why? Because my personal religious icon, Dollar Store Camouflage Jesus, has not given me a sign that the End Times are upon us.

I came into possession of DSCJ by divine Providence—my son saw Him in a 99 Cent Only store in Vista, California, and was inspired to fork across a dollar of my money to make a present of Him to me. The icon currently rests on a shelf in my library, next to a bottle of rubber cement that I have never opened and a few mismatched cufflinks that I never use, watching over me like the holy hunk of plastic that He is.

And yes, I do have books in my library, but like any object in my home that offers a flat surface or two, its shelves are used for general storage as well as literature.

So far, DSCJ has not given me any sign that the last moments of our earthly abode are upon us. No tears have appeared to run down His tiny, olive-colored face. No stigmata are dripping blood from his hands, although He is wearing little weight-lifter gloves, so I guess they could be concealing a discharge from His wounds.

You heard me when I said “olive-colored.” Dollar Store Camouflage Jesus is not a Northern European, although He does have distinctly Caucasian hair. This compromise in His ancestry was no doubt due to the wisdom of His makers, although giving Him the correct skin tone was the only gesture they made to historical accuracy. Camouflage had not been invented when He walked the streets of Jerusalem, and neither had pants.

DSCJ wears knee pads, making those long sessions of prayer to His Father more comfortable, I expect. He carries a grenade and a canteen on His belt. The canteen can be filled with either water or wine, depending on His whim.

Some theologians tell me I shouldn’t depend on this icon to give me forewarning of the Apocalypse. DSCJ is too geared up and butch to start weeping like some wussie statue of the Virgin, End of Time or not, they say, and if I want to see some blood flowing, I’d better get me one of those relic chalices that have been fondled like they were altar boys by the saints, and mysteriously fill themselves with red liquid on Holy Days and long weekends.

But I persevere in my faith. If the Rapture does indeed come upon us, I expect I’ll get a sign. Maybe on that appointed day, I’ll come into my office and see Him kneeling on those kneepads, and know the time of Final Tribulation is upon us.
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If that happens, I’ll let you know. In the meantime, don’t cash in your IRA.

The President announced today that he will impose sanctions on the basketball champion Golden State Warriors and the entire NFL, for back-sassing him.

“They were warned,” said a White House source, on condition of anonymity. “When the President suggests that players who kneel during the national anthem be immediately fired and replaced by shittier football players, or he invites a championship team to the White House and they say sorry, we have a dentist appointment that day, he doesn’t expect any pushback. Like Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, a man we should all respect for marrying a spoiled blonde tart thirty years younger than him in spite of his unpronounceable name and his having the facial features of a cane toad, said, “Let them exercise their free speech on their own time.”

What does the Secretary of the Treasury have to do with football?

“He renews the NFL’s license to print money every year, for one thing. Take that away, and the whole football structure crumbles. But we’re not going to start with major sanctions like that right away, because that would hurt the NFL owners, many of whom have golfed with the President. We’re going to start with the big troublemakers, the players. Their ability to get free shoes may be severely curtailed. And when they retire, they may no longer be allowed to do wooden, unwatchable TV commercials for local car dealers and pizza restaurants.”

That’s pretty stern.

“We serious here. If these malcontents want to get down on their knees while the Star-Spangled Banner is played, let them do it at home.”

But nobody would notice them there, or think anything of it. People get on their knees all the time at home. I mean, if you need to paint the baseboard, or retrieve a sex toy that’s rolled under the bed, down you go. Nobody would even know they were protesting.

“That is their problem. Football players get paid very well for a few years. Most of them get two or three free knee surgeries, too. They need to be more grateful for what America gives them, and stand tall for the national anthem.”

So what about the Golden State Warriors having their White House invitation withdrawn?

“A harbinger of future policy. You see a bunch of tattooed dark people around the White House today? Hell, no. Well, guess what we get when we have one of those basketball teams in? It makes Jared and Ivanka nervous, thinking that people like that possibly make enough money to move into one of their buildings. We might as well ban visits by future football champions while we’re thinking about them, too. As the President noted, a lot of them aren't really enthusiastic about getting gruesomely injured to entertain us anyway. Screw them.  World Series winners will still be allowed to come to the White House, but any players with notable Hispanic accents will be forbidden to speak to the President.”

What about hockey teams?

“Hockey teams are, for the most part, reliably white. I don’t see a problem.”

How about them not being reliably American? Most of them are European or Canadian.

“The President has many Caucasian friends who are not American. Ask Mueller if you don’t believe me.”

In yet another effort to poke Trump in the eye, North Korean hereditary dictator Kim "Rocket Man" Jong Un has followed the lead of California and declared his nation a sanctuary state. Pundits declared the surprise move a stroke of political genius by Un.

“Talk about a charm offensive,” said one State Department analyst, who wished to remain anonymous. “Now instead of exchanging threats about seas of fire, pathways to annihilation and the utter destruction of all its enemies, North Korea has turned itself into a refuge for those America seeks to deport. The Dreamers can now dream of living in North Korea, although they would be well-advised to bring their own snacks.

“Trump immediately wanted to go tit-for-tat with Un, as he usually does, by declaring America a sanctuary state for any of Un’s relatives the fat kid hasn’t machine-gunned yet, but was frustrated when he found out that is in fact our national policy, and to add insult to injury, was put in place by Obama.  Currently he’s following his pattern of brooding about a perceived insult. Probably his next step will be to commit an act of executive overreach on Twitter. In the meantime, Un is basking in the glow of international approval.”

Wow. Do you think Un has another move in him?

‘I wouldn’t be surprised if he offers aid after America’s next not-caused-by-climate-change huge hurricane, which looks like it might be next week. I mean, North Korea doesn't have much to export besides dust, but guess what you don’t have a lot of after a hurricane?

Or a lot of demand for it.

“The symbolic gesture is what counts for North Korea. I mean, this is a nation that’s proud of being able to hit the Pacific Ocean with a missile.”

Do you think that the Un will ease sanctions on North Korea, now that Kim’s turning into an international sweetheart?

“I don’t know about that. There’s a lot of cynicism about North Korean motives at the UN. Some diplomats are whispering that Un is making this move merely to get a few taco trucks parked in Pyongyang. There’s no place there that serves a decent enchilada right now, and it's obvious being an international pariah makes Un hungry.”

So, do you think now that North Korea has declared itself a sanctuary state, many of America’s undocumented workers will take advantage of the offer and move there?

“Once again, I don’t know. Would you rather live under the constant threat of deportation or move to a famine-stricken wasteland? That’s a very personal decision, but Kim Jong Un has made it possible. All undocumented Americans are welcome there. Especially if they bring some uranium with them.”

ESPN talking head Jemele Hill got herself into hot water with her head honchos and the government over the weekend when she Tweeted a few casual observations about the White House’s current occupant, among them being that he was a white supremacist and a bigot.

The White House said that was plainly untrue, which itself is plainly untrue, because the cheddar-colored commander of our national fate is on record as calling for stern measures to be taken against Mexicans and Muslims, merely because they are Mexicans and Muslims. His pals include Steve Bannon, Joe Arpaio and Jeff Sessions, people who also claim not to be white supremacists, but just prefer to act like them. Everybody could be wrong about them. Perhaps they have big parties where they all get together to be racially neutral.

But Jemele doubts that, and Tweeted her doubts to the world. This Administration, which every day shows our citizens that it cannot take criticism or even a joke very well, called for Jemelle to be fired by ESPN. The sports network has not done that yet, although Jemelle has been taken to the woodshed and told it is not the sports network’s job not to get involved in politics.

They are probably right—people who paint their faces in primary colors to show their rabid lust for a particular college or pro franchise probably don’t spend a crap-ton of time thinking about the three branches of government, and you see a lot of those guys on ESPN. So Jemele will probably keep her opinions about Trump’s white supremacist tendencies on the down low from now on.
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But this column is here to help her. Here are fifteen things you can call the Big Cheeto without implying in the most remote way that he is a racist:
 
President Twitter Twaddle
Popular vote loser
Big white chocolate rabbit in the basket of deplorables
Melania’s main squeeze
Small-handed shitbird
Caucasian-in Chief
Golf twat
Dementia Don
Bannon’s butt buddy
Hankering for some Ivankering
President Squeak Toy
Pencil-dick dictator
Nuclear wanker
Chin flab Fuhrer
Taco-bowl eating turdbite.
 
Have at it, Jemele. You go, girl.

The mysterious planet Niburu is coming back to squash the life off of Earth next week, so once again my advice is don’t buy season tickets to anything.

Niburu, which loosely translates as “a massive lump of bullshit in space,” was scheduled to demolish our planet in 2003, 2012 and 2015, and also earlier this year, but failed to show up. Who knows why? Possibly it got behind on its schedule of demolishing other planets. This could happen for any number of reasons, like other planets deserving demolishing more than us (I admit, this is highly unlikely). Possibly it left a tool it needed for the job back at the shop. This is what happened to the air-conditioning guy who was supposed to fix our AC on a hundred-degree day last week, so if it happened to cosmic wanderer like Niburu, we shouldn’t be surprised.

Anyway, the date’s been set—September 23rd. That is when Niburu will appear, bright, chipper and eager to get the job done, on our doorstep, and commence flattening us out of existence, according to author David Meade. Meade claims that everything on Earth will be destroyed, up to and including the unnecessary vowel at the end of his name.  The event has been predicted by both the Bible and the Great Pyramid, according to Meade, who apparently found a date circled in Revelations that everyone else had missed, and also knows what “September 23, 2017,” looks like in hieroglyphics. He also gives the Pyramid builders credit for making a prediction based on a calendar that wouldn’t be invented for several thousands of years.

Naturally, the fake news media is publishing the anti-Niburu propaganda being pushed by people like astronomers and NASA, who claim Niburu doesn’t exist and no planetary collision will happen on the 23rd. If you're gullible enough to believe these scientist types, you could be having unpleasant thoughts like, hey, maybe the ancient prophets didn't know dick about the future.

In other words, they were just like us, only a more unwashed and unshaven and subject to a lot of old-school diseases that we're too modern to have. 

It's easy for these for these astrophysicist characters to pooh-pooh Niburu, while they’re hiding behind their advanced degrees, whiteboards full of equations nobody but them will ever understand, and their telescopes, but if you're tempted to believe them, remember—these are the same people who think the Big Bang is something other than a popular TV comedy. Here's a gratuitous link to a lingerie pic of Kaley Cuoco to prove my point.

Not to mention they faked the moon landings.

We’ve had a good many Apocalypses lately, which this column strongly supports. The Blood Moons were supposed to presage the Second Coming, because they were visible from the USA, and the total eclipse was also supposed to prefigure the end of everything, also because it rolled across America. We Americans can be proud, because God obviously is giving us extra notice that He is coming soon to whomp the crap out of our planet, a sign of His love for our nation.

In fact, all of these heavenly portents crowding in on us leads me, as a thinker, to propose an axiom:

ANYTHING THAT HAPPENS IN THE FUCKING SKY IS A PRELUDE TO THE APOCALYPSE!

You can’t go wrong with that. Of course, Jesus appearing on top of the Great Pyramid holding the original stone tablets of the 10 Commandments, or even a copy of People magazine, would signal a trending Doomsday also.

But I wouldn’t count on that. 

Hurricanes are bigger and badder nowadays, big enough to swamp whole cities and bad enough to muss up Anderson Cooper's hair. The question is, why? Is it because of climate change or gay people?

It is time for this column to examine this enduring controversy, which looms large in the nation's collective psyche because more people watched the Weather Channel this weekend than watched the opening of the professional football season.

The liberal media favors climate change, natch. CNN, probably enjoying the little reprieve they’re getting from running stories about Trump snuggling with the Russians that people don’t believe, are running stories about the ocean being seven degrees warmer than average in the hurricane zone. Warm ocean water is like crack cocaine for hurricanes, CNN’s scientists say, making them act out belligerently. People don’t believe this, either. They prefer to blame hurricanes on gay people.

None other than prominent public witch Ann Coulter was the first to blame Harvey on homos, saying that Houston being up to its lips in floodwaters was the result of the city electing a gay mayor some years back. A number of other Christian types then chimed in, all claiming that Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and the as-yet-to-be-released Jose, were God’s punishment on us for not killing our gays, or at least making a sincerer effort to hurt their feelings.

Their theory depends upon a single passage from the Bible, which reads, roughly, “Thou shalt not lie with a man as thou dost with a woman, for that is an abomination.” Of course, God, as is his wont, chose not to be more specific, by adding that “If you don’t shame everybody who does this and at least force them to live in the closet, which hasn’t been invented yet because you all live in fucking tents, I will bring forth a mighty-ass storm on a continent that you have no idea exists, in a couple or maybe three thousand years.”

No, He left us on our own to interpret His word, so some people are naturally thinking that pestering gay people will prevent further hurricanes. Hurricanes are not even mentioned in the Bible, even though the Bible is full of shitty weather. Toads, locusts, scorpions, eyes of newts and other icky objects are constantly falling from the ancient skies, but hurricanes are not mentioned once. They don’t have hurricanes in the Middle East, which cynics agree is the reason they aren’t noted in the Bible, but believers know that the Almighty in His wisdom did not want to burden the Israelites with a lot of superfluous knowledge, and contented Himself with just raining down the odd pestilence on them instead.

In the meantime, climate scientists got busy with their instruments and gages and grids and computer simulations and all the other stuff they use to make it hard to understand what they are saying, but the gist of it came to be called global warming, since modified to “climate change,” because inventing euphemisms is a necessary feature of our modern world. They warned us that hurricanes were going to be more frequent and way huger. They did not predict that hurricanes are going to start hitting gay havens like San Francisco, Palm Springs or Berlin, which you would think hurricanes would, if the will of the Almighty was to give gays a good spanking.

Which some of them would probably enjoy. But hurricanes are not everywhere, whereas gay people are. It’s almost like God made them, or something.

So, one way or another, we’re going to have more badass hurricanes in the future, whether as a result of climate change or NBC bringing back Will and Grace. We’re going to be reading more about them, so I for one would like to request some more original reporting on them. Hurricane clichés are endless. Hurricanes always “batter” or “slam” or "smack" some place. Sometimes they “hit,” sometimes they “brush.”

​Wouldn’t you like to read “Hurricane Moe Set to Bitch-Slap the Caribbean,” at least once?
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I know I would.

The pardon of Sheriff Joe by Donald Trump has caused a dwindling in atheist numbers, largely caused by the fact that atheism has no conception of a Hell that Arpaio can spend eternity being tormented in.

“It’s true,” admitted David Silverman, president of American Atheists. “Some people are having trouble clinging to rationalism because our belief system does not allow for the place of endless torment that Joe Arpaio so richly deserves. Let’s face it, the guy ran a jail system that was akin to a concentration camp, rounding up anyone who appeared Hispanic, forcing them to wear pink underwear, and starving and beating them before they were convicted of anything. He did this just to collect the votes of retirees from the Midwest, who bought condos in Phoenix and then were pissed to find out that their neighbors were allowed to speak Spanish.

“The pardon by Trump was the last straw. Atheists were content that Arpaio would spend at least a few months in jail, even though the state probably planned to pussy out and put him in protective custody. Certainly, they weren’t going to force-feed him peanut butter sandwiches every day, like he used to do to his prisoners. There was still hope that Arpaio might die behind bars—after all, he’s 85, and we atheists would be happy to see him choke out his last breath in a prison hospital, attended only by an incompetent state-paid physician whose drinking problem prevented him from having a regular practice.

“But no, Arpaio goes free, and some atheists are having an issue with that. The Atheist Hot Line, which we maintain just so atheists who are struggling with their lack of faith, who maybe are tempted to pray to win the lottery or cure cancer, have someone to talk to who can point out that if praying worked, everyone would have won the lottery by now and no one would have cancer. It’s been ringing off the hook since the Arpaio pardon, and when we tell callers that no, Sheriff Joe just goes blank like the rest of us when we die, we’ve been getting some pushback. A lot of people, before they hang up, are asking what religion has the toastiest Hell and the angriest imps, because they want to join that one.”

Of course, you aren’t able to recommend one Hell over another. Which religion do you think is vacuuming up all these fallen atheists?

“Sadly, I think it’s the Catholic one. A lot of Hispanic atheists were raised Catholic, so they don’t have to learn a bunch of new rules. And the Catholics have a great Hell that nearly everybody goes to, including most Catholics, so Sheriff Joe is a shoo-in. It’s really regretful, since the Mexican Catholic tradition is one of the most cheerfully corrupt ones. The glue that holds it together is the belief that the Virgin Mary appeared to a bunch of illiterate peasant children in Guadalupe to give them Her vision of the world.”

That does seem unlikely.

“Damn straight it’s unlikely. If that two-millennia old virgin exists, she needs a better publicist. I mean, a couple little shepherd girls? If She’s got something to say, She needs a bigger forum. Hosting Saturday Night Live wouldn’t even be a stretch.”

We’re wandering off the subject of Joe Arpaio here, Dave.

“Yeah, sorry. I guess what I’m saying is that the best we atheists can hope is for Arpaio is to get caught in a motel room with a Cub Scout, or to be arrested for embezzling money from a fund for lepers. You know, a typical Republican career-ender. We can at least hope he dies a miserable, lingering death.”

That does sound great, Dave. Can I pray for it?

“This interview is over.”

If there’s one thing we learned in the last two weeks of August, it’s that there are two things that can still bring this divided nation together.

Unfortunately, they are total eclipses of the sun and 500-year floods, neither of which are likely to happen again anytime soon.

Of course, we know exactly when the next total eclipse will be—those scientist people seem to be right on top of that, in spite of the fact that all of them believe in the hoax of global warming and the lie of evolution. The next one that crosses the US will be in 2024. It will also be right overhead in Mazatlán, Mexico, where my woman and I plan to be to watch it. We watched the last one on TV. Eclipses, like professional football, are probably better on TV, but viewing them in person means you don’t have to listen to the announcers on CNN chortle about them continuously.

Then there was the flood in Texas. CNN was right on top of that as well, so we got an up-close look at the flood, too, because a few years ago my Significant Other purchased an HDTV that is roughly the size of a ping-pong table. We felt like we could crawl into the holes people were punching in their roofs to survive, the coverage was so intimate.

We saw the thousands of boats people launched to rescue strangers from roofs, trees and overpasses. We appreciated the rescuers. We thought, like many of us did, that this represented the real America, not the cartoon America we’ve inhabited since January.

Then the cartoon America showed up, too, in the appearance of armed militia men eager to shoot looters. So, many guys who had both guns and boats had to make the morally ambiguous choice between rescuing strangers and shooting looters.

Most of them ended up in the rescue squad, because there seemed to be way more people who needed rescuing than there were looters, but I am sure there were people who wanted to do both, because most people naturally want to be heroes, and many of them want to be killers, and being a heroic killer is the best thing of all.

If you don’t believe me, you haven’t watched many movies.

Then Trump showed up and proved once again he has no idea how to do anything, unless you count self-absorbed screeching as a thing, and Melania got her fair share of criticism too, because she was filmed wearing stiletto pumps as she dashed off to Texas, shoes that probably cost more than most of the bass boats plucking people from their roofs.
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I think that’s unfair. Look at the girl. Does she look like she owns a pair of rubber waders?