Christopher Moore's Blog

It’s  Christmas Eve, kiddies, and I’m signing in to wish you all a very merry and whatnot (or a happy third night of Hanukah for the Chosen.) I’m totally in the spirit of giving and generosity. I relish the company of friends and family, and I believe that we should take this time to be thankful for our blessings, and feel compassion for those less fortunate than we are, and allow our feelings to drive us toward helping to alleviate the suffering of our fellow man.  I’m all about peace on earth, goodwill toward men.

But that said, and with the warmth and love of the holiday season in my heart, I have to say, that even though it’s Christmastime, some motherfuckers still need to be punched in the junk.

Allow me to clarify,  s’il vous plait–

(This rant may take a while. You might want to go have some egg nog and come back tomorrow to read the first chapter of Fool.)

So last night I get this e-mail entitled:
Could Barack Obama Be the Antichrist/Beast?
13 Considerations

Before I even started looking at the 13 considerations, I decided to actually give some thought to my answer, which was:
Absolutely. Barack could be the Beast.  For a long time I was hoping that I might be the beast, particularly back in the late 80s when I was in radio and needed a gimmick for my drive-time show. But certainly, I’m less qualified than Barack for most any position, except maybe “pasty white guy”, which I excel at. So if someone had to be the Beast instead of me, I’m okay with it being Barack.  I’m not sure, however, how Sarah Palin missed that during the campaign. Seems like that would have definitely been a talking point. “Sure, he was the editor of Harvard Law review, a professor of Constitutional Law at University of Chicago, but also, he was the BEAST, which we don’t go for out here in real America.”

So, once I accepted that Barack might be the Beast, I had to in logical progression, ask the next questions?
Could Barack Obama be the Tooth Fairy?

And again, Abso-fucking-lutely. I’ve never seen a picture of the Tooth Fairy, but I certainly have more empirical evidence of his/her existence than I have for the Beast. In fact, Barack might have leveraged his position as the ToothFairy to get the BEAST job. “I bring upon you seven years of darkeness and pain and suffering, and a plague shall fall upon the land, and oh,  here’s a quarter for that bicuspid you left under your pillow.”

So, I was already convinced that Barack could be the BEAST, without even reading the reasons, and after I concluded, as you would, “So what?” I thought. Wow, this guy deserves not one, but perhaps multiple punches in the junk, and he was going for it big time. After all the guy who sent me the e-mail also CCed it to Dean Koontz and William Gibson, and it’s a proven fact that Koontz has trained Labrador retrievers who will bite your junk right off, and Bill Gibson has a cryo-compressed ball of mercury on a nano wire that can deliver over seven-thousand foot pounds of pressure to your junk with just the flick of his wrist. But alas, I digress. It’s Christmas and you need to get back to your stuff.

So here’s the 13 things you should consider before giving Barack beast-props.

1. Charismatic Speaker Worshipped By The Masses.  The Book of Daniel says the Beast will arise in a country made up of “diverse” people from “all kingdoms” [which could describe the USA].  The Beast “shall speak great words …and think to change times and laws.”  The Beast will have “understanding [of] dark sentences,” “shall magnify himself in his heart,” and will talk of peace “and by peace shall destroy many.”  Daniel 7:23-25; 8:23-25.  The worldwide masses will worship the charismatic Beast/Antichrist who will have a “mouth speaking great things.”  Revelation 13:3-8. [sic]

Obviously, the most ominous of these is his understanding of “dark sentences”.  Clearly, someone had to be able to interpret what the fuck Flava-Flav was talking about. Mad BEAST skills, if you ask me.

2. False Prophets.  The advent of the Antichrist will be heralded by false prophets.  Jeremiah Wright and Father Pfleger, who claim to be in the prophetic tradition, compared Barack to Jesus.  Louis Farrakhan called Barack “the Messiah” to whom the youth will listen.

I’m not going to say that we’re cherry-picking here, as far as false prophets go, but is it okay to mention the prophesy that “we will be greeted as liberators” and “Iraqi construction will pay for itself”.  Doesn’t false prophet mean someone who comes up with prophesies that are wrong? Like, oh, I don’t know, prophesizing that the rapture is upon us because the president elect can speak in complete sentences and pronounce nuclear?  Punch in the junk for you, Elijah!

3. Treated As A Religious Figure.  The Bible says the Beast will substitute himself in place of God and Jesus.  Oprah Winfrey called Barack “The One” who will help us evolve.  Chris Matthews blasphemed that Obama “is writing the New Testament.”   Newsweek and Rolling Stone both added halo effects to their Obama magazine covers.

Look, if it were up to Oprah to pick the Beast, then Dr. Phil, Maya Angelou, that chick who wrote The Secret, and cake would have all been the BEAST a long time ago.

Chris Matthews? Chris Matthews?  You’re citing Chris Matthews as the voice of prophesy? I don’t care if he blasphemes, I just want him to stop yelling at me. Punch in the junk just for that one.

And if Rolling Stone airbrushing you on the cover make you the beast then Britney’s implants were the BEAST(s) back in ‘99.  (And lo, she did taketh of the percocet and mojitos, and then she did push the beasts together so they did nearly spill out of her top, and into the land she did go, totally commando, flashing the pixilated beav unto who all who did look upon TMZ or Entertainment Tonight. )

4. 666.  Revelation 13:18 says “the number of the Beast … is the number of a man and his number is six hundred threescore and six.”  6+6+6=18, the number of letters in Barack Hussein Obama, whose Chicago power base includes the 60606 zip code.
On November 5 — the day after the election — in Obama’s home state of Illinois — the evening pick 3 lottery number was 6-6-6.

Because all cataclysmic events are foretold by the Illinois pick three lotto number.

5.  What Jesus Saw.  In Luke 10:18, Jesus is quoted as saying: “I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven.”
“Barak” is the Hebrew word for “lightning.”
So Jesus said he saw Satan as barak.
“Bama” is the Biblical Hebrew word for a “high place” such as heaven.

Uh huh. And Ala-bama means that the entire state is a secret Muslim heaven, because all Muslims dream of an afterlife with 99% humidity and where inbreeding is the national sport.

6. Beast Is A Hybrid From The Sea.  The symbolic Beast of Revelation 13:1-2 will “rise up out of the sea” and is a hybrid of different species with “the mouth of a lion.”
Barack is a Leo with great speaking abilities.  He is part black and part white and has both Muslim and Christian heritage.  He was born in the middle of the Pacific Ocean on the island of Oahu, surrounded by the sea.

WTF?  WTF? WTF?  A Leo with great speaking abilities? Are we placing a singles ad on Craigslist?

7. The Burak In The Koran.  The rider on a white horse in Revelation 6:2 is the horseman of the apocalypse considered to be the Antichrist.  His “crown … given unto him” and bow without arrows signify he will be freely chosen by the people without violence.
Barack’s connection to a religious white horse:  In the Koran, the buraq or burak was a magical white horse that Mohammed flew upon at night from Mecca to Jerusalem, where it was tethered to the Western Wall (called Al-Buraq in Arabic).  When Barack went to Jerusalem in July 2008, he paid a night visit to Al-Buraq (the Western Wall).

This is some fine detective work, here. Clearly, with the spotting of the white horse that Mohammed rode from Mecca to Jerusalem we know for sure that Barak is the BEAST. Because Barack means white horse. I mean, it means, light, as in consideration 5.  Or does it mean Junk in the Trunk, as in Baby Got Barack, by the prophet Sir Mixalot?  OMFG! Barack isn’t the Beast? He’s the booty of the Beast?

8. Evil Goat Connection.  Throughout the Bible, sheep are associated with good and goats are associated with evil, which is why Satan is often depicted with goat horns.  In Matthew 25:31-41, Jesus says that upon his return, he will separate the good sheep on his right from the evil goats on his left and shall cast the goats “into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.”
Barack is the lefthanded son of a Muslim goatherder.
In Kenya, Barack’s election was celebrated by the slaughter of goats.

I’m not quite sure why it’s relevant that Barack’s dad was a MUSLIM goathearder. But you had me at “left-handed”.  All of them should be burned!  Burned as left-handed witches.  I do think that “The Evil Goat Connection” should be the title of the sequel to “The Audacity of Hope”. I’d buy the omnibus edition with both books.

9. Nostradamus’s Mabus Prophecy.  Nostradamus’s first antichrist Napaulon Ray turned out to be Napoleon, and his second antichrist Hister turned out to be Hitler.  The third and final antichrist in Nostradamus’s prophecy is associated with someone named Mabus, whose death will trigger massive calamity.  (Century 2, Quatrain 62.)
The only prominent person ever named Mabus is Ray Mabus, the former Governor of Mississippi and Bill Clinton’s ambassador to Saudi Arabia.  Ray Mabus is a Middle East policy adviser to Barack and campaigned for him.  If Barack sends Ray Mabus on a mission to Iran where Mabus is killed and Barack retaliates, the Mabus prophecy will be fulfilled.
Also note: obaMABUSh.

There has got to be a line in Vegas on this one. “Yo Ray, you going to Iran? Really? Wait, I need to call my bookie. I think I smell retirement money!”   I’m just going to wing it here, but if we’re going to go with Nostradamus and his clearly dislexic antichrist spellings, wouldn’t it make more sense to go with someone named, oh, Mavis? Rather than Barack? Clearly all prophesies use JUMBLE as an oracle.

10. Unstoppable Rise To Power.  Barack’s meteoric rise to power out of nowhere has been unstoppable.  He overcame problems in his background that would have sunk an ordinary candidate.  Barack steamrolled over the Clinton machine, with the Democratic superdelegates and mainstream media unable to resist his spell.  Hurricane Gustav delayed the start of the Republican convention.  Just after McCain pulled ahead in the polls, Wall Street suddenly collapsed to ensure Barack’s election.

Absolutely. I think the key here is “Unstoppable”. While there’s no citation of a source, I’ll buy the Unstoppable part. And given that, what am I supposed to do with the information that Barack is the BEAST?  I’m definitely saving my Obama 08 bumper sticker though, because I am totally going to get to sit with the cool kids at the Apocalypse. You McCain voters can just be raptured off to Alabama.

11. Satanic Palindrome.  Sasha is only the nickname of Obama’s oldest daughter.  Her legal name is NATASHA — the reverse of AH SATAN.

Hmmm.  Again, clearly the future has been foretold by the jumbling of letters in a language that didn’t even exist when Revelation was written. Why do you suppose God is giving us such subtle clues?  Do you think he just like watching us try to figure out puzzles, like, making fire or curing cancer?  Want’s to make us work for it, I guess. Someone should make a checklist.  Is It the End of the World? Take the Test!

12. 2012.  According to Revelation 13:5, the Beast/Antichrist will rule for 42 months of relative peace and prosperity before all hell starts to break loose in the middle of the fourth year of his reign, culminating in the Battle of Armageddon.
The fourth year of Barack’s presidency will be 2012, the year the Mayan calendar comes to an end, the year of a rare planetary alignment, and a year that scholars say Nostradamus foresaw as tumultuous.

All these prophesies, from the Mayans to Nostradamus, to the planets aligning point to one thing: Before the forty-two months of relative peace and prosperity, the guy who sent me this should be summarily punched in the junk.

13.  Shiite Islamic Prophecy Of “A Tall Black Man” Running The West.  According to a 17th Century prophetic text of the Shiite branch of Islam, the return of the Mahdi, the Islamic messiah, in the End of Times will be preceded by “a tall black man” running “government in the West” and commanding “the strongest army on earth.”  The black “promised warrior” will carry a “clear sign” from Hussein ibn Ali (the third imam) and will assist the Mahdi in converting the world to Islam.  The Iranian media have identified Obama as the “promised warrior.”

So which is it?  Whose end of the world is this?  All all the Christians going to get raptured, then the rest of us converted to Islam? Cause if that’s the case, I have got forty-two months of serious bacon eating in my future.  And we’re letting Iranian media identify prophets now?  Cause you know what the Iranian media does in my town? That’s right, they sell rugs.

The saddest thing about all of these prophesies, is that someone wasted a lot of time trying to put together an argument with less structural integrity than a fighter jet made of waffle cones. And now I’ve burnt an hour or so and even worse, I’ve burned a bunch of your time, holiday time, when you should be getting drunk and fighting with your family. Sorry.

Which is why, this Christmas, I’m praying to the Tooth Fairy to give the guy who sent me this a punch in the junk.

Merry Christmas. Happy Hanukah. See you tomorrow.

<img src="<img src="“The Author Guy Making Thanksgiving Pizza”

Photo by Flip Nicklin
National Geographic
(Really)