Zombies and the 70 virgin delusion

This is Baytown Bert in Baytown, Texas and this is Podcast 016  

I have a romantic fascination with the end times and when I say romantic, I do not mean I like the prospect.  In fact, I do not want to live in a post-apocalyptic world.  Only a delusional fool would want to.   

October 16^th, season 5 of the Walking Dead premiers and I will be glued to the tube to watch what Rick does to prove that they “Don’t know who they are fooling with!”  I have a very personal interest in this series, as I went to school for 2 plus years just north of where the story takes place in Atlanta, Georgia, land of kudzu and red clay.  It brings back a lot of memories, except the zombie part, of course.

The end times… the Biblical term associated with Christians vanishing, the aftermath, and the Book of Revelation.   Not to ruffle feathers, or get into a war of what is going to actually happen, I swerve hard and go into the world of fiction – which incidentally can be manipulated at will or speculated to – to death.  This is the world I fantasize over and the one I am directing this column towards, so relax.   There’s even a little levity thrown in.

I want to go on record and state firmly that I like my conditioned air, my electricity, my fast Internet connection, etcetera, etcetera.   I prepare for anarchy, but never want to actually live it.  I like to sweat at the gym and the hiking trails, but I abhor sleeping, well, sticky.  I did that for 2 years in Southeast Asia. I like eating when I want to, but learned after Hurricane Ike that MRE’s can be quite tasty.

Living minute by minute and watching your back with a loaded AR-15 is really exciting on TV, but in real life?  Nightmarish.  Can you imagine pulling into the Donut Wheel on Garth Road to get your morning boudin kolaches and seeing a bombed out store front?  Horrors!  Not to mention, the kind and friendly proprietor would most likely be, well, he would be absent or even ghoulish in appearance?

One reason I love watching the Walking Dead is the zombie arch villain could be replaced with anything from the weather to an alien attack and it would still depict anarchy and be an accurate depiction of how it would be if the government could not maintain law and order.  It could even be an Ebola outbreak…

However, the criminal element is always involved regardless and the one I fear the most likely antagonist we will encounter in a time of anarchy. 

Regardless of who the booger man is, the criminal element will always prey upon society.  It happened in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina hit the city and this element was portrayed as victims for the most part.  Most could have left, but stayed to exploit vacant city.  It happened in Ferguson, Missouri also.  The criminal element turned a peaceful rally into something the local police could not contain.

We live in a real world where actual fanatics believe they will be welcomed into the bosom of Abraham for killing people who do not believe or practice their peculiar brand of twisted and perverse dogma.  They erroneously believe they will be rewarded with 70 very dead, but chaste young girls if they die in battle with the name of their god on their lips.  It sounds like something from an Stephen King novel and just as preposterous.  70 dead girls; now that is some reward.  It doesn’t add up any more than a dead zombie walking around biting a living human for a hot meal.  It’s impure horror/fantasy fiction.  This 70 virgin reward is the greatest lie and astoundingly more people are signing on every day. 

In a country where we believe in tolerating other religions, this particular one for the most part is lying low and to many of us, this is a clear sign of complicity.  I would love – love to see a mass movement in this country of said religion openly condemning these fanatics.  I’m not holding my breath though.  According to some “experts” at least one third of the practitioners in this country actually agree with the radicals.  They choose to remain quiet, much like the mutants in the Walking Dead.  This causes many of us to watch them with suspicion.

To me and many other Americans, they are nothing more than flesh-eating zombies, at least until they come alive and condemn this aberrant and devilish behavior toward other religions and the American way of life in particular.

Now after saying all that, I know that I will ruffle the feathers of one vitriolic and sanctimonious liberal neighbor, who will swear that somehow, I am calling Barack Hussein Obama a zombie, but I’m not.   I am however suspicious the President’s rabid walkers most likely are themselves mindless followers of his weak and flawed leadership.  Only the brain-dead could prop up the man’s actions as beneficial to we, the American people.  It’s as if he rolls the dice every day to find out what can be done “for the good of the people” and regardless of what he does, his people get all giddy over it.

No, I do not want to see America brought to its knees by religious zealots, Ebola, bad White House planning, or... yikes, zombies.  I want to see it prosper.  I want to wave at a cop knowing they have my back.  I want to eat at the local taqueria or juicy hamburg joint and sit in my air conditioned abode and watch make believe zombies get slain by desperate American fighters on the tube with my doggies curled up next to me, but there’s always that danged criminal element to watch for and thus, I will continue to prepare for the… end times.