Monday, December 29

The Afterlife

Considered by a majority to be one of the most baffling problems facing mankind today, death has played a part in several people's lives since the dawn of life on Earth. While in itself inevitable in all regards, leaving one with a dizzying retch at the idea of mortality and the end of existence as one would know it for all eternity, let us not say that we, as the first species to hammer out the tenets of optimism, cannot look upon the pale horseman's grim visage and find something to love.
  • Oblivion
    There's a lot money riding on this bet into the (lack of) afterlife in the modern era. To wink out of the world like a light bulb is a very logical and natural idea with all the comfort of a frozen marble slab resting on one's chest. That's not to say that oblivion does not have it's own austere charm. For one, anybody who has had a lifetime of more bad days than good immediately gets back into a 50/50 for themselves as all thought and mood is dispensed with. What's more, who doesn't enjoy the feeling of a pair of shoes being removed after a long day of work? Now imagine slipping free of a tired old body after a lifetime, what a relief! Not only are those tense muscles relaxed at last, they're gone baby! Another benefit of this credit roll is not having to spend the afterlife as a modern art piece if you were mangled to death in a crane collapse. Hello sirs, don't mind my calf muscle touching my pectoral muscle and that shrapnel sticking out of my taint, I'd like my harp and halo please.

  • Reincarnation
    Hell yeah! For my money, this is the absolute greatest batshit insane theory to hope for when you find yourself wondering at the strange lack of internal vigor when your heart stops after six dozen years of dutiful beating. Karmic caveats aside, you basically get to hit the reset button on your life and come back and run through the whole gamut again, only this time as a new person whose mysterious past life histories can only be unlocked by the rare talents of carnie fortune tellers and huckster psychics for nominal fees. Anything other than hack, wouldbe writer please, if you're listening universe. I'll take a slightly daft Singaporean heroin mule with a game leg and that gland disorder that makes your sweat smell like potent mating season trout cunt. That has to be more exciting than joyless cynical white man with dysfunctional relationships and mother issues.
  • Traditional Heaven
  • Reports vary on this one. The bible isn't exactly a concise reference book when it comes to the logistics, but if popular media is any indication, you get to roam around a cloud fortress of dead people for an eternity while every few thousand years a Holy Father Disney-esque parade happens down Main Street and everyone gets to admire old man God in hushed awe. Popular depictions of heaven strike me as being like one bad endless wedding reception, where the only escape is the sudden collapse of existence, and sometimes, when you're glazing over at a particularly bad shindig as a mysterious aunt that reeks vaguely of some old lady perfume made from laurels and mixed gin drinks deigned it necessary to run through the Rolodex of failure that is her family for bail & jail updates, your brain itches into a frenzy, as if the molecules begin a ritual to summon this calamitous end. Plus, only nerds go to Heaven. Nerds and dogs apparently. The last thing I want to do is spend eternity watching the same Bob Hope set circa The Great Depression with Shari Lewis at my table doing a puppet voice while Lassie pisses on my foot and all the while my penis was replaced with a sensible spigot that produces rainbows or some kind of wholesome garbage not conducive to creating the raging orgies that would go on after everyone got sick of pleasant eternity.
  • Traditional Hell
  • Despite what a bible scholar (virgin) will tell you, Hell sounds like a pretty banging place to go. Lets look at the facts, the book itself is written solely from God's point of view. It's obvious The Morning Star had some beef with the Main Dude, Main Dude casts him out, or some such. Now supposedly he's the God's hatchetman under the earth torturing "bad people" for eternity? I don't buy it. Either the whole thing is a work, or Hell is just a place that would abhor Christians/Catholics with holy sticks in their asses, and is actually more like an ethereal Las Vegas. We already know all the cool people are there, as any 1980's brickwall open mic act comic would tell you, and I'm going to bet it's really easy to hit the torture quota for the day and then get some off time to pick the brains of dead rock stars and teenage icons. Like being in prison with maybe some more ass rape thrown in for good measure. For me to suffer for eternity, there has to be a whole infrastructure created and maintained, dedicated to making people suffer for eternity, and why would any loving God create that!? WHY!?
  • Valhalla
  • Not a very pervasive belief today, but the allure is there. Basically, you kick it with Odin in his giant crib with doors as wide as football fields where you prepare to do battle with monsters until the end of time. Then after you're done for the day, you get to feast with vikings on boar and get crunk on various wines, ales, and other intoxicating brews. You go to bed, and you do it all again the next day! The only problem with this scenario is that I'm sure it will get a bit boring after a few centuries. I mean you got a whole battlefield to scope every day and probably five or six types of weapons to master, and after the dozenth time you dive roll away from an arrow and then sever a burly man's head with your iron axe before driving the spiked pommel home in another dude's eye socket mere seconds before he gutted you with a scimitar, it'd all be rather "ho hum". I mean, I only watched "300" once and it was enough. Plus there's a distinctly small chance of getting this afterlife, probably even smaller than the rest due to its antiquity, but lets hope for some kind of wacky universal mix-up! Unless you're a woman, because then I'm pretty sure it's searing ass rape by an endless parade of bearded savages for eternity.



So there you have it. These are the five options you'll face at the end of your days. The definitive list for all time, no changes or errors expected. Pick your favorite and cling absolutely, death isn't so bad. But dying is probably a bitch.

1 comment:

  1. Bravo. We've stumbled upon our generation's very own Dante! This is really funny stuff. I'll take oblivion, thank you.

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