-by Michael-

Philip Marshal (Philosophy Professor): I ask my students every semester how they believe the world and its societies would react if we all found out that everything would suddenly come to an end. I asked “If we knew the exact date of the apocalypse, what would happen? How would the world react? How would you as an individual react?”

Alex Kidd (Undergrad): Dr. Marshal was always making us think about mortality and theology and human nature. Philosophy, right? But I don’t really think he ever anticipated Doomsday the way it went down. I mean, look me in the face and tell me you anticipated it at all, yaknow? None of us did. Not really, anyway. But Doc Marshal was just there to make us think about that shit, not plan for it. 

Silvia Beaton (Head of Operations, Icarus Project): Of course nobody was to plan for it. Nobody but us at Icarus. For what good? What benefit? If the project would have failed there would have been nothing left and we’d’ve had mass panic, rapes, murders… total chaos. The whole world going to hell right before ending? Obviously the governments of the world didn’t want that. Ignorance is bliss. Agent K said it best when he said “A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it.” And yes I just quoted Men In Black, but the point stands.

Robert Schopher (Journalist): So we’re all crammed in that room with the blue curtains - American and other Nation’s flags and that jazzy patriotic shit - like sardines. Reporters with no elbow room get cranky, but… “Urgent matter of national security” we’d all been told. Room’s buzzing like a honeybee box full of speculation. Figured North Korea was finally gonna go off like a powder keg. Maybe Iranians. I joked about China’s inevitable coup - finally overthrowing us as the world’s SuperPower, right? Then Mr. President himself walks up to that podium with some stiff broad in a suit and introduces her as the head of operations at something called Icarus. Whole room goes quiet as a casket, right? First Lady’s in the corner holding back sobs ‘cause obviously she knows something we don’t. And I’m just taking pictures…

Carl Baker (Father): I was workin’ in tool and dye, textile things and that sorta labor, you know… an’… that day, on December 28th, two-thousand an’ twelve? I… well I come home from that work, grease on my hands, grimed up into between my fingers, and I go on into the kitchen for a rag and I hear the wife and the boy hollerin’ at me to come see what’s on the television. Grab myself a beer from the fridge. Sat down. And there’s the idiot I refused to vote fer at his podium, and he grabs his wife of his - the First Lady - an’ pulls her in real close. Says “Ladies and Gentlemen. Citizens of the world. I am so very sorry.” Hell, I didn’t know what to do. Kid’s sayin’ “daddy I don’t understand” and the wife starts sobbing, so I just throw my bottle at the damned television screen. Didn’t know what else to do. Wa’n’t nothin’ else TO do.

Silvia Beaton (Head of Operations, Icarus Project): No, I wasn’t scared. My team and I were fully prepared for all anticipated outcomes, positive or otherwise. I guess I just didn’t expect the dead silence of it all. Like we’d robbed them all of something by not informing them sooner, but - the looks? The blank faces on the journalists in the press room? - they understood. They didn’t like it, of course. But they understood.

Robert Schopher (Journalist): Not a single person in that room had it together enough to even clear his throat. Everyone’s too focused on how far his or her heart has climbed up into their throat, or dropped into his or her gut respectively.

Philip Marshal (Philosophy Professor): My colleagues and I used to get around a poker table every Saturday and just have at it. Full blown arguments about politics and religion - always calm and collected. Like serial killers but with better beards - and of course we’d argue about human nature in the face of adversity and… well, honestly, I guess I always that it’d be bloodier. I’m a pessimist. Either always right or pleasantly surprised. But I still figured that human nature would destroy us all with ego and pride and fear and war long before the nature of the universe ever would get a chance to touch us.

Sheriff Walter Owens: I was out on patrol, December 28th. You know. When the announcement was made. Radios were so damned quiet and at the time I didn’t think much of it. I get back to the station and most of the boys are stoic but plenty of them were crying right along with the women. Plenty of them were holding each other, too, and I thought somebody must’ve died. Everyone’s looking at me with big, wet, doleful eyes as I walk towards one of the other cops who was sitting at his computer, and I see this black and white image of a potato surrounded by darkness… it didn’t register right away, but when I realized what I was seeing? My blood went cold for an hour, I swear it. 

Silvia Beaton (Head of Operations, Icarus Project): Ten years ago I was working for NASA as the lead engineer on a team whose primary objective was extraterrestrial projectile identification and collision prevention. Imagine the shot my ego took when it wasn’t us who discovered the PD462, but some kid out of a New Zealand observatory.

Jacob Gardner (Astronomer): PD462. A potential devastator. I’m an intern then, in 2003, sitting at the telescope in the Carter Observatory. I’m just a kid staring at the beautiful, vast sea of glittering diamonds in the sky, and then… suddenly… an anomaly. One of these kids was not like the others, you know? Sheer dumb stupid luck I saw it then. A damn shimmer o’ light wasn’t there before and suddenly… poof! It was. A fuckin’ potato the length of California and twice as wide! I tell you what, there were phone calls to be made about that.

Silvia Beaton (Head of Operations, Icarus Project): PD462 was going to hit us in a matter of years. We got the phone call and crunched the numbers Gardner fed us and no matter how many times we calculated and recalculated… impact was inevitable. So a secret summit was held and the Icarus Project was born.

Yamada Mitsuro (Engineer, Icarus Project): Offense had to be nuclear. The asteroid would hit Earth with enough force to virtually split the planet in half - vaporize it, more likely. We’re talking trillions of tons of rock and steel, like a cosmic bullet aiming for a head-shot. So my team and I were tasked with designing a fleet of probes that would carry roughly 30% of the world’s warheads out into space to meet PD462 halfway.

Silvia Beaton (Head of Operations, Icarus Project): Five years of the most god-awfully stressful planning and building and remote rocket launches. Shuttle missions. Everything launched during the day out in the middle of nowhere. People asked questions, but it’s a miracle we were never found out.

Aaron Lloyd (Classified): All I had to tell the press was some bullshit about weather balloons and satellite retrieval. No muss no fuss. 

Robert Schopher (Journalist): So the Beaton woman from Icarus just keeps talking while all us journalists stare in shock and silence in the press room, President off to the the side with the Wife, and we’re listening to this broad tell us how they’ve known about PD462 for damn near a decade. Tells us and the world that their attempts to neutralize the asteroid failed and that in 24 hours the thing’d tear through our atmosphere and effectively end life as we know it.

Jacob Gardner (Astronomer): We were hoping the nuclear detonations would at least break the asteroid up into small enough pieces that they might burn up in the atmosphere or fly off in opposite directions away from Earth. After detonation, small pieces did in fact break off, accelerate towards us and burn up in the atmosphere, but the large bulk of the thing was still headed right for us. 

Carl Baker (Father): “May God have mercy on us all” and “I’m so very sorry” was the best Mr. President could do fer us. Ha. Just about told him where he could stick God’s mercy.

Alex Kidd (Undergrad): You know what we did that night? We didn’t go out and steal shit. I mean, yeah. Plenty of people did that, but a lot fewer than we’d have anticipated. There’s always going to be people who feel cheated and entitled to things they didn’t really earn or people with old grudges they felt they could settle, so yeah, there were gunshots all over the world popping off. Crime went up that night, but it’s not like it was total chaos. That’s what was so smart about the timing. Give people just 24 hours to live and I think they realize that they just want to have a nice time with the people they love most. So no, I didn’t go out and help cause a ruckus. I switched of the TV and told my roommate to pack us up a nice bowl of the dankest shit we had, and we blazed up nice and proper. Invited the whole floor to join us. Called up my ex and had an emotional conversation. Only girl I ever really loved, if you want to know the truth.

Sheriff Walter Owens: Cops got divided into two groups that night. Those who were ready for all-out war with the enraged and desperate public, and those who just didn’t see the fuckin’ point. The damned thing was, though, that after 1am, any sort of problems just died down. Worst of it was just a few evangelicals damning the gays, but even they decided to quit wasting their time around sun-up on Zero Day.

Philip Marshal (Philosophy Professor): There was this global, unspoken idea in the air on Zero Day. A sort of perfect unity that can really only come with the acceptance of total annihilation. People got down off their soapboxes and put away their protest signs. What a silly idea, bigotry. To still make an issue of the quantity of melanin in our skin? To be angry over the love shared between any two given people? Over theology? Please. Black, white, gay or straight; we would all make the same noise under the weight of PD462, and nobody cared whose god failed to prevent it. So what did I do on that morning? I kissed my wife and made love to her, then I made breakfast, cleaned up, and then I went outside to breathe in the air of my last day. Sweetest air I’ve ever tasted.

Carl Baker (Father): Never want my son to go soft on me but I hugged ‘im an’ told ‘im I loved ‘em anyhow.

Jacob Gardner (Astronomer): I spent all Zero Day in the observatory watching that carefree mass toss its weight at us with reckless disregard for a very large percentage of life in the universe. And as I’m sitting there with a bowl of ramen… haha, is that a strange last meal? I suppose so… well, anyhow, that’s when it happened. 

Silvia Beaton (Head of Operations, Icarus Project): The structural integrity of the asteroid was severely compromised by the Icarus satellites. It took a terrifying amount of time, but the damned thing tore itself apart a few hundred-thousand miles away from impact. Plenty of pieces strayed away, a few adding new craters to the Moon. Others burnt up in the atmosphere. There was of course a meteorite that hit Atlanta, another in Nevada, and the biggest one off the cost of California. Hundreds of lives lost is still tragic, but we’ve dealt with floods before and the Earth keeps on turning.

Robert Schopher (Journalist): I mean, yeah. It’s all well and good. But everyone’s so docile now. How’s a journalist gonna make a living if nobody’s gonna throw a grenade somewhere?

Philip Marshal (Philosophy Professor): I don’t know. Has the Earth kept on spinning? It IS possible that we did all die and found a neat, manageable afterlife. Everything as we knew it only slightly better? Social evolution at its peak? The world singing kumbaya? Tell me you don’t question it every now and then?

Alex Kidd (Undergrad): I married that girl, by the way. My ex? Yeah, everyone just stopped taking everything for granted suddenly.People went back to work and back to school and society picked right up after only six months or so, and with gusto. All things aside, though, Dr. Marshal has become an asshole, handing out F’s just to keep reality in check. 

There’s been a lot of news going on around about Chik-Fil-A lately. Recently, President of Chik-Fil-A Dan Cathy was publicly quoted saying that he - and through an extension of his power, his company - firmly stands with and believes in the “biblical definition of the family unit”. This has created an air of homophobia along with protests surrounding the company, raising hell and causing controversy with liberal crowds and other supporters of the gay community. 

I’ve been asked how I feel about this a few times, and now that I’ve sat down to seriously think about it (especially since I’ve never openly/publicly adressed my views on homosexuality)… This is what I have to say.

1. An individual is entitled to his or her beliefs. Gay, straight, christian, hindu. It’s in the constitution. This goes for the heads of major companys, too. That being said, if my favorite resteraunt decided to one day put up a sign that said “No niggers served”… I think I might turn and find some other place to eat. Open descrimination against any relatively large demographic is just bad business. That’s the practical side of it. 

A company can represent itself in any way it sees fit, but associating with dated views and opinions is a tactical error at best. 

That probably made a few of you uncomfortable and or upset, but this is where I stand: Fundamental Christianity is dated and absurd and anyone who wants to challange that and the things Leaders of The Human Race have done in the name OF it… well, I invite that person to study up on the Spanish Inquisition. 

(sigh)… oh, the good ol’ days of being brutally tortured for your beliefs in the name of our Lord and Saviour…

This is where point 1 ends. The short of it, in case you didn’t catch it is this: Freedom of speech and belief is GREAT. It is a VERY GOOD THING. But if I ran a company like chik-fil-a… I’d be more concerned about my quarterly income reports than my own personal beliefs because… well… ‘merica.

Captialism. Chick-Fil-A… you’re doing it wrong.

2. Point two is my final point and it ties in directly with point one yet has nothing to do with capitalism and everything to do with freedom of speech and belief. How so? Well… Because where Mr. Cathy believes that a christian marriage is to be held solely between a man and a woman… I am inclined to agree.

CALM DOWN.

STAY CALM.

FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THINGS SANE JUST BREATHE.

…let me explain.

THE ORIGIN OF MARRIAGE (a brief overview): our best anthropoligical studies date the origins of marriage back some 4.5 thousand years ago (but the bible says - ) (shut up). Back then it had nothing to do with religion and everything to do with hunter/gatherers being able to identify their biological heirs with certainty. Through marriage, a woman became a mans property. HOLD OFF ON THE BRA-BURNINGS, FEMENISTS! 

Sooner or later, religious institutions took over and bound man and woman under “God” for the next few thousand years. Women were still basically a man’s property, though, sooo…

That didn’t really change up until the 1960’s, though, and only here in the US along with other “westernized” societies. Then feminism had it’s hay-day and equality is just now on the rise as a popular idea.

NOW FOR THE ACTUAL POINT: churches of all shapes and sizes, relating to any given major religion, have been around for hundreds if not THOUSANDS of years. We, in this country, are given the CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT to decide if we as individuals want to associate ourselves with any one of this institutions.

Now tell me: Who are you or any other protester to go and uproot and change a system that set its own rules that have been in place for centuries?

DON’T LIKE IT? LEAVE IT. It’s really that easy. Because if the people you want to be married under don’t accept you… why fight it? Are you the person in the abusive relationship who insists on sticking around despite the beatings being given to you? If you stick around long enough maybe the church will change, right?

NO. Go and find people who accept you, and fuck the bigots and let them stay in the dark ages if that’s what they want. That is their right, as it is yours to evolve and move on with society.

DON’T GET ME WRONG. I LOVE THE GAYS. Not with my body, mind you, but certainly with my heart and mind. AND GAYS ARE ALLOWED TO LOVE ONE ANOTHER.

Let me remind you all of that. Homosexuality is NOT illegal.

SO: do I believe that gays should be allowed to be married? By the standard definition? No.

KEEP CALM.

I do, however, firmly believe that gay couples are as worthy of being LEGALLY bound to one another as hetero couples. I believe the federal government should allow gay couples to be bound and united civilly, and that they should be awarded the same tax and healthcare benefits as any hetero couple might be. I believe that they should be allowed to adopt without running into issues based on any prejudice and/or homophobia. I believe gay couples are more than capable of raising healthy, intelligent, talanted, inspiring young humans, gay and hetero alike.

Being a hetero couple has failed to stop many from birthing gay babies, so screw off with that archaic logic.

In summation: Chik-Fil-A and Mr. Cathy are invited by me personally to enjoy their freedom of expression as well as their drop in revenue. I like KFC just as well.

Nobody has the right to force beliefs on another, nor are free Americans required to listen to him when he tries.

Nobody has the right to tell an established, albeit ancient, archaic, homophobic, racist, misogynistic, fear-mongering institution to change its laws to suit special interest groups, especially if said groups have a choice in associating with said institution.

And NOBODY should have the right to discriminate against another human and deny him or her benefits simply because he or she loves differently, if not better, than the majority.

BECAUSE ‘MERICA. THAT’S FUCKING WHY. 

I AM NOT GAY.

Please, don’t misunderstand. I completely love and support your kind. Your sexual orientation is not a crime, an abomination, or wrong in my eyes. And I find your compliments and advances and propositions wildly flattering. But PLEASE understand that I am RIDICULOUSLY HETEROSEXUAL. YES, I like to dress well and clean myself up. But it’s not for YOU. It’s for females.

I’m glad many of you think I’m “sexy” or “hot” or “cute” enough to constantly try to convince me that I am gay, but BELIEVE me when I say that I’m not a closet case. And it’s not denial. I’m a hopeless romantic, and I’ve felt unbearable attraction (romantic and sexual) but never towards a MAN. I will gladly be your friend. I’m not a homophobe by any stretch of the imagination. But you guys can NOT keep telling me that you KNOW you’re gonna “get some of” this, and you can’t keep coming on to me with such persistence after I’ve made it clear that I’m in to and into women. If anything, it’s a total turn off and at this rate will influence me to avoid gay company. And that’s not fair to anyone, because I love my gay friends very dearly.

And don’t use the “how can you know if you’ve never tried it?” thing. Did you have sex with a girl first and then decided you’d try a guy next because something felt wrong? MAYBE. MAYBE you did. But I don’t have to because I legitimately enjoy vaginal intercourse. I’ve kissed my fair share of boys just to humor them or on a drunk dare, but I promise you that they only further convinced me of my hetero status.

gays: i love you , just not with my body. nor will i ever love you with my body. not because i’m closeted. not because i’m afraid. but because i know who i am, just like you know who you are. please respect that.

pdbaz

THEY’RE the ones who keep making gay babies!