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- SEMO and The Will To (Become A Consultant) – Part 2 (6/14/18)
- SEMO and The Will To Do (You Really Want To See That Legal Notice?) – Part 1 (6/4/18)
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- Diary of Cape Girardeau Road Deconstruction (5/11/18)
- Trying To Save A Tree From City “Improvements” (4/30/18)2
For Immediate Release:
The World Is Coming to an End.
The faxed news release that arrived at the Southeast Missourian on January 20 was pretty clear. It stated:
For Immediate Release. The World is Coming to an End.
I would agree that the end of the world is usually a pretty strong reason for immediately notifying everyone you know.
However, we small-town media usually relegate the coverage of the Big Stories -- such as the SuperBowl or Presidential Inaugurations or the World Ending -- to the Associated Press, the national broadcasters and the big city newspapers.
They just have more resources for covering those kinds of issues.
And if there's no local angle, our readers will probably not be that interested.
The news release we received was for a book that had been published in November 2008. I don't think it was any coincidence that the fax promoting it arrived on Inauguration Day.
After all, Internet rumors and conspiracies have been circulating for over a year that Barack Obama is the Antichrist and that The End of Days are nigh.
I recently saw a show on the History Channel discussing the whole matter.
Experts talked about the Book of Revelations from the New Testament prophesying that a charismatic world leader will appear who is actually the Antichrist just prior to The End of Days.
And they discussed how Nostradamus' prophecies from the 1500s and how the calendar created by the ancient Maya Indians can both be interpreted to indicate that the end of the world will be occurring on or about December 21, 2012.
It was some of the most depressing escapism I think I have ever watched.
Superficially, Obama does sound a little like the Antichrist description that is being circulated.
He is certainly popular.
Fifty-three percent of Americans apparently like him as do the populations of numerous other countries from around the world.
But to be fair, I don't know if it is so much that everyone likes Obama, or that they really, really hated Bush.
Regarding Nostradamus, he liked to disguise most of his predictions and prophecies in 4 line verses called quatrains. I've looked at some of them and I think there's a lot of room for interpretation.
And as far as the Maya are concerned -- besides the fact they created extremely sophisticated calendars -- the only other thing I know about them is that they invented a delicious sandwich spread that is used worldwide to this day.
However, Mayo Lite is a modern-day interpretation.
But I digress.
According to the press release, the book is massive, weighing in at 735 pages. It's also not cheap -- $24 for the paperback edition and $35 for the hardback version.
This made me question the conviction of the author in his prediction. If the end of the world is eminent -- as the press releases' headline says it is -- then shouldn't you just give the book away? What's the point in making any profit?
And why offer the book in a deluxe hardback edition? Hardbacks are meant to last a long time. If the world is coming to an end in the near future, then why bother? At least they're not offering the tome in slipcase edition.
Then, I read the press release a little closer.
It says the writer's royalties "will help mainly the Memphis School of Preaching." That's nice to know that he's mainly not profiting from this work and that it is going to a good cause.
I wonder if that school has ever played SEMO in football? If they did, I would put my money on Memphis.
That's not to suggest that SEMO has a really awful football program.
The reason I would bet that the Memphis School of Preaching football team would beat SEMO is because I've heard that Memphis has an uncanny knack for throwing Hail Mary passes.
Now, that's a story with a local angle that I bet our paper would cover.
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