Hellgrammites and the Rapture

This is the infamous hellgrammite. You do
not want this nasty little bastard anywhere
near your underwear. Those mandibles are
fully functional ass biting tools of destruction.













This is the Rapture.
You do not want Rapturists anywhere near
your underwear either. They are also capable
of inflicting a nasty wound when provoked.















Note the carnage left behind as those who are
raptured are yanked from behind the wheels
of their vehicles.














Note the speed of departure from your
earthly garments. Imagine how ridiculous
this scenario would be if there were 72 virgins
waiting on the other side. Yeah, that would be
pretty ridiculous. Those Muslims and their
crazy ideas. Wow, 72 virgins, what were
they thinking? Looks like they will never be
raptured and fly naked through the air. Too
bad for them I guess.















There is only one thing that worries me out more than starvation, bird flu, intestinal parasites, hemorrhoids, televangelists, dogs with rabies, rampaging hordes of Muslims and hellgrammites in my underwear. That would be Rapturists. My mistrust of these people has nothing to do with religion. What freaks me out is the thought of educated people in positions of power subscribing to the belief that at a designated time, the streets will be littered with piles of clothing as the skies fill with naked people flying through the air with a one way ticket to paradise. Pilotless planes will fall from the sky with unsaved men, women and children plummeting do their doom. Ditto for the millions of driverless vehicles piling up in heaps of burning wreckage. From my first introduction to this concept as a child, I was never able to wipe the creepy image from my mind of old geezers with scrotums flapping in the wind and women with outstretched arms and legs pumping away like a cheesy Hollywood freefall stunt. The thought of it made me laugh when I was too young to understand how serious the issue was.
The main street through the farming community in which I grew up consisted primarily of a three-room school and four churches. From an eternal lake of fire perspective, the Methodist church that I belonged to came up short in the eyes of the competing houses-of-God on that street. The pious congregations in two of those churches did their best to save us from our ignorance of God's will, but to no avail. The Baptists were by far the most concerned for our salvation and after attending a few of their revivals, there was no question in my mind that if the afterlife was managed in the manner in which it was portrayed by the Jesus Industrial Complex, I would be one of those souls left behind. My own mother would join the naked hordes and wave a final goodbye, all memories of her hell-bound children soon to be erased. That freaked me out on several different levels.
Later, after hitching my wagon to a group of fundamentalist evangelical Jesus freaks, my failure to speak in tongues at the appointed time confirmed my worst fear, I was unworthy. I resolved to make the best of a bad situation. Thank God for tequila and the brotherhood of the weed. They carried me through those transition years between hard-core religious indoctrination and the glory of logic and reason. These days, I try not to judge too harshly. It would be easy to fall into the ex-smoker syndrome where addiction is replaced by indignant rage. Come to think of it, I am an ex-smoker and I do have a lot of indignant rage but I try to give my Christian friends the same benefit of the doubt that I give to subscribers of all belief systems that I do not fully comprehend. In any case, I've come full circle to where the thought of scrotums flapping in the wind is funny again but I still don't trust those Rapturists.