Tag archive: God
Titanic II: Looks Like History’s Repeating Itself
Countless bits of pop-apocrypha cling (like wailing, frost-bitten, doomed wretches) to the myth and meaning of the RMS Titanic. Vengeful Egyptian mummies in the cargo hold. Captain Smith saving a baby before floating off into the night. Stiff-upper-lippy musicians stoically playing Nearer my God to Thee as the ship went down. Most potent and enduring of all, however, is that whole “God himself could not sink her!” business (which has been attributed to everyone from a disastrously cocky deckhand, to bullish tabloids, to Billy Zane).
It’s all about human hubris, you see. With the Titanic basically being a giant floating sign that read (in 882-foot-long letters) “God is shit! And humans are totes brilliant! Yah! Boo!”. Cue an ominous rumbling sound in the heavens as a gargantuan can of whupass is opened.
So if Titanic is all about cocksure, preening arrogance (or *barf* the eternal persistence of love), then Shane Van Dyke‘s shit-tastic Titanic II
Well, yes. And, no. And, I wasn’t really paying that much attention as it was poo. But I do recall Shane (a smug playboy shipping magnate who gets his comeuppance big time) making a speech to commemorate the maiden voyage of the rebuilt (what were they thinking?!) Titanic II, in which he says something like this:
“This ship will help us triumph over the mistakes of the past”.
Take that history. Of course, what Shane had forgotten (the grinning tosser) was….global warming. A sort of unnamed (alluded to) terror that starts collapsing massive ice-sheets in Greenland (or somewhere), thus causing mega-giganto-super-tsunamis. Mega-giganto-super-tsunamis that are (*gasp*) heading straight for the Titanic II!
To add spice to proceedings (if mega-giganto-super-tsunamis aren’t enough for you) she and Shane used to be an item. Before he became all super-rich and narcissistic and horrible and stuff. Forcing us to endure a penniless-man’s bootleg version of the DiCaprio/Winslet lurve-fest from Titanic (or, Titanic I, as James Cameron is now hilariously forced to call it).
In a bootleg reprisal of the “King of the World” thingy, Shane and pound-shop-Kate stand at the peak of the ship (its nose, or stern, or pointy bit or whatever you call it) and exchange dialogue so banal it almost becomes transcendent.
Shane: You still have those earrings I gave you.
Pound-shop-Kate: Yeah. Well, I have a lot of earrings.
Huh? Wha?
The punch the air moment comes when the engines give out, and the ship is fucked (thanks to Shane’s “Make it go 50 knots!” hubris), and a second (even bigger) mega-giganto-super-tsunami is on the way and the Captain turns to a chastened Van Dyke and says:
“Looks Like history’s repeating itself”
Yeah! God wins again. Or something.
God is nothing but a big stupid over-sensitive man with a beard that lives on a cloud
Of all the many wild ‘n’ wacky notions entertained and promoted by orgainsed religions, few can be as amusingly bonkos as the idea that (human) earthly adherents of a deity have a responsibility to protect their God from “offensive” criticism, satire, or name-calling. God may be infinitely wise, loving, and compassionate but He
Luckily for him, many of his earthbound flunkies dedicate their wretched lives (in this vale of tears) to stopping any of this nasty criticism from floating into his ethereal earholes. Sometimes, alas, portions of the slagging do make it across the void separating the earthly and the divine and God goes totally mental. He gives us AIDS. He causes hurricanes. He makes our lives miserable – opening giant cans of whupass until we learn our lessons and re-meek & un-deprave ourselves.
Lesson to be learned? Here’s a guy you don’t want to offend. He’s like a drunken Godzilla with nappy rash and a mouth full of bombs. He’s mad, bad and dangerous to upset (and there’s no escaping his gaze). He makes Galactus look like a total pussy.
Let’s be grateful then that the previously dormant & slumbering prohibition on blasphemy in our constitution is currently being reignited and made “operable” by Minister for Justice, Dermot Ahern. As it stands, blasphemy (as an offence) is impossible to define. This lack of definition has rendered it fuzzy and amorphous – extending an open invitation to demented God-haters to “blaspheme” with impunity. You think the recent May downpours are evidence of climate change and global warming? Think again, unbelievers! The showers are actually Our Lord simultaneously weeping wounded tears and slashing enraged jets of holy piss down on our constantly blaspheming heads.
Once the legal fuzziness has been removed (by the giant Fuzz-Buster of state) we’ll see the shape and outline of blasphemy clearly once more. Even more impressively, we should soon (DPP willing) be able to fling cough-softening fines around and licence the Guards to boot in doors and seize inflammatory material – hopefully before God has a chance to flick through it and go ballistic.
The benefits of a less tetchy and irritable God are obvious. The weather would improve (we might finally get a summer). “Natural” disasters would all but disappear. Outbreaks of frog & locust plagues would be significantly reduced. Anti-social teens loitering on street corners would be replaced by caroling angels and chortling nekkid cherubs. It would be a fine world. A better world.
Why would anyone, other than creepy avant-gardey weirdo artists, want to scupper such a future?
