6-6-06.

[I did a Google search for "666," expecting a demon or a pentagram, and I found this instead. I think we can all agree this wins.]

If you're on MySpace, you've probably known that today's date is the Mark of the Beast for weeks thanks to many promotional ads for the remake of The Omen. If this is what we're going to have to go through every time a shitty Fox movie comes out (remember when MySpace was "X-Space"?), I'm going to have to write a letter* to Rupert Murdoch. If we let him keep getting away with this, we'll soon have Bill O'Reilly leaving us picture comments. No thank you, Mr. Murdoch. It's bad enough that the new "game" ads want us to help President Bush out-knit Saddam Hussein. "Help Bush win!" they plead. I don't think so.

I think I have less patience for people who give a shit about "666" than those who use that fear as a promotional campaign for an bad (and unsolicited, if I do say so myself) remake of a pretty good horror film. I mean, it's one thing to be religious. I'm fine with that as long as you don't offend me with your beliefs. I've realized since my anti-religion stance in high school was just as ridiculous as the people I was arguing with, and at this point I avoid the fiery fights and welcome the nice, civil discussions. But seriously, people who believe that 666 has anything to do with anything? That's Y2K-level of nonsense, especially since no one knows if "666" is even the acurate number. (Wikipedia, which we all know is one hundred percent true one hundred percent of the time, says that "616" was the original number used in Revelations). It's this folk-Christian belief that's based on what has become a stupid pop-culture reference.

So you can imagine my frustration when I overheard a certain person at work who has a higher degree in opera singing from a reputable Big Ten university, who, by the way, also calls his significant other "Momma" and warns her to "carry her pepper spray, since the riff-raff likes to come out when it's warm," telling our manager all about his experiences with ghostly apparitions in honor of the skooky associations with today's date.

[And I KNOW that I shouldn't write about people at work, but I can only take so much. When it gets to the point where it's like listening to a five-year-old entertain himself during a foreign film (whistling, doing impressions of the African-American manager at the Walgreens who "cannot control the volume of his voice," practicing his German pronunciations, singing selections from West Side Story, speculating on the plausibility of gangs fighting through dance, and tapping - no, BANGING - on his desk), I lose my patience and feel the need to expres how this certain person really, really sucks.**]

I think my favorite part of the conversation, which, I should add, was rather one-sided, was when the certain co-worker said to my manager, "It's not that unusual for something really strange to materialize in a place this size. Has anyone ever died in the building before?"

Sigh.




*(An open letter, which will be published here, since I cannot afford postage right now.)
**(This is all hypothetical, of course.)