Gena Mohwish says, "Come armageddon. Come armageddon. Come."

I am reading Observatory Mansions by Edward Carey. It is fantastic, and I don't mean that it belongs to the fantasy genre like the editor as Weird Tales used to wonder whenever I wrote "Fantastic!" on a slush pile story.

Here is the first paragraph:

"I wore white gloves. I lived with my mother and father. I was not a child. I was thirty-seven years old. My bottom lip was swollen. I wore white gloves though I was not a servant. I did not play in a brass band. I was not a waiter. I was not a magician. I was the attendant of a museum. A museum of significant objects. I wore white gloves so I would not damage any of the nine hundred and eighty-six objects in the museum. I wore white gloves so that I would not have to touch anything with my bare hands. I wore white gloves so that I would not have to look at my own hands."

I found out about this book from a packet that Leni Zumas made for her craft session on rhythm in prose. I took this craft session during my summer writing program. The same paragraph that I transcribed appeared in the packet.

A few days ago, I noticed that the name Obama is pretty similar to Osama and someone might use this against him in the election. Then I noticed that the name Obama is pretty similar to Nostradamus's Mabus when you rearrange the letters. According to the people who interpret Nostradamus's writing, Mabus is either the antichrist or the man whose death will herald the end times.

A few years ago, I noticed how Osama's name is also pretty similar to Mabus when you rearrange the letters. But it is missing the all-important "B," and it is a first name rather than a last name. There is more power in a last name.

I think I would vote for the antichrist over a republican. So if Obama is the antichrist, it is ok with me.

A few days ago, I googled the words "obama" and "mabus" and "nostradamus."

I looked at the results. Many of them mentioned Ray Mabus.

Ray Mabus is the 60th governor of Mississippi. Ray Mabus has been described by paranoid people as "Obama's right-hand man." Ray Mabus is Obama's adviser on Middle East issues. Ray Obama's picture on wikipedia reminds me of the evil guy who was running for president in David Cronenberg's adaptation of The Dead Zone (although I cannot remember what the character looked like).

It is atypical for Nostradamus to get a name so right on. Like "hisler." Or however he screwed up with Napoleon, which I cannot be bothered to look up.

I'm leaning towards the side that thinks Nostradamus's prophecies are a crock of shit. I think that they are very vague and people latch onto something whenever a passage fits certain events. Many years have passed since Nostradamus wrote down his prophecies. There have been a lot of opportunities throughout history to connect passages to events.

Like this:

Earth shaking fires from the worlds center
Around New City is the earth a quiver
Two Nobles long shall wage a fruitless war
The nymph of spring pour forth a new red river

Does this predict the collapse of the World Trade Center?

Yes, but I'm sure that it can also be used as a prediction for about a hundred or so other things.

I once took a class in college called Games Thinkers Play. This blog entry reminds me of it. We had weekly assignments to write two page papers on essays. We had to either prove or disprove what was being said in the essays. Everybody always chose to disprove the essays, because proving them was way to difficult. I remember one of the essays was about how someone else wrote the work of Shakespeare and how his plays contained codes that proved this. All the essays were like that.

I read that a bunch of grave diggers digged up Nostradamus many years after his death because they thought he was buried with prophecies. They did not find any prophecies, but he was wearing a necklace that was inscribed with the year that they dug him up. I am skeptical about this.

I am a skeptical person, but I still believe that anything is possible.

I will be a little freaked out if Obama chooses Ray Mabus to be his running mate.