That’s great, it starts with an earthquake[1]Per Revelations, the penultimate seal: “And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became … Continue reading
Birds and snakes[2]“And there came forth poisonous serpents also upon the face of the land, and did poison many people. And it came to pass that their flocks began to flee before the poisonous … Continue reading, and aeroplanes
And Lenny Bruce[3]Famously vulgar comedian who passed away in 1966 at age 40, and whose 1964 obscenity trial was considered a landmark in U.S. free speech rights. is not afraid[4]“…perfect love casteth out fear” -1 John 4:18; Moroni 8:16
Eye of a hurricane[5]AKA the calm in the middle of the storm, before the worst hits; it is why we are cautioned to “Stand ye in holy places, and be not moved, until the day of the Lord come” (D&C 87:8)., listen to yourself churn
World serves its own needs[6]Yes, the world will serve its own needs, but that doesn’t mean you need to serve them too: “These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have … Continue reading
Don’t mis-serve your own needs
Speed it up[7]“And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect’s sake those days shall be shortened.” -Matt. 24:22 a notch, speed, grunt, no, strength
The ladder starts to clatter[8]Indeed, the earth entire starts to clatter: “The earth shall stagger like a drunken man, and shall be moved to and fro like a hut; and the transgression thereof shall be heavy upon it, and it … Continue reading
With a fear of height, down, height
Wire in a fire, represent the seven[9]“…to the seven churches which are in Asia: Grace be unto you, and peace, from him which is, and which was, and which is to come; and from the seven Spirits which are before his … Continue reading games
And a government for hire[10]A condition described in the Book of Mormon: “Condemning the righteous because of their righteousness; letting the guilty and the wicked go unpunished because of their money and a combat … Continue reading
Left her, wasn’t coming in a hurry
With the Furies[11]Greco-Roman demi-gods responsible in particular for visiting mortals with the judgment and punishments of the Gods, and the root of our own English word “furious”. breathing down your neck
Team by team, reporters baffled, trumped, tethered, cropped
Look at that low plane[12]A line that took on new meaning on the morning of 9/11; the original line was perhaps an allusion to the famed cropduster scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s North By Northwest., fine, then
Uh oh, overflow population[13]From the Victorian famines in 19th-century Ireland and India, to the eugenics movement of the early-20th century, to Hitler’s ominous “We need breathing room” in 1933, to the Puerto … Continue reading, common group
But it’ll do, save yourself, serve yourself
World serves its own needs[14]The second repetition of “World serves its own readers;” what the song lyrics leave ambiguous, however, is whether serving (and saving) yourself is an act of selfishness or of finally overcoming … Continue reading listen to your heart bleed[15]The term “bleeding-heart” was oft used throughout the latter-half of the 20th century to mock liberals, due to their purported sympathy for the oppressed. The irony, of course, is … Continue reading
Tell me with the Rapture[16]A term that does not ever actually appear anywhere in the scriptures, incidentally. and the reverent in the right? Right!
You vitriolic, patriotic[17]“Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious,” -Oscar Wilde (as quoted by Sean Connery in The Rock)., slam fight, bright light[18]“I saw a pillar of light, brighter than the sun, directly above my head…”
Feeling pretty psyched[19]“And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?” -Revelations 6:10; that is, the … Continue reading
It’s the end of the world as we know it[20]“old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” -2 Corinthians 5:17
It’s the end of the world as we know it[21]“Wherefore, cleave unto charity, which is the greatest of all, for all things must fail” (Moroni 7:46)–including the world itself. No exceptions.
It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine[22]Neal A. Maxwell came out the gate swinging when he was first called to the Apostleship in October Conference of 1981, with all of his indelible alliterations and parallelisms, his inimitable turns of … Continue reading
Six o’clock, T.V. hour[23]In the days before 24-hour news networks and social media feeds when this song was first written, the news was reported on T.V. every evening at 6pm., don’t get caught in foreign tower
Slash and burn[24]It has been common practice for decades now to slash and burn rain forest for coffee plantations in South America, which actively destroys one of the lungs of the world; besides the fact that this … Continue reading, return, listen to yourself churn
Lock him in uniform, book burning, bloodletting[25]As the Nazis during WWII taught us, those who burn books are only a short leap away from burning people directly (hence why “book burning” is immediately followed by … Continue reading
Every motive escalate[26]What we are in this life will determine what we will be in the next life: “the same sociality which exists among us here will exist among us there, only it will be coupled with eternal glory … Continue reading, automotive incinerate
Light a candle,[27]“Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house.” -Matt. 5:14 light a motive, step down, step down
Watch your heel crush[28]Obviously a lot of these citations of ours are facetious; but we are reasonably confident that this line is an obvious allusion to God’s words to the snake in the Garden of Eden: “And I … Continue reading, crush, uh oh
This means no fear, cavalier, renegade and steering clear
A tournament, a tournament, a tournament of lies[29]“Wo unto the liar, for he shall be cast down to hell.” -2 Nephi 9:34
Offer me solutions, offer me alternatives and I decline[30]When the forces of Shiz and Coriantumr was forcing everyone to pick a side and fight to the death in the concluding chapters of Ether, the prophet Ether himself made the only rationale choice and … Continue reading
It’s the end of the world as we know it (I had some time alone)
It’s the end of the world as we know it (I had some time alone)
It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine (time I had some time alone)[31]A Southernism (the band’s from Georgia, after all): “Time I had some time alone,” is short for “It’s about time I had some time alone.” In this impulse to be alone … Continue reading
I feel fine (I feel fine)
It’s the end of the world as we know it (time I had some time alone)
It’s the end of the world as we know it (time I had some time alone)
It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine (time I had some time alone)
The other night I drifted nice continental drift divide[32]The Saints crossed the continental divide when they crossed the Great Plains to escape Babylon and establish Zion. Of course, we then promptly reintroduced Babylon and all her commerce into our … Continue reading
Mountains sit in a line, Leonard Bernstein[33]American composer, perhaps best known for West Side Story–another tale of mistreated immigrants and the sins that befall from our bigotry.
Leonid Brezhnev[34]Ukrainian-born Soviet Premier after Kruschev till 1982; second longest serving premier since Stalin; spearheaded the 1979 Afghanistan invasion that ultimately led to the self-destruction of the … Continue reading, Lenny Bruce[35]The comedian’s second appearance in this song after the first verse. and Lester Bangs[36]Music journalist for Rolling Stone magazine; also died young, at 33–coincidentally, the same age as Christ.
Birthday party, cheesecake, jellybean, boom
You symbiotic, patriotic, slam but neck, right? (Right!)
It’s the end of the world as we know it[37]“And, behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be.” -Revelations 22:12 (time I had some time alone)
It’s the end of the world as we know it[38]“Behold, I am Alpha and Omega, and I come quickly. Amen.” -D&C 68:35 (time I had some time alone)
It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine (time I had some time alone)
It’s the end of the world as we know it
It’s the end of the world as we know it
It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine[39]Still-popular second single from R.E.M.’s 1987 album Document—which also features a cover of “Strange” by the English Punk band Wire, for the LORD will do “his strange work; and bring … Continue reading (time I had some time alone)
It’s the end of the world as we know it (time I had some time alone)
It’s the end of the world as we know it (time I had some time alone)
It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine (time I had some time alone)
It’s the end of the world as we know it (time I had some time alone)
It’s the end of the world as we know it (time I had some time alone)
It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine (time I had some time alone)[40]“And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away.” -Revelations 21:21; this promise of a new heaven and a new earth, by the way, is only … Continue reading
References
| ↑1 | Per Revelations, the penultimate seal: “And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood; and the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind.” -Revelations 6:12-14 |
|---|---|
| ↑2 | “And there came forth poisonous serpents also upon the face of the land, and did poison many people. And it came to pass that their flocks began to flee before the poisonous serpents…” -Ether 9:31 |
| ↑3 | Famously vulgar comedian who passed away in 1966 at age 40, and whose 1964 obscenity trial was considered a landmark in U.S. free speech rights. |
| ↑4 | “…perfect love casteth out fear” -1 John 4:18; Moroni 8:16 |
| ↑5 | AKA the calm in the middle of the storm, before the worst hits; it is why we are cautioned to “Stand ye in holy places, and be not moved, until the day of the Lord come” (D&C 87:8). |
| ↑6 | Yes, the world will serve its own needs, but that doesn’t mean you need to serve them too: “These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” -John 16:33 |
| ↑7 | “And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect’s sake those days shall be shortened.” -Matt. 24:22 |
| ↑8 | Indeed, the earth entire starts to clatter: “The earth shall stagger like a drunken man, and shall be moved to and fro like a hut; and the transgression thereof shall be heavy upon it, and it shall fall” -Isaiah 24:20 |
| ↑9 | “…to the seven churches which are in Asia: Grace be unto you, and peace, from him which is, and which was, and which is to come; and from the seven Spirits which are before his throne” -Revelations 1:4 |
| ↑10 | A condition described in the Book of Mormon: “Condemning the righteous because of their righteousness; letting the guilty and the wicked go unpunished because of their money and a combat site” (Helaman 7:5). Under Gadianton influence, the Nephite government had become a corrupt government for hire. As has ours. |
| ↑11 | Greco-Roman demi-gods responsible in particular for visiting mortals with the judgment and punishments of the Gods, and the root of our own English word “furious”. |
| ↑12 | A line that took on new meaning on the morning of 9/11; the original line was perhaps an allusion to the famed cropduster scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s North By Northwest. |
| ↑13 | From the Victorian famines in 19th-century Ireland and India, to the eugenics movement of the early-20th century, to Hitler’s ominous “We need breathing room” in 1933, to the Puerto Rican sterilization program of the 1960s and ’70s, to the modern-day movement to deport millions from America in the middle of a labor shortage due to some mythical lack of room, the rhetoric of “overflow population” has been used to justify one “ethnic cleansing” after another. It is one of the many sins we must needs repent of, before the Last Day, great and terrible. |
| ↑14 | The second repetition of “World serves its own readers;” what the song lyrics leave ambiguous, however, is whether serving (and saving) yourself is an act of selfishness or of finally overcoming the world. But then, this same ambiguity is present within the Gospels themselves: Christ, as cited earlier, says in John 16 to be of good cheer because he has “overcome the world,” but he also famously says only 13 chapters earlier, “For God so loved the world, that he sent his only begotten Son…”
As G.K. Chesterton might note, this is just one of the many divine paradoxes of our faith. |
| ↑15 | The term “bleeding-heart” was oft used throughout the latter-half of the 20th century to mock liberals, due to their purported sympathy for the oppressed. The irony, of course, is refusing to feel love for the afflicted is a sign of the latter days: “And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.” (Matt. 24:12-13). That is, we must listen to our hearts bleed to be saved. |
| ↑16 | A term that does not ever actually appear anywhere in the scriptures, incidentally. |
| ↑17 | “Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious,” -Oscar Wilde (as quoted by Sean Connery in The Rock). |
| ↑18 | “I saw a pillar of light, brighter than the sun, directly above my head…” |
| ↑19 | “And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?” -Revelations 6:10; that is, the angels themselves are “feeling pretty psyched” for the end to come at last, as well. |
| ↑20 | “old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” -2 Corinthians 5:17 |
| ↑21 | “Wherefore, cleave unto charity, which is the greatest of all, for all things must fail” (Moroni 7:46)–including the world itself. No exceptions. |
| ↑22 | Neal A. Maxwell came out the gate swinging when he was first called to the Apostleship in October Conference of 1981, with all of his indelible alliterations and parallelisms, his inimitable turns of phrase, all to make his case that the Latter-day Saints should not fear the Last Days. A sample from that talk:
“All will then acknowledge the completeness of His justice and His mercy and will see how human indifference to God—not God’s indifference to humanity—accounts for so much suffering. “Then we will see the true story of mankind—and not through glass darkly. The great military battles will appear as mere bonfires which blazed briefly, and the mortal accounts of the human experience will be but graffiti on the walls of time. “Before that reckoning moment, however, both your ministry and mine will unfold in the grim but also glorious circumstances of the last days. “Yes, there will be wrenching polarization on this planet, but also the remarkable reunion with our colleagues in Christ from the City of Enoch. Yes, nation after nation will become a house divided, but more and more unifying Houses of the Lord will grace this planet. Yes, Armageddon lies ahead. But so does Adam-ondi-Ahman!” |
| ↑23 | In the days before 24-hour news networks and social media feeds when this song was first written, the news was reported on T.V. every evening at 6pm. |
| ↑24 | It has been common practice for decades now to slash and burn rain forest for coffee plantations in South America, which actively destroys one of the lungs of the world; besides the fact that this horrifically destructive practice is perhaps the best argument in favor of the Word of Wisdom’s prohibition on coffee drinking, and is also one of the many reasons why Spencer W. Kimball, in his bicentennial address, suggested that the Earth can hardly stand to hold us: “Wo, wo is me, the mother of men; I am pained, I am weary, because of the wickedness of my children. When shall I rest, and be cleansed from the filthiness which is gone forth out of me? When will my Creator sanctify me, that I may rest, and righteousness for a season abide upon my face?” -Moses 7:48 |
| ↑25 | As the Nazis during WWII taught us, those who burn books are only a short leap away from burning people directly (hence why “book burning” is immediately followed by “bloodletting” in the same line). Those who ban certain books are also fully intent on banning certain human beings, too. Let us not repeat those monstrous sins in our own time. |
| ↑26 | What we are in this life will determine what we will be in the next life: “the same sociality which exists among us here will exist among us there, only it will be coupled with eternal glory […] Whatever principle of intelligence we attain unto in this life, it will rise with us in the resurrection” (D&C 130:2, 18). That is, we will have the same motives, only escalated. As Alma 41:15-16 also declares:
“Therefore, my son, see that you are merciful unto your brethren; deal justly, judge righteously, and do good continually; and if ye do all these things then shall ye receive your reward; yea, ye shall have mercy restored unto you again; ye shall have justice restored unto you again; ye shall have a righteous judgment restored unto you again; and ye shall have good rewarded unto you again. For that which ye do send out shall return unto you again, and be restored; therefore, the word restoration more fully condemneth the sinner, and justifieth him not at all.” |
| ↑27 | “Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house.” -Matt. 5:14 |
| ↑28 | Obviously a lot of these citations of ours are facetious; but we are reasonably confident that this line is an obvious allusion to God’s words to the snake in the Garden of Eden: “And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.” -Genesis 3:15; the language of the LDS Temple endowment is more explicit: “But he shall have power to crush thy head.” Satan in turn responds by announcing exactly what he will do with that enmity–and as everyone who’s been through the Temple can attest, he has repeatedly fulfilled each and every one of his threats to this day. Hence, why this world cannot end fast enough. |
| ↑29 | “Wo unto the liar, for he shall be cast down to hell.” -2 Nephi 9:34 |
| ↑30 | When the forces of Shiz and Coriantumr was forcing everyone to pick a side and fight to the death in the concluding chapters of Ether, the prophet Ether himself made the only rationale choice and withdrew into a cavity in the rock. He saw the solutions offered, he saw the alternatives proffered, and he declined.
As summed up by Brother Nibley: “[I’m often] called to declare one side or the other… Shiz or Coriantumr, wicked Nephites of wicked Lamanites, Whigs or Tories, Catholic or Protestant, Republican or Democrat, capitalism or communism…The devilish neatness of the thing is the easy illusion that I am choosing between good and evil, when in reality two or more evils distract my attention from the real issue.” |
| ↑31 | A Southernism (the band’s from Georgia, after all): “Time I had some time alone,” is short for “It’s about time I had some time alone.” In this impulse to be alone amidst the ongoing catastrophe of the world, we but follow the example of not only Ether, but the Savior Himself: “And he withdrew himself into the wilderness, and prayed.” -Luke 5:16 |
| ↑32 | The Saints crossed the continental divide when they crossed the Great Plains to escape Babylon and establish Zion. Of course, we then promptly reintroduced Babylon and all her commerce into our borders not long afterwords… |
| ↑33 | American composer, perhaps best known for West Side Story–another tale of mistreated immigrants and the sins that befall from our bigotry. |
| ↑34 | Ukrainian-born Soviet Premier after Kruschev till 1982; second longest serving premier since Stalin; spearheaded the 1979 Afghanistan invasion that ultimately led to the self-destruction of the Soviet Union. A catastrophe that the United States learned nothing from 22 years later. |
| ↑35 | The comedian’s second appearance in this song after the first verse. |
| ↑36 | Music journalist for Rolling Stone magazine; also died young, at 33–coincidentally, the same age as Christ. |
| ↑37 | “And, behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be.” -Revelations 22:12 |
| ↑38 | “Behold, I am Alpha and Omega, and I come quickly. Amen.” -D&C 68:35 |
| ↑39 | Still-popular second single from R.E.M.’s 1987 album Document—which also features a cover of “Strange” by the English Punk band Wire, for the LORD will do “his strange work; and bring to pass his act, his strange act” (Isaiah 28:21). |
| ↑40 | “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away.” -Revelations 21:21; this promise of a new heaven and a new earth, by the way, is only way we can feel fine about any of this. |