I spent way too much time in front of the television as a child; when I wasn't in front of the t.v., I was behind some book that no one else I knew wanted to read. The end result of this unholy combination is that I am long in the trivia department, but it took a foreign exchange student's reaction to an obscure reference to Nostradamus to make me go "hmm."
You see, amongst the apocalyptic quatrains, Nostradamus predicts that the next anti-Christ will be a man from greater Arabia wearing a blue turban, and he will rain down fire from the skies. Anti-Christ v1.0 was Napoleon, and v2.0 was Hitler; v3.0 may have been created this weekend with W's visit to South Asia.
I was talking about rhetorical strategies for justifying war in class, and used the example of Hussein's being likened to Hitler as a means of explaining how we demonize the enemy. I added, in my usual, offhand, no-one-is-going-to-get-this-allusion-either way that I love, that at least Hussein doesn't wear a blue turban, or the Nostradamus devotees would have had a field day. A couple of students pressed for more info, and I explained the reference; that's when Manu's jaw dropped and he pointed out that the Indian prime minister wears a blue turban. Ha ha, semi-nervous chuckles all around until I remembered an NPR story I heard this morning about Bush welcoming India into the Nuclear Club... dum dum DUMMMM.
So there you go: Nostradumbass was a little off. The next anti-Christ is actually the Indian prime minister, and he is going to rain down nuclear fire from the sky soon after visiting Europe. I wonder if Bollywood has done any films about this....
No comments:
Post a Comment