Hey, Noah, build me an Ark

So, I found this (thanks Suburban Guerilla):

Western Pa state Sen Camera Bartolotta (R-Monongahela) musing about how we need all restaurants to stay open because “the creation of our country started at pubs in merry old England” https://t.co/gegaqd4spu

— Ryan Deto (@RyanDeto) November 19, 2020

It reminds me of the Noah story in the Bible. Remember? Noah spent most of the year building an Ark out of masks because God told him a flood was coming? But so many people made fun of Noah for being all “righteous”. Noah, went right on building that Ark and probably did afternoon press conferences where he stood on a rock in a long robe and his ratty beard and his human microphone of his immediate family only and belted out the warning God gave him. And the people went, “FLOOD, flood, FLOOD, flood, FLOOD, FlOoD!!!”

Then they laughed and walked away and slapped each other on the backs as they went into what was the equivalent of a bar back then to drink some “Sumerian Queen Ale made of slow roasted ancient grains, grown in the Anatolian sunshine in the land between the rivers and kissed by a touch of honey”. I’ll have a growler of that.

Noah despaired that all of those poor people were going to die and by the time they realized it, god would have to shut down the bars and temple prostitute private stalls -again- but the people did not listen.

So they drank and ate and fist bumped and did that kiss on both cheeks that freaks out Americans anyway and generally made asses out of themselves about how no stupid God was going to tell them what to do and there was no such thing as a great flood and that it’s all FAKE PROPHECY!!! MUGA!! (Make Ur Great Again).

Then the rains came. At first it was off and on. There were a few weeks where everyone had to stay home and teach their kids how to write on those squishy cuneiform tablets with the new styluses and the wife started losing her mind about how everyone was tracking mud in the hut and didn’t anyone wipe their feet anymore and I swear to Baal, if I have to slaughter and butcher one more lamb instead of making reservations again I’m going to scream. Damn, that Noah, damn him!

Where was a patriarch supposed to find some peace and quiet anymore what with the inns all closed??

As soon as those first sprinkles were over, the MUGA crowd went out and laughed at Noah and shook Japheth down for his lunch drachmas and did not build themselves even so much as a dinghy made of masks.

Then the rains came in earnest and it rained and rained and rained. And pretty soon, everyone knew someone who had died but the false gods whispered in their ears that they had died of suffocating comorbidities, not drowning. So they partied more and opened up NEW bars featuring “Marduk’s Scat Stout” made with … well, you don’t want to know. And they defiantly went out to more temple prostitute stalls and inns even while Noah said, “I wouldn’t do that it I were you”.

Anyway, it didn’t end well. The scribes had a hard time keeping up what with recording the fatalities and nothing but a pile of clay tablets repetitively defiled by lines of single wedges. But the good thing is they convened a symposium on the new field of numbers. They met in improvised covered mask boats and periodically issued press releases on the benefits of mask arks but that they had come to an impasse on the precise definition and length of a cubitt.

Meanwhile, Noah looked sadly at the people drowning and dying and the people’s representatives held press conferences where they exhorted the people to defy the rain and drink more beer like the Anunaki did in Merry Olde England. No need to wear themselves out with worry and mask raft building. And Noah prophesied that it was going to be a long, very expensive cleanup but that they brought it on themselves because they would not wear a mask and build an ark of their own.

Oh, yeah, there was a rainbow, courtesy of Pfizer and Moderna. They were quickly promoted to demigod status. But many people did not live to see it.