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_____________________________ST JOHN KARP_____________________________
__________________Ramblings of an Ornamental Hermit___________________
2014-10-29
San Francisco has gone a little crazy tonight. People are flooding out into the streets. Cars are honking at everyone as they go by. Helicopters are flying overhead. There is even a car on fire in the Mission. But then I think you would go a little crazy too. You see, the Giants have won.
The Giants are just about the biggest thing in San Francisco. We have one of the most beautiful bridges in the world. The earthquake in 1906 was one of the biggest to strike a modern city. I would even say that some of the best writers living today are in San Francisco. But no-one really talks about those things any more. No-one really talks about anything any more. Not since the Giants came.
I can still remember where I was when I heard --- the same way I remember where I was when I heard New York had been attacked in 2001, or that Robin Williams had died. The same way the previous generation remembers where they were when Nixon resigned or Pearl Harbor was bombed. That's the same way the next generation will remember today. Those that survive, anyway.
The city is going to be a bit hectic tomorrow. Crying women will rock back and forth over the bodies of trampled children. Cars will jam the bridges trying to escape. Families will barricade themselves in their bomb shelters with years of food stockpiled inside and nothing but two-foot concrete walls and a sawn-off shotgun for defense.
I don't like to think about what will happen after that. When the supermarkets have finally been looted and exhausted, people will probably resort to cannibalism. The neighborhoods of this city will turn into tribal fortresses. Anyone caught out after curfew will be hanged publicly in Union Square. New plagues will sweep unchecked through the ruins of the city on the backs of rats and riding the tide of overflowing sewage.
The Giants will watch all of this with steely eyes and unmoving hearts. The pleas of the desperate people will fall upon uncaring ears. They will be the lords of this Hell, the masters of their own ugly dominion.
A lot of people will be going to the state-sponsored assisted suicide clinics long before that happens. I can't blame them. I would be doing the same myself, but there are too many people I care about in this city to just take my own life. We are holding a big fin de siècle party tonight, and when we're ready we will mix some arsenic into the punch and drink ourselves into oblivion.
Because the Giants are coming home now. And I'm scared.