The Day They Destroyed the Set of Waterworld

They blew it up. Let metal and plastic sink to the bottom of our ocean. Let it dirty our life-giving waters with their Hollywood waste, with their actors cheating on their wives with hula dancers, playing bball in the ghetto, pretending this was their home, thinking they could live a known, and unknown, life. Each of us affected by their seedy affluence, bragging about big cash tips, about autographs, about parties, about free coke, about roles in future movies, and we happily circled the detritus of their leftovers, their garbage, eagerly lapping up their faux luxury, hungrily begging for more.

There’re only 144,000 people going to heaven when the world ends

My father says and nods his head over the Watch Tower left by the JWs when my mother wouldn’t let them in. He shows me the Bat Boy in the Weekly World News. This is what happens to boys who don’t listen to their fathers he shares with me. He opens the first Time Life book we get in the mail on UFOs, a secret from my mother before she finds out and burns it in the yard, we are all aliens here on earth, he teaches me, his fingers tracing the outline of the glowing creature on the cover.