What The Frock

The history of Western Civilization is, to a surprising extent, the history of people announcing that Western Civilization has approximately fifteen minutes left to live.

The Romans thought it was ending. Medieval monks thought it was ending. Victorians thought it was ending. Radio broadcasters thought it was ending. Television executives thought it was ending. The Internet has elevated the practice to an Olympic sport.

This week on What The Frock?, Rabbi Dave and Friar Rod examine the latest evidence that humanity has finally crossed the line from merely ridiculous into completely unrecoverable.

The investigation begins with the FIFA World Cup, an organization that appears to have discovered the remarkable business model of making everyone involved unhappy simultaneously. Fans are angry. Cities are angry. Broadcasters are angry. Even people who do not watch soccer have somehow become angry. FIFA has achieved the sort of universal consensus usually reserved for tax audits and airline baggage fees.

From there, the story becomes worse.

Australia has uncovered a criminal enterprise involving more than 100,000 illegal exotic cockroaches. Somewhere in New South Wales, a human being woke up one morning and decided that his contribution to civilization would be the large-scale breeding and distribution of giant hissing insects. Authorities responded with the sort of language normally associated with international drug cartels, except this cartel was apparently run by creatures that spend most of their day hiding under logs.

As alarming as that sounds, it is merely the appetizer.

The English language itself is now under attack. Long-standing grammar rules are being quietly retired, altered, or ignored altogether. Sentences are ending with prepositions. Conjunctions are beginning sentences. Pronouns are behaving suspiciously. Entire generations are communicating without what previous centuries would have recognized as proper supervision.

Naturally, Rabbi Dave takes this development well.

Finally, the discussion wanders into modern physics, where scientists are investigating whether information possesses physical mass and whether reality itself may be a computational construct. This raises several important questions, including whether dark matter exists, whether the universe is a simulation, and whether Friar Rod is merely a software bug residing in Rabbi Dave’s consciousness.

As always, no firm conclusions are reached. The universe remains confusing. Civilization stubbornly refuses to end. The cockroaches are probably planning something.

And somewhere, despite all available evidence to the contrary, FIFA is preparing another mandatory hydration break.