Bob was mad at Cindy because she won a bet So he lit her house on fire and murdered all her pets Cindy was incensed and had sex with his “friends” and poured a bucket of piss on his face while he slept Just to make amends The gods were not pleased, so they turned them all into worms Every faction can't see eye to eye Three eyes for an eye, no eyes on the prize The rivalries and refugees, The bigotries, Asymmetries The partitioning of nations Unreconciled inequities The grievances, the forms of recourse The arms of the armature of force The gods were not pleased, so they turned them all into worms Give the market what they want Sell the people what they’ll buy Kings live like gods and peasants like kings Lift all boats with a rising tide Like the Dow Jones it just keeps rising We surmised why but it was already late The gods were not pleased, so they turned us all into worms

Their magnitude diminishes They will perish But aeons hence Heretofore unseen beasts will arise And rearing upon the topmost crest of the equatorial flood, spout frothed defiance to the skies.

Tired blood going down the drain A mountain to nothing A dynasty dying, the end of the reign A mountain to nothing The predecessor collected trophies, The heir atrophies The former was adaisical, the latter just lax A mountain to nothing This child of prestige is weak and slack A mountain to nothing

When there were gods People worshipped gods They dreamed about gods Fixated on gods Lusted after gods Hallucinated gods Had fanclubs for gods Dressed up as gods Asked autographs of gods Bid on relics of the gods Gossiped about gods Read tabloids about gods Wrote fanfiction about gods Became stalkers of gods Gods got bodyguards because People got the gods they wanted Gods you can touch and kill

The heralds heralded heraldically The circumstance pompous, impossibly Royal blue banners, a million in vermillion The Tyrian purple of tyranny Anointed, appointed, even elected The scapegoat and/or savior The embodiment of the nation state Known to control the nation’s fate The crown, the throne, prime president The fanfare where e’er he goes Fans the feelings, stirs the hearts The throng in song praise and decry The arrival of Lord Majest Most High And a child exclaimed, upon finally seeing, “Why, he’s just some human being!”

The royalest, smallest pool of blood Stagnancy, to the nth degree The best spawn with the best Keep it in the best family tree Infested with incest, defective progeny Duplicate my divinity with consanguinity You call it inbreeding depression I call it generational self-expression My descendents will rule the continent My descendents will be incontinent My descendents will be impotent My descendents will be omnipotent When you’re king, people have to take your shit

He believed that no nation that had ever known the joy of worshiping a royal family could ever be robbed of it and not fade away and die of melancholy. I urged that kings were dangerous. He said, then have cats. He was sure that a royal family of cats would answer every purpose. They would be as useful as any other royal family, they would know as much, they would have the same virtues and the same treacheries, the same disposition to get up shindies with other royal cats, they would be laughably vain and absurd and never know it, they would be wholly inexpensive; finally, they would have as sound a divine right as any other royal house, and “Tom VII, or Tom XI, or Tom XIV by the grace of God King,” would sound as well as it would when applied to the ordinary royal tomcat with tights on. “And as a rule… t he character of these cats would be considerably above the character of the average king, and this would be an immense moral advantage to the nation, for the reason that a nation always models its morals after its monarch’s. The worship of royalty being founded in unreason, these graceful and harmless cats would easily become as sacred as any other royalties, and indeed more so, because… hanged nobody, beheaded nobody, imprisoned nobody, inflicted no cruelties or injustices of any sort, and so must be worthy of a deeper love and reverence than the customary human king, and would certainly get it. The eyes of the whole harried world would soon be fixed upon this humane and gentle system, and royal butchers would presently begin to disappear; their subjects would fill the vacancies with catlings from our own royal house… we should supply the thrones of the world; …all… would be governed by cats. The reign of universal peace would begin then, to end no more forever.”

Though I mock the past freely, concede this I must: Ancient ignorance and superstition will not be our destroyer unaided. They will come in farcical combination with unbridled technological and scientific hubris. We will meet our ruin in a devastating crossfire of old bad ideas, like forced birth and wet markets, and new bad ideas, like gain of function research. We will meet our ruin in a devastating crossfire of old bad ideas and new bad ideas. It'll be a collaboration.