This is a Joke, Right?

Driving home after an early shift at the golf course, a crew of elfs shoveled my days wage, a short stack of one dollar bills, into the coal fires of my gas tank. A chime and jingle blended with song marked the top of the hour on National Public Radio. A woman's voice welcomed the ears of listeners who, like me, didn't have the fortune of being unconscious (or consciously dream, depending on your perspective) on this gray Saturday morning. Her voice rang with excitement her vocal cords warmed and lubricated by fruit mocha. "Good morning. Today is May 20th 2006. Scientist now believe that humans may have diverged from the apes two million years later than previously thought. Breeding between the two species is still thought to have been common before the two species split for good about five-point-four million years ago. And in Iraq, delegates..."

She said that with such joy. I nearly swerved into on-coming traffic, distracted by the flexing of those deep tissues in my brain. Straying backwards through the ages, I saw man and his computers, his factories, his plows; I saw kings and priests bent over scrolls with feather pens in their hand and candle light flickering off their searching faces; I saw fire and water and wind lapping at the earth, shaping it. I traveled down through the ages of the world--six million years--and I saw there a caveman fucking an ape. Then at the speed of thought, I traveled forward again through history, back to my station wagon and the hot coffee spilled in my lap.

I would expect such a revelation about human origins to come from a voice from heaven in the midst of a terrible thunder cloud sizzling at the edges with flaming plasma, not glazed over by a mortal anchor woman. When the question of Man's being, a topic that has given philosphers trouble for thousands and thousands of years is announced on morning radio with such casualness, beware!

Man was created full of magic and spirit. People drive around in cars filling themselves with things and thoughts that make them forget this. It seems they get all to excited when the media confirms their suspicions: they're already dead.