Mr. Peanut and the Doomsday Clock - weekly column

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Mr. Peanut and the Doomsday Clock

…send not to know

For whom the bell tolls,

It tolls for Mr. Peanut

-as John Donne did not say

The Doomsday Clock (shudder) is menacing us again, much like the monsters under Calvin’s bed in the much-missed Calvin and Hobbes cartoon strip.

Children were first threatened with clockworkery around seventy years ago – if you don’t eat all your oatmeal the Doomsday Clock will get you.

Or something like that.

The American people were told that there was a metaphorical doomsday clock and that the hands were set at ten minutes until nuclear destruction and would tick-tock to our fiery end if we did not buy bonds and think pure thoughts.

As the decades have passed, the Doomsday Clock has been dusted off, oiled, and brought out like a fiery Moloch for every crisis that must not be wasted: Communism, the Russians, the Chinese, the military-industrial complex, pollution, global cooling, global warming, A.I.D.S., the Democrats, the Republicans, the Russians again, the Chinese again, Italians, Ukrainians, opioids (but pass me a legal joint, bro), robotics, autonomous cars – we’re ticking doomed, I tell you, dooooooooooooomed!

And, hey, maybe this time it’s true.

After all, Mr. Peanut has been disappeared by the Planters-Nabisco-Kraft-Heinz Continuum and their special operations squad of ticking vegan albino ninja monks.

Planters Peanuts was an American company was created by two Italian immigrants – hey, and you know what those Italians are like, and probably spying for Mussolini – and their mascot was Mr. Peanut Man, a dapper nut-about-town with a top hat, monocle, and cane. He cleverly dropped his Italian accent and became a symbol of all that is great in godly American legumes.

The Planters company, now absorbed by Nabisco-Kraft-Heinz, still makes all sorts of great foods and treats from the humble, nutritious, healthy peanut in the U.S.A., Canada, and the United Kingdom. This suggests the continuation of a nefarious Italian plot to take over the English-speaking world.

Why was Mr. Peanut offed in a purported car accident? Perhaps he knew too much. His death was convenient for someone, right? They say he was sipping on a New Coke while driving his Edsel past the exploding Jack-in-the-Box just before running into Elsie the Borden Cow, but that’s what they – They – would have us believe. And why weren’t the security cameras working?

Well, it was a quicker and more merciful end than that of Chuckles the Clown as Peter Peanut on The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

There are adults whose homes whose clocks and watches are all digital and who then complain that their children don’t know to tell time on a round-faced clock. Yeah, and why don’t they know how to plow behind a mule, hah?

How can our young be destroyed properly if they can’t tell time on a round-faced doomsday clock, hah? You answer me that, hah?

First they came for the tick-tock clocks, and then they came for Mr. Peanut.

It’s a pattern, I tell ya. We’re doomed.

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