Oh Joy! Oh Rapture!

This morning I woke up to a story on NPR about how many believe that today, May 21, 2011, is the day of the Rapture. It caught me totally by surprise (although I would have been prepared if I had been keeping up on my friends' blogs), but then I remembered that I had been alerted about the impending Judgement Day last fall in the parking lot of the Clackamas, Oregon Wal-Mart:

Of course I was a little bit skeptical about this - how could I not be after getting burned before when the doomsday prediction from the opening titles of the 1990 Nintendo game Crystalis failed to come to pass?



P.S. - I really love the word "rapture" because my beloved operetta composing team of Gilbert & Sullivan worked that word into nearly every one of their 14 collaborations, often rhyming it with "capture":

From The Pirates of Penzance:

MAJOR-GENERAL STANLEY:
Frederic here! Oh joy! Oh rapture!
Summon your men and effect their capture!

From The Gondoliers:

GIUSEPPE:
I've at length achieved a capture!
This is Tessa! Rapture, rapture!

C HORUS:
Rapture, rapture!

From The Yeomen of the Guard:

DAME CARRUTHERS:
Rapture, rapture
When love's votary,
Flushed with capture,
Seeks the notary,
Joy and jollity
Then is polity;
Reigns frivolity!
Rapture, rapture!

(That last excerpt was perfectly understandable, right?)

And finally, my favorite use of "rapture," from this fantastic bit of dialogue in The Mikado:

NANKI-POO:
But you do not love him?
YUM-YUM:
Alas, no!
NANKI-POO:
Modified rapture!