By Smaktakula

Would-be funnymen across the United States and Canada were disheartened this morning to find their Rapture jokes completely depleted of humor.  Many people had come to their places of work Tuesday morning armed with hilarious Armageddon material cribbed from late night talk show hosts. Although the routines had been gut-busters the previous week and still considered moderately-funny as recently as Monday night, the cold and sobering light of Tuesday’s dawn shone revealed a tired and broken joke completely bereft of its zing.

That’s not the way it appeared last week, when Harold Camping’s prediction of the world’s demise failed to come off as planned.  In the days preceding the California radio-preacher’s May 21st deadline, and in those immediately following the nonevent’s anticlimactic denouement, millions of normally unfunny individuals tugged mightily on this low-hanging fruit, clogging Twitter and Facebook with the pungent droppings.

The sudden expiration date on Rapture humor caught the public largely by surprise.  There are a variety of explanations for this seemingly abrupt depletion of funny, but many experts believe the confusion stems from a fundamental misperception, arguing that the recent spate of Rapture humor overachieved beyond anyone’s expectations.  By playing well above its level, the Rapture meme was able to create an illusion of sophistication and cultural resonance, which caused observers to believe it would have a longer shelf-life.  However, three or four days is reportedly typical for mass-produced humor of that grade.  “The fact is,” says a topical humor specialist, “Camping’s Rapture prediction got a lot more play than it deserved, and more ominously, caused every idiot with at least a sixth-grade education to think he was a comedian.  I think future generations will look back on this episode with no little amount of embarrassment.”