If listening to Kacey Musgraves in earnest has taught me anything, it’s to stay connected to my ~roots~. So in an attempt to stay connected to my home state of Kentucky while following my arrow in the bustling metropolis that is Providence, I’ve been reading local Kentucky news. There’s the usual—Matt Bevin comparing the EPA to Frankenstein (Yo MB, Frankenstein was the doc), people projecting their unfulfilled dreams onto college athletics—etc, etc. But lately, something in the news has caught my eye, and I’ve been following it with the entrepreneurial gaze of an eighteenth century party boss on a governmentally desirable tract of land.
In the year of our Lord, 2016, a former koala of a man named Ken Ham unveiled his latest contribution to the world of fundamentalist Christianity: a huge-ass ark à la Noah, nestled in the gut of Kentucky. According to the Paducah Sun, a digital news source of dubious credibility and circa-early-2000s interface, the Ark Encounter had “already surpassed 325,000 visitors” in its first three months of business.
Which brings me to my main point. What shall we do with this hunk of wood and plastic dinosaurs when the shallow pool of global Creationists inevitably runs dry? Hear this: we drop it into the Licking River and start up the gaudiest cruise line you’ve ever seen in your life. Let’s take this hot mess of a tourist destination and add water.
Picture Ken Ham, decked out in straw hat, Hawaiian shirt, and various other vacation accoutrements. Fruity cocktail in one hand and megaphone in the other. On this ship, he’s king over recreation and repression of sexuality. He organizes fun and fundamental dehumanization of women and non-whites. He gets down on the dance floor and on the pseudo-science of Creationism.
There are so many activities on this ship! An especially hot sauna for women who use or have used birth control. An all-you-can-eat buffet pointedly sans pork. A rousing game of darts aimed at an unflattering picture (good luck finding one) of Bill Nye.
Yes, my friends, invest now. People would COME to this thing in HORDES. Attendance would be even greater than the crowds at Trump’s inauguration and the Ark Encounter combined, if you can imagine it. Don’t think too hard trying to fathom that large of a quantity, it’s like trying to understand the size of space, or maybe something even larger (president 45’s incompetence).
Image via Anne Warner.