All your base are belong somewhere around here...

It's senseless.  It's pointless.  It's a complete waste of time...
If only it weren't so danged much fun, too.

As of March 16, 2001, only two days after first encountering it,
I have become hopelessly hooked on the
"All Your Base Are Belong to Us" phenomenon,
a thought contagion traveling across the 'Net faster
than a chain letter e-mail hoax.

It's only a matter of time before "CATS" shows up on both
The X-Files and Millennium in a special cross-over-story-line double episode.
Mulder always said that the truth was out there.
Who'd have ever guessed that the truth would be,
"All your base are belong to us"?


Below are examples of evidence that I have found in the past day or so
that clearly indicate the presence of a "vast Zero-wing conspiracy."
(They're also evidence that I've got too much time on my hands...)
 
 


Resistance is futile...
 
 


Here's one truth that we always knew was out there...
 
 


What CATS' broken "Engrish" really means...
 
 


Of course!  "CATS" is a bad translation of "GATES."
 
 


"I am Bjorn... of Borg!"
 


The end is Mir...
 


In looking for material for Easter I came across the above religious painting
(I've left it at its original size so that the text on the pages of the open book will be legible).
What caught my eye is that while the noun (o qemelioV) is singular,
the verb (eisin) is plural.  I pulled out my Greek lexicon to try to make sense of it;
apparently it's in a divine syntax because it doesn't make sense in ordinary Greek.
A literal rendering would be "All the foundation of you are ours,"
or "Your whole foundation are ours."  As best as I can tell,
this painting represents the Holy Trinity as saying to the viewer,
"All your base are belong to us."
I suppose that the painter was seeking to express the doctrine of divine sovereignty.
 
 


The above image came to me in a moment of inspiration.
While I was thinking about how the Zero Wing phrase "For great justice!"
sounds like an expression of Shatnerian, melodramatic overacting,
I suddenly realized that the words themselves could actually point
to something beyond a badly-translated computer arcade game,
to something that truly did happen "for great justice":
Christ's death upon the cross for the sake of our justification before God.
He "was put to death for our trespasses and raised for our justification"
(Romans 4:25).



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