God must not like jazz...

I turned to the dark skinned old man sitting next to me, and commented, "I don't remember anything in the bible about the prophets speaking jibberish!".

We both erupted in pleasant laughter, and then the old man came back with, "but it did say they would speak in strange tongues!". This brought on another round of laughter.

The prophet came back to us and yelled at us some more. It was the first time I was able to understand an entire sentence from him. "Go ahead and laugh". And then, back to the volumes of jibberish.

The prophet was scary looking. He was lacking a lot of teeth. He had a lumpy face, with an enormous forehead. When he spoke, there was angry fire in his eyes. With the central teeth missing, the canines looked like extended fangs. I was rather amazed that during his tirades I wasn't showered in spittle.

* * *

He had been sitting on the bus bench when I first got there. So was the old black man, and at the far end, a bag lady was quietly mumbling non-stop about something that, judging by her facial expressions, had her a bit peeved. I had seen her before. She was always peeved. Always mumbling.

The bus sheltered didn't offer much shade, and while it was a relatively cool 100 degrees - relatively cool for Vegas in the Summer - there was no breeze at all, and the sun seemed to really bite at my skin. Everyone looked miserable, oppressed by the heat. 2 or 3 in the afternoon is always the worst. Not only is the sun pushing down on you, the asphalt has soaked up as much heat as it possibly can, and starts assaulting you from underneath, too. One giant oven.

I might have even drifted off to sleep if not for the sudden noise. The prophet had stood up from his seat on the bench, and was starting to berate the elderly black gentleman. The old man turned to look at me, his badly reddened eyes asking for help in understanding the sudden outburst from the prophet. I shrugged my response to him.

I made out the words "Four point one million dollars", as the bellowing continued. The prophet's eyes flipped back and forth between me and his original target. Now he was preaching to us as an audience, not just the old man.

More yelling came, and straining, I was able to finally figure out that The Prophet was ranting about the flooding in New Orleans.

"I don't remember anything in the bible about the prophets speaking jibberish!"

The Prophet answered our chorus of laughter with "Go ahead and laugh all you want. Armaggedon is coming."

You heard it here, first.