Eschatological Cake

Song: Cool Blue Reason
Band: Cake
Lyric: "...I'm just talking to myself. I'm just rearranging Hell..."

I suppose Cake has been a guilty pleasure for years. Isn't that always the case? Ever since their hit, "Going the Distance," I've been intrigued by their lyrics. The above lyric struck me upon my most recent listening as a particular apt description of Hell in two sentences. Although the whole Fire and Brimstone imagery is still common in the arts, the recent elaborations of Hell have focused on the idea of singularity. That is to say, Hell is being completely and totally self-absorbed much like the image from "The Passion" where Satan is on a floating rock in a vast dark emptiness, screaming. The Cake Eschaton has a nice fussiness to it. When a consummate consumerist goes to Hell, I imagine him spending a lot of time rearranging it; moving things around in a knowingly futile attempt to make things better and looking at all his things as they eternally condemn him, like a millstone around his neck.

I imagine Hellish furniture to be expensive and modern, whereas Heavenly furniture is from Ikea.