I think death is a lot like losing your virginity. After it happens you say to yourself, "What was the big deal?".

We have a little less than six years until the Mayan Calendar says that the world ends. I wouldn't worry about it, like I did about that stupid Harmonic Convergence in 1987, except the I Ching has the world ending on the very same date. Now, my mom used to say all this stuff years ago in the 1960's. In fact, a lot of what she said was quite prescient.

She said that the earth would shift on its axis. I was just hoping that it would happen way after I have left this world. Unfortunately, this could happen before most people's kids get into high school.

My dad called the other day and said he was watching a show on global warming and they said that most of lower Manhattan would be under 20 feet of water. He wanted to know how far that would come up on our building. I guessed that it would be about to the third floor. He said, "Well, that's good, you're on the 14th floor, so you should be alright then." I think he is now planning on buying us a rowboat for Christmas.

Now the whole idea of the earth's poles shifting, which would perhaps involve the crust (or mantle) of the earth rotating over the core of the planet, would cause a major upheaval that many scientists, other than myself, postulate to be a big mess. You have to figure on tsunamis, earthquakes, geysers of molten lava and delays on the 1, 2 and 3 subway lines (which happens every weekend). Basically, a lot of people are not gonna make it.

Here is a sad side bar to all this. All the truly horrible people in the world have been planning for this for a long time. They have their bunkers all set up with stores of water and Ritz Crackers. This way they can outlast the apocalypse and once things are safe, they can corporatize the devastation. The key here is that they know that all you really need to survive is water and Ritz Crackers, because Ritz are actually 3 entire food groups all wrapped into one.

So the point I am trying to make is that the Dick Cheneys of the world will all survive, while all the Father Shawns of the world do not, and the former can continue their plan of hegemony over the surviving 500,000 humans on earth.
And regretfully, I may be one of those poor surviving saps, because my dad is gonna buy me a rowboat for Christmas.

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