Its the end of the world as we know it…
Haiti, Chile, Turkey, Chile again, Chile yet again. The world seems to be fracturing at an alarming rate lately. And it has a certain segment of society in quite the state of agitation. And why not? In the last two months alone, over 200,000 people have lost their lives to earthquakes around the globe. But scientists have been quick to point out that, on average, there are over 130 earthquakes a year between 6.0 and 6.9. The vast majority of these quakes go unreported because they cause little to no damage. The problem, it appears, is that lately some of those earthquakes have been hitting populated regions. In other words, it isn’t that there are more earthquakes, its that there are too many people living on fault lines. That’s a problem certain to increase as the world’s population continues to boom. But it doesn’t portend the end of the world.
Naturally, your diehard fire-and-brimstone, repent-the-end-is-nigh types aren’t too happy to hear this. As an olive branch to my tin-foil hatted brethren I offer these five alternatives for them to hang their doomsday hopes on.
5. A black man is President of the United States. – Well, he’s half black, but that still counts. What’s more there are lots of folks who still think that Obama is (gasp) a muslim! Apparently he’s trying to perform jihad from the inside out (natch). Had Obama been a woman we’d certainly all be a pile of cinders already.
4. Its no secret that civil liberties have taken a beating since 9/11. The Patriot Act, quickly signed into law shortly after the worst terrorist attack on American soil, gives law enforcement officials nearly unfettered access to anybody’s telephone, email, text, medical, and financial records. Privacy has been further eroded by the installation of whole body imaging scanners at airport security checkpoints all over the country. That means $11/hr mouth breathers will get to see you nekkid. The prophesies of George Orwell, though twenty-six years late, are spiraling towards reality, driven by wild fears of random attacks by madmen. Practice your Newspeak, you’ll need it soon enough.
3. Social Security is already paying out more money than its bringing in. The funding mechanisms meant to bankroll social security will be completely exhausted by 2036. Unless we institute dramatic reforms to the elderly care system in this country, most Americans will be burdened with caring for their elderly parents as well as their own children. Discretionary income will drop to nothing, the economy will melt down, and in an explosion of underfunded glory the United States will disappear under mountains of defaulted IOU’s.
2. The Hadron supercollider has entered into service. Currently it is only functioning at partial power while teams of scientists calibrate the machine. It wont be tested at full power until 2013. It is then that the earth will be sucked into a baby black hole, birthed by the collision of two protons inside the belly of the supercollider. Humor yourself with the knowledge that Rosie O’Donnell and Ann Coulter will ever so briefly occupy the same point in space and time before their atoms implode into a fine red mist.
1. The Academy Awards ceremony bestowed the Best Picture Oscar to independent darling The Hurt Locker instead of box-office obliterating Avatar. What? When Hollywood elitists start making decisions based on quality instead of money then that is certainly a sign of the apocalypse.