From the Green Room: It's the End of the World
Friday, April 16, 2010 
Record-setting earthquakes. Devastating tsunamis. Unpredictable, severe weather patterns. Strange lights flashing across the sky. It’s the end of the world as we know it.
But I’m not ready for it.
The Mayan Calendar doesn’t go past 2012, and armageddon sentimental, because there’s still so much left to do. It’s the ultimate mid-life crisis, the paralyzing realization that I am on the back nine of my life and there is less time ahead of me than there is behind me. So many dreams yet to be realized, so many miles to go before I sleep.
For instance, there’s that 87 pounds left I still need to lose in order to get down to a number that will, for my height, ease me into the overweight category and away from morbidly obese. At my current rate, eating 12 calories a day with no exercise, I won’t even be NEAR that goal until 2035.
Then there’s the story arc from the hit ABC series “Lost.” I know this is the final season and all loose ends are supposedly going to be tied up, I just don’t think I’ll be able to make any sense out of any of them, and won’t have even a basic understanding of what the hell all of it means until at LEAST 2015.
Then there’s my 75th Wedding Anniversary, our Diamond Jubilee, which won’t happen until September of 2077, and the date we plan on filing divorce papers, because we agreed we would wait until the children were dead.
When I was a kid, we were encouraged to be petrified about “The Bomb,” practicing duck and cover drills during recess in second grade. We were made to fear “The Doomsday Machine,” that nebulous Deus Ex Machina that was sure to spell Certain Doom. The Apocalypse has always loomed, but now, as it turns out, it is Mother Nature who will be the end of us all.
That bitch is either going to drown us, bake us, or freeze us to death, then open up the earth and bury us.
Time to start building that ark, and making a plan to set sail for the most predictably temperate zone on the planet. Or make a big sign imploring whoever is driving that Nova-Bright mothership seen over the Midwest sky the other day to stop and pick us up and take us to whatever James Cameron imagined world they came from.
Just go easy on that anal probe.
