It's the end of the world as we know it

And, as people go to the polls all across the United States, my niece points to George Dubya on a news report and says “He’s a silly shouty man.” My family are great at incisive political comment like that, you see.

It’s another miscellany, tonight, dedicated to her, because I wouldn’t want to interrupt her routine for two nights in a row.

***

Actually, talking about my niece, she’s still in songwriting genius mode. In terms of her artistic development, she’s approaching Noel Gallagher status, where her melodies get more accomplished, but the whole thing is obviously ripped off of a well known source, as can be witnessed in her Moby homage:

“Oh lolly lolly

Oh Lordy my heart feels so bad”

She’s taken to singing in a big way to entertain her little brother, you see, something that you’d be hard-pressed to believe if you’d witnessed her special disco number “Come on everybody, Party to the rhythm of the scissors”, complete with dance that could only be described as Jarvis Cocker from Pulp crossed with vintage John Travolta.

She’s three and a half years old, remember. I fully expect her to have a record contract by the time she’s 10.

***

Is it so wrong of me to turn down a job where your prospective employer not only refuses to tell you his name, but then says that “it’s probably safer if you don’t tell people what you’d be doing for a living”?

I thought not. But, as you can possibly tell, my job search got a lot more interesting yesterday.

***

I’ve never been one for the whole “Hope I die before I get old” thing; the idea of growing old and increasingly “eccentric” has always appealed to me, especially now that there’s someone I’d be very happy to grow old with. Imagine my skeptical horror, then, when I discovered at the weekend that I’m apparently not even going to live to see my 56th birthday.

This all comes from the fact that scientists seem to be predicting that Earth is going to be hit by a meteor with the force of 100 atomic bombs on Saturday, September 21st 2030 (It’s not definitely going to happen, they say, but it’s a 500-1 chance, which is better odds than anyone has of winning the lottery, and THAT happens every week). What I want to know is, WHY do scientists feel the need to tell us this? I mean, I’m all for freedom of information and all, but what good does it do anyone to know that we’re all likely to die in thirty years time? It’s not like anyone can actually change it; we can’t all go to the one continent and jump on the count of three, to knock the Earth out the meteor’s path at the last moment or anything. So why announce it on all kinds of media?

This is what I think; it’s not actually going to happen at all. There IS no meteor, and all that’s really going on is that somewhere, a group of scientists thought it’d be really funny to make the whole thing up and issue a press release about it, convinced that no-one’d believe them. Somewhere, in some obscure corner of an obscure university, there’s a group of men in white coats laughing their heads off.

[ previous - next ]

Copyright © Grim, 2002