All the Signs Are There

I'm trying to remember. Who were the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse? Flameout, Foulmouth, Fernbreath and Flatulence? Or was it Asshead, Asswipe, Assface, and Smartass?

For those of you who would smote me in the eye with a poker for making Biblical fun, let me assure you that I already feel ike I've been ridden by Fire, Pestilence, War, and Death since Bush arrived, and I was just trying to lighten things up around here.

Yesterday I heard an environmental group proclaim that the Great Lakes are evaporating faster than fishermen can pee into the water. Atlanta is having a drought which threatens to end the entire landscape industry in Georgia. Apparently the Army Corps of Engineers didn't get the memo. They continue to siphon off billions of gallons of fresh water every day from a soon to be empty reservoir to keep a bunch of endangered mussels from drying up like prunes downstream. New Orleans, in case you haven't noticed, is still digging out from the flood of the millennium, just as wildfires in LA and San Diego sent 2000 houses up in flames. And don't forget, Yellowstone isn't just a national park, it's the cap on a bottle of magma that is so shook up it could explode any time and take three states with it.

On a positive note, a mere 69 school children have been killed in Chicago this year. Unfortunately, the lucky kids that survive the shootings have to contend with locker-rooms, lunchrooms, and doorknobs infected with antibiotic resistant MRSA -- the scourge of small cuts and scratches that makes AIDS look like a bad cold.

Meanwhile, I'd like to know why gasoline is selling at over eighty dollars a barrel, but prices at the pump are still under three bucks.

The financial reporters announced with much tribulation that sales of existing homes are down eight percent, a chance for doom and gloomers to predict a coming recession, but the next day, sales of new homes were reportedly up a surprising four percent. 

Nothing makes sense. Even pumpkins. Those big yellow squash are no longer just gourds for children to carve on Halloween. They've now been grown to gargantuan size, itself an American tradition, so that they can be [choose one]: carved out to use as boats and raced down a river, dropped from enormous heights to crush a pick up truck, served to elephants so they can stomp them to death, and finally, weighed in a contest to see if someonecan grow one that tops 2000 pounds. 1600+ is all they could muster this year. Okay, it's world record size for a pumpkin.

Why do we care about things like that?

It's my birthday tomorrow by the way. A guy I've known since high school has the same birthday as I do.  Today he sent me an MP3 of the Beatles singing "When I'm 64." The first time I heard them on the radio was in '64. Does that qualify as a full circle moment?