Mayim Bialik and Kaley Cuoco||Chuck Lorre Productions||Warner Bros. Television
PENNY: “How’s your life?”
AMY FARRAH FOWLER: “Like everybody else’s—
subject to entropy, decay, and eventual death.
Thank you for asking.”
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Do you know what I’ve discovered? I just survived a “derecho” (pronounced duh-RAY-cho), and up until it slammed into my town last week, I had never heard of such a force of nature and had no idea that there was yet another thing out there in the great unknown that could reign mayhem and death upon my life when I least expected it. At 10:30 p.m. last Friday, something that wasn’t a hurricane, or a tornado, or a cyclone started in Chicago at 2 p.m. and made a straight line of a squall of violent thunderstorms from Illinois to the Atlantic Ocean while traveling up to 85 miles an hour. When Señor Derecho took out my electricity, my Internet, my phone land line, and all cell service, the last thing I saw was my weighted patio table bouncing across the deck like a bunny rabbit on crack while the deck umbrella and several hundred dollars of gorgeous plants got sucked into its vortex as if they were heaven bound. After Sir Derecho passed out to sea, it left in its wake days of 100 degree temperatures, millions of people without electricity for seven days and counting, hundreds of trees uprooted, undrinkable water, traffic lights on the fritz, long gas lines, and multitudes of cranky residents. The worst part of it all was that 17 people were killed and at least one canine was turned into a “frozen pop/pup” because in the hysteria of the moment the stupid-ass owner reasoned that tossing his Bichon Frise puppy into a freezer would alleviate the dog’s overheating problem caused by the unrelenting temperatures from Hell—proving once and for all that there is a fool born every minute.
Storm Damage/DC area||MSNBC/MSN.com
What the fuck is going on? Last March millions of fish washed up dead in the Los Angeles area while last October millions of dead fish were found in Maryland, Brazil, and New Zealand. On New Year’s Eve thousands of dead birds fell from the sky in Arkansas (of course, if I lived in Arkansas, I’d probably commit hari kari by taking a nose dive from the sky as well!), the honey bees have disappeared in droves, and now a huge section of Colorado has gone up in flames while most of the country suffers from its worst drought in years—threatening to destroy the corn yield in the middle of the country.
Before cell phones could get reception for calls in the aftermath of Herr Derecho in our area, intermittent text messages made it through on my phone with “end of time” theories from the uber-religious to my heathen friends, from the old to the young, from African-Americans to Caucasians, from Hispanic carpenters to my Asian wig stylist, from rich to poor alike—telling me their conspiracy theories which they all concluded had to do with either global warming or God’s wrath. No matter what their origins or beliefs, they all were trying to get me to buy into some wild tale about a sudden cataclysmic end of the world and write about it in my blog.
Photo by Joshua Trujillo/seattlepi.com
Grandma in her 80’s: Baby, maybe you ought to write in your blog about how everybody laughed at that old preacher who said the world gonna end on May 21 and Oct 21 last year. Maybe he was right but his math was wrong. Math ain’t my strong suit neither, and you know how we old folks can’t see that well. Maybe he didn’t carry a 1 or something in his tallyin’. Maybe we should not have laughed cause it sure seems like we all gonna die with all this mess that keeps happenin’.
ETomczyk: Mama-Mama, I love you—bunches—so don’t take this personally when I say, yes, we’re all going to die at some point (some of us sooner than later, if you catch my drift), but that dude is nuts and just plain wrong. That preacher man has been predicting the end of the world since 1994. He’s in hiding now, in his multi-million-dollar Christian media empire, having suffered a heart attack, after receiving all those donations from saps who believed his lies that the world would end on the dates he predicted. Because God don’t like liars, I can only guess that that creepy preacher had a heart attack not from regret about his false prophecies but from hearing God’s voice say: “Oh, hell to the no, false prophet Camping—HELL TO THE NO—sit down and shut up; I’ve had enough of your sorry-ass!” I sent Rev. Camping a “get well” eCard the day after the last failed prediction that said: “Cheer up, Rev. Camping; it’s not the end of the world!”
Peccator.com
My Asian Hair Stylist: How are you my friend? I think you should blog about the Mayan prediction because everybody’s talking about it. You believe that stuff? Sounds pretty good to me. Mayans predicted maybe 1600 years ago that world will end on December 21, 2012. Maybe Derecho a warning that we got six months to get our shit together. What you say? (Electricity just came back; you can come on by for styling of your new wig anytime.)
ETomczyk: Hanging in there, Phi—how yu doin’? My problem with the Mayan prediction is the obvious: how can you trust an ancient people’s predictions about the modern world when they didn’t see the Spanish coming and the anihilation of their own sorry behinds? That’s kind of like taking stock market tips from a fortune teller that is dirt poor.
Reenactment of Mayan Priests Ritual||Goodnews.ws.com
My Asian Hair Stylist: Understandable, my friend. But somebody told me that the Mayan Round Calendar refers to something called a “Grand Continent,” which they say is talking about North America. The Mayan message says, “Wind and Fire will take their sides on the Grand Continent, and then will return to meet in the middle.” See—fire in Colorado, storms in the East, meeting together in the middle! That’s one of the reasons I’m thinking of going back to Viet Nam, my friend, and take my chances with Trương Tấn Sang and the rest of those communist bastards because too much unpredictable shit keeps happening here.
ETomczyk: You’re a trip, Phi. I’ll think about blogging about the Mayans. No promises though.
Husband (WW): Hey Babe, you interested in seeing “Seeking Friend for End of the World” with Steve Carell and Keira Knightley when the electricity comes back on? It might be something to use for your blog since I’m sure the Derecho trials of this week are blog worthy. How about blogging what you would do with your life if the world was going to end in six weeks or six months?
ETomczyk: Hey, White and Wonderful! My readers already know what I would do, because they would probably do the same. You and I would quit our jobs, gather our family and any friends that needed family and transport them to a bucolic location (probably Hawaii or the Caribbean), and we’d spend the remaining time enjoying each other with purposeful abandonment without distraction, guilt, bickering, or worry. Remember that scene from the apocalyptic movie, Deep Impact, with Téa Leoni and Maximilian Schell as the estranged father and daughter? Remember how they faced the tsunami wave locked in each other’s arms and died together in total peace—no fear, no panic, and no regrets. I would hope that would be me after leading a life well lived for that short amount of time.
SEEKINIG A FRIEND for the End of the World||Movie Poster||Wikipedia Image
Brown Cat: You don’t know me but I lived in the house where the Bichon Frise was “frozen” and I’m texting you on the lam. The Bichon’s name was Monique and she was my friend. I only missed the freezer demise with her by a hairball—literally! (I started to hack up a pretend hair ball until the master got distracted with cooling off Monique, and then I ran for the hills before he could toss me in frozen box with her). You see, he told the vet he was just trying to cool us off in the triple digit heat following the Derecho, but I know differently. Master is a Zombie! Blog about Monique—BLOG ABOUT THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE because that is what the signs of the times are telling us: The Zombies are upon us and they are the idiots in our midst. Look for the idiots and you’ll find the Zombies. Start with the Tea Party and Fox News, and make sure you warn the people about the pseudo-intellectual, Dinesh D’Souza, because he is one of the top Zombie leaders. WARN THE PEOPLES I TELL YOU—WARN THEM!
Pinned from Pinterest||funnycats4U.blogspot.com
ETomczyk: Kitty, wait a minute—maybe the world is coming to an end. When did you get opposable thumbs to text? Oh, Sweet, Jesus! What did you do with your owner?
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I am discovering that there have been “end of time scenarios” since the dawn of the ages or since man realized how quickly and efficiently he could fuck up the planet and wanted to stop the world and kick off the undesirables. If you’re of the Christian ilk, you’ll remember how Noah and God tried to do a localized end times scenario, but it didn’t take more than a chapter for people to start acting like fools again. (The Zombies are us, I tell you!) But I kind of think we’ll be here for a while—at least until we get the concept of “living” right. Since I didn’t have any control over when I’d be born and probably won’t have any control over when I’ll die, I think I’ll just chill and enjoy today “sans” fear. Besides, I don’t believe any person, now or then, knows when the world will cease to be as we know it. Personally, I’ve decided to err on the side of sheer abandonment (live like my world is ending in six months all the freakin’ time), and be an outrageous expression of love, integrity, and joy because in reality one day in the future will certainly be my last.
My sister’s birthday is December 22nd. I’ve asked all the family to arrive a week before 12/21 because I plan to throw a party every single day like it’s the last day of our lives. That way, if we go on December 21st as the Mayans have predicted, we’ll all go together with smiles on our faces, good wine and food in our tummies, and hearts full of love and tenderness for each other. Who could ask for anything more?
Used by permission from Dan Piraro|http://www.bizarrocomics.com
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“I am not afraid of tomorrow, for I have seen yesterday and I love today.”—William Allen White
“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.”—H. P. Lovecraft
“Let us live so that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.”—Mark Twain
“The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, the education, the money, than circumstances, than failure, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. . . The remarkable thing is we have a choice everyday regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day . . . We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it. . .”—Charles Swindoll
