lawsy, lawsy!

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This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
-- T.S. Eliot

Apocalypse and catastrophe are popular money-making themes among those who see the end of the world. The threats and lamentations that accompany such tales play directly into the notion that somehow man deserves better treatment ... perhaps to be lifted up to celestial heights, but preferably not cast out into a fiery pit or, worse yet, disposed of without a backward or caring glance. Better a Cecil B. DeMille scenario than the very real suspicion that no one gives a shit. The underpinning axiom is, "Man is important." But more specifically and accurately, "I am important."

"Mom -- tell me a story about how important I am."

And mom complies in a million guises, some of them real money-makers.

But it seems to me that every once in a while there are little tickles and trickles of how the world will really end, has always ended, and can never end.

What's to become of any of us when the maker of Twinkies and Wonder Bread files for bankruptcy? Is this not somehow more dismally disheartening than pestilence and war and the other high-profile calamities? To lose the wondrous and miraculous is easy -- they were never a sure thing in the first place. But to lose the mediocrity that forms the warp and weft of so much of this important life?!

If Twinkies and Wonder Bread are unworthy, can I be far behind?

Repent! Disastrous times are upon us ... or will be soon! This is not a drill!

Of course you could always send me five bucks or a couple of thousand and I will make things all better. I can weave a Twinkie-filled tale with the best of them. I know this, of course, because I am important.
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