It’s getting embarrassing. People confidently shout to everyone that the end of the world will end tomorrow. Then tomorrow comes. And it doesn’t end. Again. Oh sure, you might have gotten a migraine or you found no hot coffee waiting for you when woke up, but that’s not entirely the same thing as the complete destruction of seven billion people. Be fair, it isn’t.
So what happens to the doomsayers? Humiliated, they slink off to their innermost lairs, tails between their legs, until enough time has elapsed for them to come out and forecast with complete uncertainty the next apocalypse. This, of course, is a shame as most of the end-of-the-Earthers are the nicest people you’d ever meet. George, who predicted the end of the world in 2012 makes doughnuts at his bakery and has a smile for everyone, including those who pay for their purchases entirely with pennies. Sarah, a newcomer to doom, runs a charity to provide hearing aids to northern Greenland. Prudence, a veteran with seventeen predicted apocalypses under her belt, provides the voice that says, “Recalculating,” whenever your GPS notices you’ve taken a wrong turn.
All these people are wonderful folks. It’s always a great loss to the community whenever hide because of yet another highly visible, spectacularly, amazingly, world shakingly–oops sorry, bad choice of words there–End-It-All Soothsayers. What can we do to soothe their bruised egos?
Give them excuses
1* It’s the president’s fault.
2* It happened at night. No one noticed.
3* It happened, but we all got better.
4* It happened. It did! It just happened in a parallel universe. You know the one that takes our orphan socks from the clothes dryer.
5* It can’t happen until the Cubs win the World Series. Maybe this year they will and the apocalypse will back on track.
6* Apparently we don’t need the apocalypse, we have ComcastTM.
7* The Earth didn’t get slammed by a giant Coca PebbleTM, because an immensely huge space alien, I mean a hundred times the size of Jupiter, ate the last box of immensely huge Coca Pebbles.
8* We were on Daylight Savings Time.
9* Dr. Who saved us.
10* It happened, but no one will give the doomsayers any credit. It isn’t fair. Just because people won’t dwell on the negative, preferring to rebuild their lives and face the slaggy, radioactive world with a joyful song.
– Paul R. De Lancey, comforter
My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.
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