Sunday Miscellany: The End of the World. With Peacocks.

Universe save us from the eschatologists! Look, ok, this week has been Special. Really, really Special. But a bigass earthquake in Japan (now with added radiation) and a new war in the Middle East does not an apocalypse make. Is this stressful and anxiety-producing? Absolutely. But I don't care what the Mayans said, this stuff isn't more frequent; it's just that the advent of cheap recording devices and unlimited bandwith has just made it more immediate. Even twenty years ago, a terrible tsunami was just Something Awful that Happened in Foreign Parts. Now you're watching the shaky camera video of water lapping at someone's feet and desperately hoping they got out okay.

But! You say, Nostradamus predicted that in the End Times a Second Sun would rise over Japan!

Seriously, you're taking life-changing advice from a guy who doesn't know the difference between fission and a fusion reaction? Puh-leeze!

I've never gotten the obsession with predicting the end of the World, nor the apparent glee that some of the predictors take from the prospect. Really, you want all your non-believing and differently-believing friends and neighbors to die horrible deaths in war and torture while you get swept up to Heaven? Do you dream of their last agonizing thoughts being about how they should've listened to you and accepted Jesus into their hearts?

And they call *me* passive aggressive.


To quote Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett (one of my favorite books):

"I mean, you're right about the fire and war, all that. But that Rapture stuff--well, if you could see them all in Heaven--serried ranks of them as far as the mind can follow and beyond, league after league of us, flaming swords, all that, well, what I'm trying to say is who has time to go round picking people out and popping them up in the air to sneer at the people dying of radiation sickness on the parched and burning earth below them? If that's your idea of a morally acceptable time, I might add."

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I learned a new word this week:

Pavonicide: The killing of a peacock.

Those of you who went to Grand Outlandish in the years after they moved it from Sir Kragon's land will know exactly why I'm glad there's a word for it, but for those who don't, we spent several entire Memorial Day Weekends on a piece of land owned by someone who raised peacocks.

OMG those birds are annoying. I can still do a damned accurate imitation of a peacock call courtesy of that weekend. AT ALL HOURS, they went off. Let me tell you, the LAST thing you want to hear at the crack of dawn after you've been out at bardic circles all night long is one of those things going off in your ear.

The peacocks escaped the weekends unscathed, to my certain knowledge, despite the presence of a thousand people with the weaponry and know how to dispose of them properly. We even had recipes...