Derry, Northern Ireland

Derry, Northern Ireland
A book I'm working on is set in this town.

Saturday, May 21, 2011

Almost made it.

At 6pm Eastern Time, someone in my building set off the fire alarm.  Not smelling smoke or hearing panic in the streets, I pulled together a few things and headed down four flights of stairs to evacuate and wait...and wait...and wait for the fire engines to arrive.  Which they did about 10 minutes after the alarm screamed.  The building could have burned down by then, if this hadn't been a false alarm.  It then took them another half an hour to get the damned thing to shut off.  So I sat in my car and read and took notes and waited till the excitement was over then went back to my apartment.

So much for the end of the world.  The closest we got to an earthquake was in Iceland, when another one of their volcanoes blew up.  Fat lot of good THAT did you, Mother Nature; I'm not going to London.  I'm going to fucking Salt Lake City.  They're expecting rain in Chicago, Monday evening.  We'll see how that screws up Southwest.

I find it amazing that people still keep falling for these predictions of "the end of the world."  It's been going on for centuries and every damned time it's been proven to be a load of crap put out by some arrogant jerk who thinks he's got a pipeline to God's plans.  So people freak out and give things away and some kill themselves thinking that will speed things up...and yet the sun keeps coming up the day after and nothing's different and excuses are made and the idiots never learn.

Next comes 12-21-2012, when the Mayan calendar ends.  At least this time they're talking about a meteor hitting the planet.  I heard someplace that somebody in France found it and now they're building underground shelters...and if you pay the developer $50,000 up front, he'll consider you as one of the people he'll allow to take cover there, but only if he feels you'll contribute something to the next civilization.  Guess that leaves me out -- I'm super-talent deficient and short about $49,900 bucks.

What you want to bet the contract says no refunds if nothing happens?

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