Fairies Live In Bangkok

I welcome visiting Nepalese yaks

I keep seeing the words, "this will bring real visitors to your blog". As opposed to what? Clones? Robots? Droids? Nepalese Yaks? The Stepford Wives? The Stepford aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins, kids? Fake people? What are you kiddin' me? Everyone who visits is a real person.

If I actually get a Nepalese Yak visiting my site could you please leave a hoof print or a spot of, oh... something Nepalese to let me know you've been here? Clones, Robots and Droids can leave a note. Fake people of course cannot since they probably can't write. Not that they can read since their fake. But you get the idea.

Mental people? Sure we are!

I wanted to address a couple of things that I've gotten comments on.

First, the "Am I mental?" thing was posted by Deek and yes he is in fact mental. We all still love Deeky weeky but he's a complete nutter. So as to the inquiring minds that want to know, there is your answer.

If you are asking if I the blog owner/writer is mental, then I would have to say yes. I am in fact mental and am a complete nutter. I hope this clears up any and all misunderstandings about who the fruitloops are in this box.

As for the comment I received in regard to Malcolm X, I admired his book very much as well but I found his realizations of what other people will lie about - in regard to the Nation of Islam - sad since it obviously caused him great pain. But at the same time if helped him become who he was. I think it strengthened his own beliefs as well. At the very least it showed him how not to behave.

As for the nice people that signed up for the ipod offer, thanks a million! You guys are great! The offer still stands for me to create a nice graphic or banner for anyone that signed up. Just send me a note and I'll be happy to do it for you. I do very good work too. It's just my way of saying thanks for signing up.

If anyone out there has a good site or information about living (i.e. costs of living, which areas are far too expensive, which are cool -I'm not really a suburb type person - and nice but reasonable, utilities, groceries etc)in the Seattle, Washington area, please feel free to email me katesworld@gmail.com. I could use the input for that area.

In fact, if anyone has any profound realizations on life, love or anything fun, feel free to email me for that too.

This moves to another thing to ask about. If anyone is interested in fairies let me know. I find the subject fascinating and the artwork I've seen for most of them is just gorgeous!

Animal Realm

I have finally gotten my new second blog site up and running. It's called, Animal Realm so check often to see what I've added.

I will repost many that I have posted here since I felt they were good posts. I will also be adding pictures as well as jokes and stories and more importantly, I will add animal rights posts and such as I find them.

I will be adding numerous links as I find them as well. If you have an animal related blog please send me the link so I can check it out. Please keep in mind that Animal Realm is a family site and will not allow posts with strong adult language, material or comments. Such comments/posts are welcome here at Kate's World Blog.

If you have a comment about animals or animal-related topics, please feel free to leave it on Animal Realm.

Am I Mental?

???

Designer chicken

I was thinking about chicken the other day and was wondering with all the growth hormone stuff going on today why can't they just genetically engineer a totally boneless chicken?

How convenient for consumers not to have to debone anything. It would look strange though wouldn't it. A blob-like pile of chicken. Kinda puts you off nuggets doesn't it?

In a fast-food chicken ad I saw they had an ad for "Naked chicken". I could see a couple of blushing chickens standing there with one of them saying, "For god's sake Gladys, cover yourself"! What exactly does that mean "Naked" chicken? Skinless?

Are Americans so bored that they continually have to have cool new phrases in order to make life at the nearest fast food joint more interesting? Say it isn't so!

Why not write a description something like, "Try our new chicken in a silk chiffon robe! Or maybe designers like Versace or Jimmy Choo could create chicken. How about a Prada dish? Chicken Armani anyone? Wow cool! Designer chicken!

Come on people, let's all force the fast food joints to either use the normal descriptions that we all know or really spice things up with top designer names in chicken.

I think this is the start of something good for designers as well as for the chicken industry.

Ipods and random acts

I am waiting for all but one of the people I need for my ipod. Once those sign ups become completed, mine is done. Goodie, goodie! A bright spot on my very dreary horizon. Thanks nice people!

I have some post ideas which I will think through later. It's early here at the moment - too early to work out which I want to post about.

So remember, you can pick your friends and you can pick your nose but you can't pick your friends nose. Well actually you could, it just wouldn't be very nice. And your friend might develop a very strange and rather uncomfortable attitude toward you and we wouldn't want that would we? Certainly not.

See, this is what stress causes. Random acts of lunacy. But then maybe mine aren't random. Maybe that's why the cat was looking at me the way he was. Hmmmmm... yeaaa...

Hopefully I will not become one of the people that might suddenly decide to wear a trash bin as a dress while roller blading along singing, "I wish I were an Oscar Mayer wiener". That's just so wrong. A trash bin would never fit me properly.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X

I began this book a week or so ago and am about half way through. I want to tell you all that it is well worth reading. In light of the way I grew up, I want to mention some things about my childhood first.

First off, let me say that I do love my Father since he is my Father. However, he is the most bigoted person I have ever met. This is a very sad fact. One that I do not now nor have I ever agreed with. That fact in itself caused me much physical pain through my early life.

One of my earliest childhood memories is of standing beside my mother meeting George Wallace. I still remember what his eyes looked like to me as he bent down slightly to shake my hand. He scared me - I didn't know why at the time but even as a small child I saw hatred in his eyes and it frightened me beyond anything I had ever known.

I was afraid of him so I stepped behind my mother so that I didn't have to touch his hand. With my parents and the "friends" they had, this was a mistake that I would pay for later at home with a spanking for not being "nice".

Even at that age I wondered how they could whip me for not being nice when George Wallace and even themselves were full of such cold hatred toward good people who had never done anything to harm them. That whipping planted the seeds of rebellion in me, seeds that would grow as long as I drew breath.

I knew I would live my life getting to know people as they are. Liking someone for their qualities not for the color of their skin. Loving people just as they are.

In all the years that I grew up, I never understood the hatred or things I heard about black people. In fact, to me they were just people like me. I knew black kids at school that were such good kids, I couldn't see why my parents would ever think badly of them. For me, peace wasn't to be. As I grew older, my life began to unravel.

I fought more and more with my Father. After my parents divorce, my Mother died. I was 15. I was not like my Mother or Brother who would not fight back. I fought back and then some. I think I fought for all of us. I fought from years of anger over hatred that I never understood. I fought hard against it. I refused to let it pull me under.

Reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X has helped me in more ways than he could ever imagine. Like me, as a youth he fought his way through life and learned lessons the hard way. He gained the ability to love and be loved and to forgive. He learned compassion for everyone and was not afraid to say that he had made a mistake.

His writing is a comfort to me. I understand him and I hope to learn from him as I read on. Knowing that other people have lived much the same way I did - even while in a vastly different life - the outcome is still the same. We learned lessons that shaped us into the people we were to become. With blessings, effort and luck, better people.

There are touching, sad moments in this book as well as some very funny ones. But it all comes back to the same thing. The words of a great man that gave his life for his ideas and beliefs. Ideas that will help anyone fortunate enough to listen.

On that note I leave you with the following. We as people - brothers and sisters of this world - will never find peace until we learn to respect each other as equals. All of us.

"Let us learn to live together in justice and love". El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, Malcolm X

Goalie returns and the fish slapping dance.

I am amazed to see that Goalie is back with us. Even wild-eyed from behind tall stacks of government paperwork. It's still nice to have you back. Definitely better than a sharp stick in the eye.

When work drives you to the knife-edge brink of insanity, just remember what Eric Idle's song says, "always look on the bright side of life". If I had one of those modern, smokin' fast internet connections I would download a wav file of that song and post it here for all you readers. However, I am still on the string and tin can connection which is better than nothing.

If that song doesn't help then think of my favorite, the Monty Python fish slapping dance. If that doesn't make you laugh and feel better, nothing will. Frankly I think you should master that dance and then right in the middle of the office, stand up and do the fish slapping dance - with or without the fish - like you have a full orchestra behind you.

Personally I might actually get a nice fish to bring with me and explain that the smell is just your new deodorant. Then when the time is right, viola! Dance your cares away. If it doesn't help with the stress of a government paperwork job, at least it would relieve your own pent up anxieties.

I hope this helps your transition back into real life. Oh and by the way, I forgive your lengthy absence as well as the fact that you work for the government.

The hell that Tax Season is.

Many blogs wonder at the curious absense of me, Kate was perhaps the most accurate that I was buried in the mounds of paperwork of a government job. Truth being told, what has happened is a government job with a cash strapped Department of Revenue.

The state of Missouri is in a financial crunch, and there's no good way out of it. In balancing the budgets even while tax season is on, people have been cut of jobs, the small luxuries of life stripped. All of this amounts in the long run to more work for any employee, but the computer people are on the recieving end of a sandpaper dildo right now. Computers purchased before the financial crisis must be deployed asap for political reasons, new projects/programs as well, with fewer people. Oh, and the nonsense that we call tax season is occurring, causing more people to need technical assistance than usual. All of this combined makes for a very interesting high pace high stress job. I'm actually happy in the job; I just don't have energy to do SQUAT after work.

Seriously, I don't. As I write this post, I'm wondering if I'll have energy to make it to the toilet to finally take that crap soon. Thankfully this laptop sits next to the bed, the energy that is being expended here is mental, and not much physical.

Now, for those of you wondering what tax season is like for the department of revenue, let me tell you: one half panic, one half a well oiled machine. It's something like a car driving down the road with it's wheels held on by nothing. Sure it'll keep moving, however you wonder when the speed bump will hit and everything will go to hell. People are putting tax returns into the system. The servers are staying mostly up and stable (surprisingly, knock on wood..) The paperwork generated by this is impressive. Consider a parking garage with room for about 100 cars in three rows. That is what our temporary file room is like, an endless row of file folders. It's sad, and awesome at the same time to behold. Should I have the chance, I hope to take a picture and perhaps post it here.

Goalie is still Goalie, folks. A ticking time bomb of mental obscenity, waiting to explode, to finally go from ember to cold and build up again. Currently I'm like a pressure cooker whose regulator has failed, I have no clue when I'll slip into stupidity as is predicted of my type. I'm pretty clear and clean right now, however a day of Monty Python impressions may soon be needed. The high stress fast paced job, coupled with family health problems certainly wears on one. Getting home and sleeping is good, however it does nothing to hold that stress back or push it down.

Stress brings its own turmoil to life. Physically, I find myself hornier than ever, a mental snapshot of my dreams would surely bring me millions in a publishing deal with Playboy, Penthouse, or some XXX institution of ill repute. My body finds itself slightly overweight, with an urge to exercise and to screw, but no energy to do either. And no lady.. several in mind, including one who reads my blog the few times I post (I dare you to find me saying that on my blog), but alas no balls to actually move on any of it. Better yet with one preparing to move out of my life, I find myself pondering growing a pair.. to tell her my thoughts, try to keep her from moving, or allowing her to persue her happiness. Figures that my intentions would create pure misery.. another type of stress yet. If you know of an eligible female in Missouri willing to meet up with lame ol me...

My brain is snide and cynical more so than ever on this stress, ready to make John Cleese proud, but as I said I'm waiting for the regulator to fail so I can do insanity some justice. I'm considering perhaps writing a post on the ethics of crapping in a corporate environment (and the rules that govern the stools). There's no way I can do that without a copious quantity of insanity and fart humor, what can I say. Seems perfect. The mental energy for that post has been much of what's holding me back.

So.. there's my semi-annual rundown of my life in as dry of terms as possible, save living in the sahara. Then I could make it dryer. Dry and witty? Naaa. Now for those card enthusiasts, before I forget, I have an Uno bot running in #uno on irc.starchat.net (The starchat irc network.) Please let me know of any features that are needed. And enjoy playing. Go visit it, say hi to me and all. That's one of the few projects I have that brings me joy right now (The other one I can't tell you about, it's secret. Maybe some day.)

PS- This Doctor Who thing... I never got into Doctor Who. However recently I rediscovered The Avengers, particularly the incarnations with Emma Peel. (Diana Rigg.) Damn. She's hot by today's standards, which says something. Not to mention the show's rather enjoyable anyway. Odd how the BBC America shows those shows. (Monarch of the Glen had a blonde hottie named Lorraine Pinkerton(?? I think that's right) that helped draw me into that show. Bring Archie back, however, damnit.)

So, now that I've wandered into wandering drivel with no point other than to evade a point, I'm going to end this post.

Let Them Eat Cake

I stuck the interview with Emily Thornberry online.

I'm going to post the write up later. I've also been writing some other stuff, which I will share with you. There's a lot of fun stuff here.

Speaking of which, Mr IG sent me his splendid Conservative posters:




This is putting the revolution at the disposal of poetry.

What's happening.

Many of you that have visited my site may be wondering why I added a PayPal button. It's simple really. After looking for work for the past two years, I still haven't found a job. I had over 370 job applications on file in my jobs folder. Monster, Career Builder, any of the sites available to look for the type work I do. And this is after dropping my pay scale as low as possible or leaving it open too. I have also looked for more meager employment such as cashier or something along those lines but to no avail.

My age and health are great factors as well. I am diabetic and have high blood pressure as well. With all the finance problems that have steadily developed my health has grown progressively worse due to the constant stress. Still I refuse to give up. I will keep looking and try not to get too down about it since that doesn't really help.

My husband is working but was laid off a job that paid a great deal more. Since we started out with basically nothing, we had to get things new and used sometimes too. I don't mind that - I'm not terribly picky myself and certainly don't mind clean, decent used appliances etc. However it is very hard to lose 45% of your income after being laid off. The bills are all the same but you have less to pay them with.

Shortly afterward, I lost my job as well. It was a tough blow since I have two sons that were still in high school at the time. My youngest just graduated this past September (04). Although my oldest son is very intelligent and wants to go to college very badly, they still count my husbands salary so my son isn't eligible for either grants or financial aid. It's just ridiculous considering what is spent on other things in this country.

Simply put it has been one thing after another to the point that I am so disgusted and disillusioned that I can't see straight. I've lost faith in this system and country. We try and try and just keep getting kicked down more. I wish we could move away from here but we seem to be stuck.

I decided to put up a PayPal button in case someone that might have been very fortunate in life might care to share. Anyone wishing to share that would care to talk more to me about any of this, I would be most happy to do so. You are welcome to email me at katesworld@gmail.com. I will also create custom graphics and/or banners for you if you like. That is a small thing to do for someone that helps me and my family.

Little things matter.

I am so thrilled that you guys are helping me get an ipod. I want to say that if anyone would like me to create a custom graphic or banner, I am quite talented at either and would be happy to do this for nothing. This is just my way of saying thank you all for being so sweet and thoughtful!

This is nice and makes me feel better since now with finances, etc, our lawyer now wants another $5000.00 or we will lose the house. That stinks but there seems to be little we can do about it. I'm sorry we ever bought this house now. It's been nothing but trouble and money. I don't talk about this stuff much other than to make a joke now and then. It's my way of dealing with it all I suppose and it helps me not be so depressed.

Knowing that there are actually some really nice, considerate people out there is a very good thing. I think if we create a group of people - all of us on earth to help each other and stick by each other, maybe things wouldn't get like they do. As bad as things are for us right now, I know beyond a doubt that there are others much worse off than us. I really wish I could help them too. Even a little.

I see things have turned into a dog eat dog world with wallets and profit margins the number one objective. It's so sad since people - all of us are the best commodity to have faith in. Little things matter, sometimes more than anyone could ever know.

If anyone would like a graphic or banner, just send me an email letting me know what you would like on it - style, colors, content etc and so I have your return email addy. You can email me at katesworld@gmail.com or the other addy listed for this site. Thanks again for being so kind.

A little closer!

I am very happy to say that one fabulous person has completed an offer that has made me one step closer to getting a freebie ipod! Hoooray! That is so sweet of you all to help! Now I just need four more people to sign up for one of the offers and I'm set!

It may sound silly but it boosts my faith in people to know that someone is nice enough to do something that will benefit someone other than themselves. Believe me, in light of our serious (and getting worse by the day) financial problemsthat keeps me feeling pretty down most of the time, a little kindness is a very great thing.

If anyone has any lucky lottery numbers, please send them to me. If I know your email and name, I will definitely share if I win a nice fat lotto pot. And I know you guys are probably thinkin', "yeaaah sure you will" but I would. I am not a stingy person at all. People that know me would tell you that.

Back to the main reason for this post. Thanks again to the kind person that signed up for an offer. I'm four away from an ipod.

Where's the love people?

Ok people, I don't see the Fed-X guy at the front door with an Ipod. Come on, where's the love? Go click something and send me an Ipod. I'm very deprived of music you know. Deek keeps me in music. But not lately. *sniff** So now I'm doubly deprived! No music from Deek either. Unless we can consider his fax/modem noises on the comments page to be music.

Let's put it to a vote. Leave a comment if you think Deeks fax/modem noises were music or just silly gibberish on his part. Maybe he's the one talking and it's me doing the gibberish. Wow, too much for my brain cells and corpsuckles. Yes I know that is misspelled I did it on purpose. Why? Because it's fun. So there.

Now then... where was I? Oh right. Whoa is me! I should go drink a bunch of booze but I would just end up getting stinking drunk and then walk into the street singing rule Britannia or something by the Beatles since they are English and then be run down by a double decker bus. And I haven't even ridden on one yet. Depressin' ain't it?

English is fun isn't it? Yes it is and how lucky for me since that is what I speak. Things could be worse, I could speak Portufart or something equally ridiculous. I feel fortunate and so should you.

"One day, may we all meet together in the light of understanding."

Malcolm X

Favorite ways to annoy people

1. Leave the copy machine set to reduce 150%, dark, 17-inch paper, and 99 copies.

2. In the memo field of all of your checks, write "for sensual massage".

3. Specify that your drive-through order is "to go".

4. Insist on keeping your car windshield wipers running in all weather conditions "to keep them tuned up".

5. Reply to everything someone says with "that's what YOU think".

6. Practice making fax and modem noises.

7. Highlight irrelevant information in scientific papers and "cc" them to your boss.

8. Finish all your sentences with the words "in accordance with prophecy".

9. Signal that a conversation is over by clamping your hands over your ears.

10. Adjust the tint on your TV so that all the people are green and insist to others that you "like it that way".

11. Repeat the following conversation a dozen times: "Do you hear that?" "What?" "Never mind, it's gone now."

12. As much as possible, skip rather than walk.

13. Ask people what gender they are.

14. While making presentations, occasionally bob your head like a parakeet.

15. Sit in your front yard pointing a hair dryer at passing cars to see if they slow down.

16. Sing along at the opera.

17. Go to a poetry recital and ask why each poem doesn't rhyme.

18. Ask your co-workers mysterious questions and then scribble their answers in a notebook. Mutter something about "psychological profiles".

19. Send this list to everyone in your e-mail address book even if they sent it to you or ask you not to send things like this.

Disillusioned

I have become so disillusioned with living in the USA that it isn't the slightest bit funny. I wish this weren't the case but it is. If someone has a bright side to tell me to look for do share. I could use the cheer up.

Make me laugh. Help me forget I live here. Mail me an airline ticket?I can't mail myself since the guy was caught Fed-Xing himself to his parents house. That's the problem, nobody has a sense of humor anymore. I thought it was funny and a great idea.

E=mc²

"Tis better to light one little candle than to torch the wax museum with a flame thrower". "Sticks and stones may break my bones but an Uzi 9mm is a different matter altogether" - Pete

Errr... those comments make me feel that maybe just maybe Pete needs a short holiday. This is the kinda thing that makes me wonder about him but then coming from someone that does a hilariously funny Scottish dance that looks more like an escapee from a mental ward it shouldn't come as a big surprise.

I think people that are highly intelligent have their silly, bizarre moments because their brains work at a faster rate than the brains of other people. Like the difference between a 120 MHz Pentium and a 4.4 GHz Pentium, the data process rate increases 40 times the speed. So smart people are in fact teetering on the very edge of lunacy anyway from the sheer speed their brains process data. At the very least we're looking at a serious derailing.

The cars are off the pyramidal tract. And no, the pyramidal tract is not a housing development outside Cairo. At least two of my fellow writers show these (I'll refer to them as "nutcase" in the future) symptoms. Pete and Deek. Both show the same symptoms. But it could be because they are both British. It's the English air you know.

And although I have my suspicions, I can't speak for Goalie since I think he got stuck in a soccer net and can't get out hence the reason for his exceedingly long absence. Or it could be the government job he got and has now been completely buried in paperwork. Literally.

Now don't either of you post anything mean about me. This post is meant with humor and love. And don't post anything nasty and then copy that either. "...ohh she's such a blahh blahh blahhh... it was posted with humor and love yadda yadda yadda..." You guys just sit there and let your brain cells rest so that there is no derailing.

Repost of Volunteering in Australia

I was sitting here looking through a student travel site and found a section on volunteer work. To my surprise, the age limit for this particular volunteer work is 18-70! Even at 46 I could volunteer to do something nice sometime. I noticed that Australia was listed so I thought, "Great! I'll have a look at that." A dear friend's family is in Tasmania and I have a few other Aussie friends so a volunteer visit might be really nice sometime. Once I looked through the site though, I really had to laugh.

What Australia is in need of are people to do "Conservation" work. And can you guess why? That's because no Aussie I know would be stupid enough to go out into the blazing Australian sun to conserve anything. So they kill two birds with one stone. I have to hand it to the Aussies it's certainly a brilliant plan - avoid the poisonous livestock and get rid of pushy Americans at the same time. Australians sit in air-conditioned houses having a Foster's while they watch telly or they surf the Internet while we Americans go out and fry under the lethal sun wearing Kevlar underwear while running away from 99.9% of the most venomous of everything on earth. Now I ask you, is that a plan or what?

The site lists volunteer activities:

1. Reforestation. Where the most deadly funnel web lives, even MORE deadly than the regular old not-quite-so-deadly funnel web.

2. River and creek reservation. Where the huge salt water crocs live and are regularly fed everything. Especially irritating Yanks, conservationist and tourists.

3. Walking trails. This gives wombats and Tasmanian devils ample opportunity to tear large hunks out of your legs as you try to run away. I understand running away only infuriates them. Then there is the wildlife data collection.

In my minds eye, I saw myself walking along roasting in my Kevlar underwear to keep all (Douglas Adams, Hitchhikers guide to Australia volumes 1-42, "What's poisonous in Australia" comes immediately to mind) the various poisonous things away from me. I also saw a flash of my diary of field notes from observing the fauna... that being the final trailing off of my writing as I describe the deadly snake that has just given me a less than friendly love tap to let me know how very unhappy it is that I happened to be "observing" in it's neighborhood.

Let's see now, lovely, rather darkish... a tiger snake? King brown perhaps? Or is my eyesight failing from the copious amount of neurotoxic venom the snake just harpooned me with and maybe it was actually a lovely iridescent Taipan? Who can tell? And it doesn't really matter because I have no anti-venom to inject and wouldn't know how to if I did. So much for that $2.49 Walmart snakebite kit I brought with me.

While you may begin to feel that nothing else lives there except deadly snakes, they certainly aren't the only things to worry about. There are vicious birds as well. Let's not even think about the cassowaries. Well, ok, we have to think about them since they also roam the forests of Australia. Cassowaries are enormous VW-sized birds with heavy armor plating on their heads and the largest toenails in the solar system. They are very angry birds with bad attitudes especially when you look at their toenails. They either head butt you or they use their razor sharp toenails to rip you open like a big sack of Idaho potatoes. Who knows, maybe they head butt you THEN use the potato-sack openers. In any case, I think a very large pair of nail clippers is in order for the "Things to take to Australia" list.

The site also says that equipment and training are supplied at each project. The equipment being sticks, large pieces of pipe, a hammer, extra-jumbo toenail clippers, and fluorescent tape. Sticks, pipes, and the extra-jumbo toenail clippers are very obviously for protection. Everyone knows this. The hammer is to knock yourself in the head with after you realize what you've really gotten yourself into. The fluorescent tape is so the Australian forest rangers can find your withered body complete with snakebite, cassowary head butt bruises and a wombat hanging from your Kevlar underwear. All after only a few hours of observing the interesting wildlife.

Unlike throwing a few more shrimp on the barbie, this certainly isn't the most cheery way to end an almost one day stint of Australian wildlife observation but at least they have part of a page in an otherwise empty field diary for posterity. I wonder if a nice funeral is included.

After thinking it over, I believe I may hold out for the possible future invitation from a friend to visit lovely Australia rather than risk life and limb to visit under the pretence of a volunteer conservation visit. To all my Aussie friends and everyone else, please forgive my jests, this is meant in the spirit of laughter. I adore Australia and the animals there but neither my Kevlar underwear nor me wish to encounter quite that much wildlife in one day.

The End Of The World (As We Know It) ?

The Pope died during Dr Who, episode 2, just as my pal Iain said he would.

Hang on: that means My Friend CORRECTLY PREDICTED THE TIME OF THE POPE'S DEMISE!!!

Actually, he sent me this email a short while beforehand:

pope breaths still. it would be most irritating if he dies during Dr Who....

Oh, by the prophecy of St Malachy. That means in all probability, we'll get to see the false Pope, the Antichrist, the Believers in Rapture, Jesus standing in Zion - fantastic! Do you think that's why Bush doesn't bother with a Middle-Eastern policy of any potency? He probably had Condo read him one day all about the 2nd Coming, and thought, well if it's that close, I don't really need to bother.

Nostradamus said 7 years after the millenium, that's 2006, and the Mayans predicted 2012 for the End of Time. Doesn't mean ALL time, just this one. How exciting! We may even live to see it.