Snow in Desert, Dead Chipmunk Are Sure Signs the End Is Near

Repent! Repent! The end is near.

(This means you, Travolta. You owe huge for “Battleship Earth.”)

Often we think the surest sign the apocalypse is upon us would be something so obvious, so disturbing, so downright biblical we’d all immediately take cover--say, a theater marquee with the words, “Tony Danza’s Hamlet.”

Alas, the portents are not quite so clear. But consider these events from this past week:

* There was a “surprise snowstorm” in Saudi Arabia that marooned thousands of people.

Of course it was a surprise. Saudi Arabia never gets snow. According to a wire story I saw, “Summertime temperatures soar above 122 degrees.” The story says, “Many Saudis escape the scorching heat by taking holidays in the southern mountains bordering Yemen.” Yemen, the Norway of the Middle East. What’s the temperature plummet to in Yemen, a brisk, refreshing 104 degrees?

Snow in Saudi Arabia! There probably isn’t even a word for “snow” in Arabic--the closest they come is “Haagen Dazs.” Be serious, if you started word associations with “Saudi Arabia,” before you got to “snow” you’d have to go past “Seinfeld” and “mohel.”

* “A dead chipmunk at Lake Tahoe has tested positive for bubonic plague.” That’s the first sentence of a Reno Gazette-Journal story. Many subsequent sentences go on to say this happens with some regularity, and with modern medicine the disease doesn’t have to be deadly. But “bubonic plague” is a showstopper, isn’t it? Honk if you thought the freakin’ bubonic plague was still around. I thought we put an end to bubonic plague around, oh, 1580--around the same time we discovered the dunking chair was an effective method of ferreting out witches.

If chipmunks are dying from plague in Nevada, might that not make a fella think twice the next time someone offers you Siegfried & Roy tickets? (As a public service, the newspaper listed early symptoms of plague: “high fever, chills, nausea, weakness and swollen glands.” That’s bubonic plague? Here I thought that was the list of “occasional” side effects of Beano.)

* Mt. Etna erupted in Sicily. OK, that happens now and again. But listen to this from an Agence France-Presse story: “One Italian tourist was treated after being seriously injured by a flying blob of molten lava.” One second he’s minding his own business in Sicily, looking for the Soprano family graves, the next second he’s flat on his face, charbroiled. Usually, when a flying blob of something falls from the sky, it’s shooting out of a bird. Molten lava? The only thing that hot you want smacking into you at high velocity is Angelina Jolie.

(I know this has nothing to do with the end of the world, but have you noticed the name of the new Indonesian president? It’s Megawati Sukarnoputri. How great is that? This babe’s not just wati, dude, she’s mega -wati!)

* Thousands of people from Virginia to New York reported seeing a blinding orange light streaking through the afternoon sky toward the horizon, followed by a loud boom. A spokesman for NBC declined comment on reports that the falling object was Michael Richards’ career.

Authorities believe it was a natural phenomenon known as a fireball or a “bolide.” Bolide is a word of Greek origin, roughly translated as: “Hey, Zorba, let’s get out of here! Either there’s LSD in my ouzo, or the sky is falling!”

In Pennsylvania--where an eyewitness claimed the bolide was “the size of a Jeep Cherokee,” but failed to distinguish between the Limited and Laredo models--an astronomy professor said the shaking people felt could have resulted from a meteor breaking apart in the atmosphere.

Yeah, right. Of course that’s what he’d say. But we know that was a UFO landing in the Pennsylvania woods. It’s clear UFOs land here all the time and aliens live among us. To me, the real story of this UFO landing in Pennsylvania is how much bolder the aliens are getting. Usually, they land at night. This time they came during afternoon rush hour! If UFOs showing up in drive time isn’t a clear sign that the end is near, what is?

Oh, I know, “Wolf Blitzer’s Hamlet.”