The End is Nigh

We're on day three of a heat wave with no sign of relief in sight. Yesterday it got up to 80 degrees. Forecasts say temperatures could reach 83 today. I wonder how much longer mankind can survive these kinds of infernal conditions.

The man from the Centers for Disease Control called and left another angry message on my machine. He says I'm patient zero in this horrible duck flu pandemic sweeping the nation and that I need to stay indoors at all costs. I shouldn't have shared that piece of bread with a duck. You never think about the consequences of such things until millions are dead.

That naked man is rolling around in my yard again. He's moaning and wailing. Not in a sexy way, but in a sad, lonely way, like a beached whale. There's a lot of heart and sincerity in his cries. I want to put some food out, but I'm afraid he'll just start coming back every day like a stray cat. Plus I'd probably just give him duck flu, and that's not going to do either of us any good.

President Bill Cosby is on the TV again. He's urging for calm in that reassuring, fatherly voice of his. I don't think anyone is going to listen to him, mostly because his sweater has this weird zigzag pattern that looks like a roaring sea of static on screen. He should have worn a different sweater. That ugly thing is going to be all anyone talks about now.

The riots seem to be growing in size and intensity. The news channels are showing civil unrest in practically every city on the planet. My town isn't putting up much of an effort. Everyone is indoors with the flu and the quarantine has shut everything down. I tried phoning a neighbor to see if they wanted to go riot with me, but he just yelled at me for getting his family sick.

The news is showing a video of some teenagers breaking into a zoo and stealing an old tortoise. Now it's showing them throwing the tortoise through a storefront window so they can do more looting. A crying zookeeper is on the line telling reporters that the turtle is over a hundred years old and that it's lived through 20 presidents, two world wars, and the civil rights movement. Now it's just helping people steal TVs. Seems like it didn't really learn anything in all those years.

Nobody has seen or heard from North Dakota in weeks. The governor of South Dakota says he has no idea where North Dakota went, but he sounds so guilty when he says it. The politicians and news media all seem too scared to say what everyone is thinking: why does South Dakota look so much bigger on the map? And when did it start bordering Canada?

I went online to read more about the riots and disasters sweeping the planet. A lot of people are using social media to keep in contact and spread news. With the media doing such a poor job keeping up, it's inspiring to see citizen journalists filling the void. I logged onto huckleberries.com and saw that millions of people were sending huckles to friends and loved ones.

Messages like "riot police shooting civilians in Schaumburg" and "tornado megastorms continue to pummel Midwest" and "bloggers being disappeared for reporting on food shortages" and "duck flu infected being burned alive in sports stadiums" are all too common, each drawing tons of response huckles from concerned readers.

I posted a huckle of my own. "What's with this heat wave and is it ever going to end?" Nobody replied.

It looks like the naked man isn't rolling around anymore. Hopefully the National Guard takes care of his body. They've been doing a fairly good job scooping up all the other dead bodies in the neighborhood, though I think they caused most of them. It seems like there's fresh gunfire almost every hour.

The skateboarders are still running wild, though. President Cosby wasn't prepared for the consequences when he made it a crime. Their uprising was swift and highly organized. The military was wholly unprepared to wage a guerilla war against an army of highly mobile teenagers. It's hard to catch skateboarders because they can go over ramps and people without skateboards can't.

Preachers are saying it's the end of the world. One of them said it's pretty obvious since the UN is now tagging us all with "the mark of the beast." These people are overreacting. For one thing, there's no way the mark of the beast would be a tattoo of an actual devil's head. That's just too brazen. Clearly these devil's head tattoos are for safety and convenient commercial purposes.

I can't remember when this all this craziness got started. I guess it was when President Cosby declassified all UFO documents and people started freaking out. Or maybe it was when I shared that piece of bread with the duck, allowing duck flu to jump from ducks to humans. Still, it was probably the UFO documents.

It's getting dark now. Ever since we switched to the six-day week with these 28-hour days, it gets dark so early. Anyway, the mandatory curfew is in effect, so the riots should die down a bit. The news reports say only a few hundred million will die this week, so things should start calming down soon. I just hope the temperatures do, too.

– Josh "Livestock" Boruff (@Livestock)