"It's the end of the world as we know it" --R.E.M.

I can't make this stuff up.

About a mile from our house, on a busy corner that I pass every day, stands a house. Originally, it was a small stone house and it was fine. Charming, even.

Then, the owners decided to build a house two to three times the size of the original house, right next to the original house, and attach the two. They didn't actually match the two houses in any way. Because attached to a small stone cottage, you want a great big, wood-sided, Aspen style, ski lodge of a house. Niiiiiice.

Grandma and Grandpa moved into the small stone portion of the... *insert Kathy Griffin suspicious look and tone here* ...family compound.

They cleared the front yard except for a half-dozen, four foot diameter boulders which they put on the corner. Different!

They made half of the front yard a driving pad. Whatever, right?

In the process of clearing the front yard, they left half a tree in the front, center. A four foot stump. Pretty!

To the four foot stump they attached a placard advertising a Christian radio station. I'll bet their neighbors were really loving them at this point.

Then, they put up chain link fencing... but not around the house. Not even up to the house. Not these people. They created a rectangular enclosure on the grass part of the front yard around the stump/sign post. It's maybe 20 feet by 10 feet. I imagined that maybe it was a space for a puppy. Nope, a chain link "play area" for their toddler. They moved molded plastic toys into the enclosure and placed them on wooden pallets instead of just on the grass. The kind of wooden pallets you'd expect to see on a loading dock. Fancy!

Then, they moved the Christian radio station sign from the stump out to the fence and affixed two more identical signs to other parts of the fence.

I try hard not to rank on people for poor taste because, lets face it, I've been known to wear quite a few regrettable outfits. But every time I drove by, I couldn't help but wonder, "Don't they care how their place looks?"

And, then, the other day, I got my answer. They don't care.

They now have an SUV parked on their driving pad, positioned for optimal viewing. It is painted/has a skin with depictions of skulls and fire and other Armageddon-like images. It also has the following printed in great big letters:

"The End of the World is Almost Here!"

Underneath that it says:

"Holy God will Bring Judgment Day on May 21, 2011"

Because we wouldn't want to wait all the way to 2012 for the end of the world, with those goofy Mayans, right?

Amazing, no? No wonder these people don't care how their house looks. End of the world? Higher priority.

Here's the kicker:
One of their other vehicles is an official Homeland Security vehicle. I kid you not. Isn't it comforting to know that the folks who are keeping us safe are of the belief that the world is coming to an end in 2011?!

I called Homeland Security to report it. I'm very Agnes Kravitz, that way.

They asked me why I was calling. I explained the two vehicles. They asked, again, why I was calling. I said I thought they might like to know that one of their employees believed the world was coming to an end and I was concerned said employee might do something strange (like, oh, I dunno, create a doomsday scenario themselves?) or at the very least they might require psychiatric evaluation. The call taker said they would look into it. I never heard back from them.

So, in the interest of blogging--I mean keeping America safe--I called Homeland Security back to find out what happened. They hedged. They gave me a website where I could submit a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request and then they would provide information on the case. According to the website, by just submitting the request, I agree to pay as much as $25 for the information.

So, um, no.

Consider this your warning that we may have less than a year here. So, considering the short time we have: screw work. You may as well spend the rest of your time reading and commenting on blogs, right?


Questions du jour: What do people who think the world is going to end on a particular day do when that day comes and goes (hopefully) without incident? And--long shot here--should we be invited, what is the appropriate hostess gift for an "end of the world" party?