You spent three months just cooling off and letting water vapor condense into rain to fill your oceans. By about March 5^th, you had already become home to single-celled life forms. You suffered your first environmental disaster in early June, when some organisms began releasing the toxic chemical oxygen into the atmosphere. Many life forms died, and others retreated to hidden places where the poison couldn’t reach. A few, however, learned to thrive, using the oxygen to produce energy. By August, eukaryotic cells with nuclei had developed, enabling even more complex life forms to evolve.

And evolve they did, into some amazing creatures. Around December 12^th, the mighty dinosaurs appeared, to rule the planet until around 8:00 PM the day after Christmas when they mysteriously disappeared. This afternoon, December 31^st, at about 7:14 PM, some strange-looking apes appeared, walking on two legs, and by 11:37 (23 minutes ago) they had evolved into us, homo sapiens. We have turned out to be an astoundingly industrious species. We built the pyramids at 11:59 and 36 seconds. A little over 1 ½ seconds ago, we invented the steam engine and started the Industrial Revolution. Since then we have built the modern world of today, with all its technological wonders, and have developed an overwhelming sense of confidence in our abilities.

You’ve had a bit of trouble holding your temperature steady over the past year; you’ve developed a chill at least four times that we know of. We think the earliest was around late May, then again just before Halloween, again at Thanksgiving, and finally as late as this afternoon, around 4:22 PM. During these cold spells, snow and ice covered much of your surface. In between these periods, your temperature rose enough to shrink the ice caps to a tiny area at the poles, leaving even Greenland and much of Antarctica ice-free. Since those regions are ice-covered today, you must still be recovering from your latest cold.

These changes haven’t gone unnoticed by us, and we have grown ever more sophisticated in our analysis of the climate. We now feel confident that we know what is going on. Seven tenths of a second ago, we declared that you were growing colder. Then, a little more than half a second ago, we corrected ourselves and pointed out that the temperature was getting warmer. Less than a quarter of a second ago, we recognized our mistake and said no, you were actually growing colder, and perhaps we should spread a layer of black carbon over your ice caps to warm things up. Then, about one tenth of a second ago, Al Gore straightened us out and said not only was the climate getting warmer, it was our fault! For a while, we called this “Global Warming.” Unfortunately, our scientists now tell us that you have actually cooled off a bit over the past five one-hundredths of a second, so we now call it “Climate Change.” But we are sure it’s still our fault.

Zander walked reluctantly up to the office door. He hesitated a moment, then knocked gently. The door swung open, and he was dismayed to see that his rodeo trainer was watching the game film from last night.

“You wanted to see me, coach?”

“Yes, Zander,” the grizzled old cowboy replied, “have a seat, son. I wanted to talk to you about your ride last night.”

Zander shook his head in disgust. “I know, I didn’t stay on very long.”

“Are you kidding? I was going to congratulate you! Do you know who that was you rode for almost two seconds?”

“No, they didn’t tell me.”

“It’s a good thing they didn’t, or you might not have gotten on him at all. Only two other riders have even made it out of the gate, and neither of them lasted more than half a second on that monster! That was Crazy Fluffy you were riding!”

“Crazy Fluffy? Are you sure?” asked Zander in amazement.

“That’s right. The Devil’s Q-Tip himself. You set the record, son, and it’s going to last forever. They’re retiring that walking death-trap immediately. Something they should have done long ago. It’s a wonder no one’s been hurt. Now sit down and watch this ride, son.”

Zander watched with new-found pride as the film looped over and over.

“Do you see right there, at the point seven second mark?” the coach said, “That little bushwacker is trying to bite off your right leg, so you leaned over and rode him sideways for the next eight tenths of a second. I haven’t seen riding like that since Yakima Canutt perfected that trick in ‘Riders of the Dawn’ in 1937.”

“Yeah, that’s right, I did that on purpose,” Zander quickly agreed.

“Where’d you learn to ride like that? I’ve only been working with you for a month.”

“My Mom taught me.”

“Well, I’m tellin’ you, Zander, you’ve got a real lucrative career ahead of you if you stick with it.”

“I don’t know, coach. Do you think mutton bustin’ will ever become as big as soccer?”

“Of course it will! Once those idiots at the networks stop ignoring my letters and start showing action like this,” pointing to the screen, “why, sponsors like Wrangler and Stetson will start beating a path to your door. You’re gonna be rich!”

“But coach,” Zander protested, “I’m only five years old!”

“You don’t ride like it, son. Now, do you want to stay for lunch?”

“What are you having?”

“Lamb chops, boy! Crazy Fluffy has thrown his last rider.”

When I first heard this ancient joke about overconfidence, I was probably playing kickball on a grammar school playground. I believe the phrase used was “an ant with a hard-on.” I doubt any of us at the time were even old enough to know what a hard-on was, but it was clearly dirty so we enjoyed it immensely. Just as clearly, it was too crude for my sophisticated blog. Whatever should I call the appendage in question? I remember Steve Martin struggling with an equally perplexing matter: What to call the female mammary organs. Melons? Headlights? Yabahoos? He finally concluded (correctly) that the proper term was “hooters.”

Sure, I could have gone with the clinical term, erection, but that didn’t seem as funny to me. “Big Johnson” seemed pretty funny, but that joke has been worn threadbare by all the T-shirts and other references (even my father used it in a lovely poem he wrote to my mother on Mother’s Day.) “Woody” probably would have worked. “Chubby” might have been too obscure. I’m not particularly fond of the equipment-related references such as “package” or “tool” or even, yes, “equipment.”

In the end, I resorted to the authoritative wisdom of one of my favorite web sites, Cracked.com. Not a day goes by without several boner references in that fine entertainment venue. If it’s good enough for Cracked, it’s good enough for me.

That said, I apologize for my shocking incivility, and promise to be more circumspect in the future.

Of all the horror available for your viewing pleasure, Haiti destroyed, Iran getting nukes, terrorists hating us, blah, blah, blah, the one that simply refuses to go away is global warming. Man-made carbon dioxide is running amok. Another species goes extinct every time you flip on a light switch. You drive to work over the screaming bodies of baby polar bears. Every time you exhale you are destroying the planet. Go ahead, listen to your iPod while the sea rises up to your stupid neck. No wonder you’re scared. I’d be scared too if I had that corpulent toad Al Gore screaming in my face with his doughnut-laden breath of doom.

So what I have to say should come as a welcome surprise. No, I’m not going to tell you that climate change isn’t happening; of course it’s happening, as it has been doing for four and a half billion years. In fact we probably are in a warming trend, as we are still recovering from the Pliocene-Quaternary ice age, which started about two and a half million years ago, with the glaciation period ending a mere ten thousand years ago. In between these ice ages the Earth warms up to the point where Greenland, Iceland, and Antarctica are mostly ice-free; obviously we haven’t gotten there yet, but maybe we’ll get lucky and it won’t take much longer.

Now, we can’t take all the credit for the pleasant warming trend, as we only got here about 200,000 years ago, but maybe we are helping it along. My point is, that doesn’t mean we are destroying the planet. We are always talking about destroying the planet. When we invented atom bombs, we rubbed our hands in glee and said, “Now we can destroy the planet!” Now we believe we are doing it with our Hummers. Well let me tell you, Bunky, we aren’t Supermen. We’re like the ant with a boner, floating on its back down the river yelling, “Raise the drawbridge!” We cannot destroy the entire planet (at least not yet.) All we can do is destroy the planet for humans!

You see, that’s the good news! The planet will still be here! We may be able to take the polar bears with us, but there’s no way we’ll snuff out everybody! There are organisms on this planet that thrive at 176°F and higher. I’m sure the cockroaches can take it. Probably when we’re no longer eating everything in sight, whole new life forms will evolve that love the sun and generate their own natural sunblock, with built-in beach chairs growing out of their butts. Just because we’re not here to see it doesn’t mean it won’t be great! I’m sure the new owners will even be smart enough to avoid creating reality TV. Don’t you wish you could be here? Well, get over it; you won’t. But it’ll still be great.

Have a nice day.

“Sir! Thank you for stopping by! Let me introduce you to the Car of the Future! This is the car that Big Auto and Big Oil don’t want you to know about!”
“But that looks like a 1960s Volvo with a solar panel on top.”
“Very perceptive, sir! Of course, this is just a prototype. With the help of savvy investors such as yourself coming in on the ground floor, we’ll soon be gearing up to produce millions of sleek, efficient and attractive vehicles. The American driving public will beat a path to our door. How can we miss? A gorgeous car that runs for free and defeats global warming?”
“This car runs for free?”
“Well, as I said, this is a prototype. It doesn’t have all the aerodynamics the production model will have. And this solar panel was designed for an RV. It was on sale at Camper World. The actual Car of the Future will have an integrated, high-efficiency solar array that will provide more power than the car will ever need! In fact, we’re working out a way to feed excess current back into the grid. This little beauty will actually be making you money as you drive down the road! Of course, we don’t want Big Electricity to find out about that too soon.”
“But this solar panel helps drive the car?”
“Absolutely, sir! We have no doubt the mileage has been improved tremendously! Of course, it’s an indirect benefit at this point, as we haven’t completed our research on how to install the electric motor and actually hook it to the drive train, but at this point the solar panel provides full power to the radio and the dome light, greatly reducing the drag on the alternator and allowing the engine to do what it was designed for; moving this car effortlessly down America’s highways and byways!”
“That panel sort of sticks up a lot. How is it in the wind?”
“Head winds and tail winds are no problem at all, sir. But until we achieve the integrated solar array, we don’t recommend driving it in crosswinds of greater than 25 miles per hour.”
“I see. Well, how do you keep the panel facing the sun?”
“Excellent question, sir! I can see you have an engineering background. As I’m sure you’ve noticed, the panel is now set up for eastbound driving. When you want to turn around, you simply stop and loosen these two wing nuts, tilt the panel over to the other side, climb back in and Go West, Young Man! Ha-ha!”
“What about going north or south?”
“Well, I admit at this point we haven’t gotten that completely worked out. My Mom has a large lazy susan that she hardly ever uses; if she lets me borrow it, I think we can work out a rotating mount system that will allow driving in a southerly or northerly direction. Of course, the farther north you go, the weaker the sun’s rays, so the car won’t be certified for use in Canada.”
“Hmm. Now what if I want to drive at night?”
“Why would you want to do that? Ha, just kidding, sir. Our research suggests that night driving will require a passenger leaning out the window and shining this large flashlight on the… Sir! Sir, wait a minute! Come back! This is the investment opportunity of a lifetime!”

It was a nice summer day back in 1976.  I was watching a rerun of Hogan’s Heroes at my girlfriend’s apartment while girlfriend was in the bathroom doing whatever it is women do in the bathroom.  The phone rang.

Girlfriend:   Can you get it?

Me (picking up phone):   Hello?

Caller:   Where the hell are you guys!?

Me:   Us?  Where the hell are you?

Caller:  I’m at Denny’s.  We were supposed to meet here a half hour ago, remember?

Me:  No, you moron.  We originally said Denny’s but then we changed it to Lyon’s.

Caller:  We did?

Me:  Yes.  You weren’t paying attention as usual, loser.  We waited around for you but when you didn’t show up, we came back here.  How soon can you make it to Lyon’s?

Caller:  Uh, I can be there in ten minutes.

Me:  Okay, we’ll see you there in ten minutes.  (hangs up)

Girlfriend:  Who was that?

Me:  I dunno – some asshole who can’t dial a phone.

Aboard the aircraft carrier Philippine Sea off the coast of Korea on January 15, 1951, Lieutenant Commander Norman W. “Bill” Frees, Jr., and his two crewmen climbed aboard their Douglas AD-4W “Skyraider” for a morning patrol flight. Originally scheduled for 0400, the launch had been postponed until daybreak due to poor weather and rough seas, a delay that proved to be very much to their advantage. The airplane was moved into position, and the powerful steam catapult accelerated it rapidly down the deck and into the air. The single Wright 18 cylinder radial engine, producing 2700 horsepower at full throttle, pulled the aircraft up to an altitude of about 500 feet when suddenly the power unexpectedly dropped back to an idle. The plane was going down.

The AD-4W is a modified version of the AD-4 dive bomber, redesigned for airborne early warning (AEW) missions. While the dive bomber carried only the pilot, the AEW version of the plane added two crew members for radar and radio operations in a lower compartment. It had a range of 1100 miles, a top speed of 350 miles per hour and a ceiling of 26,000 feet. Normal flying weight was 17,500 pounds, but it could carry a maximum weight of 24,000 pounds. The pilots were told that the dive bomber version of this single engine carrier-based plane could carry a greater bomb load than the four engine B-17 bombers used in World War II.

The AD-4Ws replaced the TBM Avengers that Bill Frees had flown in the Pacific during WWII. He found the plane to be much more maneuverable and lighter on the controls than the Avenger. This one, however, had transformed itself from a powerful aircraft to a woefully inadequate glider. Reflecting later on what happened, he has always imagined some small cotter pin or other fastener breaking loose in the throttle linkage, a 25 cent part bringing down a two million dollar airplane.

Bill had never ditched a plane in the ocean before, but he’d had plenty of experience in tight situations during his career. He had earned two Distinguished Flying Crosses and an Air Medal during the Pacific campaign, and had gained the confidence of his crew members at that time, who elected to go with him when he was transferred to a hazardous night torpedo squadron during the latter part of the war.

He quickly radioed a Mayday back to the carrier, and instructed his crew to prepare for a ditching. The waves below him were 15 to 20 feet high, “making a water landing somewhat more tricky” (his words.) He was able to line up into the wind and make a fairly smooth landing on the top of a wave, sliding down into the trough. This allowed the plane to float for a while, giving the men time to climb out on the wing and inflate their individual life rafts, stored under their parachutes.

In January, the waters off the Korean peninsula become very cold. It was estimated that an unprotected pilot would succumb to hypothermia within 20 minutes. All air crew members wore rubber survival suits (given the inelegant nickname “poopy suits”) under their flight gear. The rescue helicopter was over the three fliers quickly. One of the crewmen had forgotten to tighten up the neck opening of his survival suit and was already starting to suffer from the cold, so Bill requested that he be picked up first. Shortly after he was lifted from the water, a destroyer came alongside to pick up Bill and the remaining crewman.

Bill always remembered the words of the destroyer captain’s remark as he came aboard. Not, “are you OK?” but “How about surveying your .38 pistol?” He was more interested in getting Bill’s sidearm than in any rescue. The men were quickly transferred back to the Philippine Sea for a hot shower and a shot of brandy.

The knock on the door sounded oddly cheerful, but when Gwen opened it, she was startled to see a disheveled man with a crazed look about him. He reminded her of Rasputin, except for the complex looking machine he held in his hand. He produced a maniacal grin and started his spiel before she could close the door in his face.

“Good afternoon, sir or madam!” he exclaimed, small droplets of spittle spraying from his foam-flecked, crusted lips. “You are about to be amazed! Watch this!”

And with that he leaned past Gwen and threw a large handful of dirt onto her new, cream-colored carpet.

“What are you doing?” she screamed, “Have you lost your mind?” She realized too late that it was a rhetorical question.

“Fear not, pretty lady!” Rasputin chortled. “This is your lucky day! I am here to introduce you to the revolutionary Suck-o-Matic 9000, the next generation of home vacuum systems.” He brandished the device in his hand in what Gwen felt was an unnecessarily threatening manner.

“But my carpet,” she protested, “you’ve ruined it!”

“Tut tut, my dear,” he replied, “there is no dirt or stain too tough for the Suck-o-Matic 9000. It incorporates the latest breakthroughs in nanotechnology, space-age polymers and HOBO filters.”

“Isn’t that HEPA filters?”

“Never mind that. Give me five minutes of your time and this modern-day miracle will have that carpet looking better than new or I’ll personally eat every grain of dirt on your rug!”

Gwen looked doubtful. “Are you sure about that?” she asked.

“I guarantee it, madam! Just give me a minute to set it set up.”

“OK,” said Gwen as she turned away, “I’ll go out to the kitchen and get a spoon.”

Rasputin looked puzzled. “What is the spoon for, if I may ask?”

“It’s for you,” replied Gwen. “This is Maine, you know. The electricity’s been out for two days.”