Mark Your Calendars: June 13, 2010 is Doomsday

Oh shit! Wait! That's today!

First, a brief announcement. I am ending the Friday Happy Happy Harmless Everything is OK theme. I am doing so because it is:

1. Cramping my style
2. not making me happy. I'm happiest when I'm sour.
3. threatening to make me lazy. I could just embed videos of kittens or puppies or chuckling babies.
4. kind of an artificial tradition in a journal which really hasn't been around long enough to merit one, and thus:
5. when these entries finally Jump the Shark, I'll introduce a cutesie theme again.

Anyways...

Today is the date that the Japanese space probe Hayabusa and its sample return capsule is scheduled to make it back to Earth. The spacecraft and capsule travelled to, and touched down upon, the near-Earth asteroid Itokawa five years ago. After travelling a total of 1.25 billion miles, it is returning to Earth with a piece of that asteroid.

Unfortunately for us, and in a variant of Crichton's "Andromeda Strain", or Vonnegut's Ice-Nine, it turns out that Itokawa is composed of the death crystal. Yes, folks, the death crystal, your average everyday run-of-the-mill, death crystal, as opposed to the Death Crystal, which is, obviously completely fictional as it is capitalized.

So, naturally, the spacecraft and return capsule have had their material rearranged and crystallized into a seed of death crystal. And it will impact South Australia today and then the death crystallization of all matter on the planet will commence.

When it reaches your area, the transformation should be easy to spot. There will be a noise like plastic being crumpled, kind of a squeaking and cracking sound, as forms are converted and frozen into place. And things will get a little hot, because freezing things into place that were formerly in motion releases heat. And all that matter that is rearranged retains its form, but has a kind of sickly, grisly, translucent, purplish-grey cast to it. You should clearly see, feel, and hear the wave approaching.

Here's what I advise. The death crystal transformation wave only affects matter that is above a certain density and is in close contact with. If you time it right, all you have to do is hop in the air when the death crystal wave reaches you. The wave will pass beneath you and you will not be transformed.

Problem is, there won't be anything to eat and drink after the wave passes, so you basically grant yourself a slower version of death.

Okay, so maybe hopping isn't the thing to do.

Good luck!