In September 2001, I, like most Americans, took a step back, scratched my chin thoughtfully while looking at the rest of the globe, and decided, It’s Got to Go. Well, here we are 3 years later, and it’s still there.

The main difference between mainstream America and the rest of the world is that we know that if enough of us vote to get rid of the rest of the world, well, just don’t be buying stock in Condé Nast is all I’m saying. I’ve been having a lot more dreams about nuclear war than I usually would’ve. Once them Mullahs get the bomb and vaporize Tel Aviv, the Israelis are going to be vaporizing some things we hadn’t really been planning on letting them vaporize, for example Paris.

My mom took me on her knee when I was 10 (don’t ask), after Reagan won the White House over charismatic homeboy Jimmy Carter. “Eric”, she said (she always called me Eric. Rube came later.), “Eric, there’s gonna be a war now. Whenever a Republican gets elected, there’s a war. And if there’s another war, which there will be, it’ll be the end of the world, and everyone’s going to die.” Then, we watched a documentary about Nostradamus, and how he predicted everything from the French Revolution to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Orson Welles, in all his Paul Masson-fat years glory, was the host of this particular show, and he explained to my young psyche the dire years ahead, with overpopulation and widespread famine, and how men would feed upon men and the beast would arise in the middle east, and then something about hats.

But then, every culture has its myths about the end of the world, even the shallow, self-absorbed Dixie-Hippies’ schicht to which my mother belonged. The population explosion never happened, then World War III became a made-for-TV fantasy, so then they invented AIDS to threaten the world and bankrupt the AYDS Diet Candy Corporation; then it was Mexicans, if I recall correctly. Now, it’s got something to do with Bush and Jews, but I’m not sure exactly what it is anymore, it being late and me being drunk.

I think I prefer the Norse apocalypse to our hand-wringing version of the end the world. According to the Scandinavians, the end of the world, Ragnarok, has already happened. The gods and giants engaged in the final battle in time immemorial; a battle which laid waste to the Earth and induced an eons-long winter. This marked an end to the age of wonder, rendering the world safe for the only two survivors, which were a man and a woman.