The Pecan Park Eagle

The Astros picked Doomsday Eve to halt their 5-game losing streak.

Damnation! The world is supposed to end today!

Curtain time is 6:00 PM, but I’m not sure if that’s standard or daylight savings, Eastern or Central! All I know is that it doesn’t take me long to come up with my Top Ten Reasons that I shall personally regret that none of us will be around to see Sunday, May 22, 2011.

And here they are:

(10) My Houston Astros are going to finish last in the National League Central in this eternally abbreviated 2011 season.

(9) 2011 will go into the books as only the third time in history that the World Series has been cancelled for cause. The other two years were 1904 and 1994. The difference is: The first two cancellations came as a result of human will. This one is apparently landing upon us by the WIll of God.

(8) We just got our thirty-year home mortgage paid off last year. What was the point?

(7) I’ve been working out to get in better shape. I’m not in shape for the end of the world. For that matter, I’m not in shape for the continuation of the world, either.

(6) I think I’ve led a pretty good, decent, and productive life. I haven’t come close to perfection, but I have always tried to consider others and not do hurtful things. Still, it’s Judgment Day too – the day when God sends some of us to Heaven and others of us to Hell. Not that it matters, but I don’t think that most old people should be sent to Hell. Growing old is Hell enough.

(5) Judgment Day shapes us as the most brain-numbing day in history. Can you imagine what it’s going to be like as we all sit around and listen to everyone else go on trial before God for their past sins? How many stories of greed, obsession, and infidelity do you think its going to take before we are all bored out of our gourds from their soap opera sameness? Our human egos always want us to believe that we are all so unique. Judgment Day shall reveal that we are not. I’m not ready for that little gauntlet of purgatory today. Never will be because none of us shall ever truly be ready for anything like Judgment Day. Those who claim they are must be speaking from prideful humility.

(4) I had hoped to get back to Cooperstown and the Baseball Hall of Fame one more time before I die. It’s going to be kind of hard to get there before sundown today.

(3) I’m very attached to the life I now enjoy with my family and friends. I’m not ready to give that up by 6:00 PM today, even though I’ve sort of made my peace with the fact that I have no guarantees about any of the days I hope to think lay ahead. Age and health issues take you to those levels of reckoning, Today will be the end of the world for millions of us. It’s simply too early into Saturday’s light to know for whom those bells shall toll.

(2) I like the feeling of human love – love  for each other – and love for our various causes of expression and passion. I can’t imagine an existence or a state of being that did not include literature, art, sports, and invention. Those are the stuff that dreams are made of – and I do not want to see the pursuit of dreams disappear today, if we can avoid it.

(1) God, please don’t end the world today. We’re still looking for another bite of the real Valian’s Pizza down here in Houston. Raia’s  makes a decent tribute pizza to the great one, but it’s still a case of “close, but no cigar.”

By the way, God, will there be a food and drink concession service at the Judgment Day hearings? And will they serve Valian’s Pizza? If so, I might be willing to feel better about this being the last day in the history of the world.

See you tomorrow, everybody! – Or not.