At one time I thought about having a separate category just for the culture sightings that make you think that surely the world’s about to end soon. I was going to name it “The moving walkway is ending” in honor of something you hear a lot in airports — so much, in fact, that it begins to seem more like Pure Truth rather than a recorded inanity. I may still do the category, but for now, here’s just some of the latest evidence that the clock is ticking:

1. Don’t know if this means the end of the world or just the end of rap music, but when I was at the gym, I was hearing a rap-styled song, one of the ones that’s a fusion of the booming urban beat and snippets of some older song (thus allowing them to be perceived as both edgy and retro. Can you say ‘marketing’?). In this case, the older song was something sort of annoyingly sung by children. It turned out to be “Hard Knock Life” as sung by the orphanage girls in “Annie.” So, rap music is getting its playlist from 80’s Broadway musicals now? Yep, we’re all going to die.
2. I think I know the destination of my next road trip, and this would be better than the last one. Not only would I not have to leave the area, I wouldn’t have to leave this chair. According to this month’s Wired magazine, the latest thing for those who love playing computer games online is a virtual world called “Second Life.” That would be … a world. It has its own geography, cities, politics, industry, economy and population (currently about 500,000). So the next time you tell a geeky friend to get a life, he can proudly say “I have a first and Second life.” And the scary thing is, he’ll probably mean it.
3. For those of us who are still kind of grumpy that we didn’t get the rocket-ship-cars we were promised when we entered the 21st century, you’ll be glad to hear that scientists have been making headway with teleportation. Unfortunately, the breakthroughs (including this latest one) have been teleporting information rather than matter, which means that the recipients of all this fab new Star-Trekkiness may be computers. But hey, it still counts!
4. They make refrigerators that have televisions built into them. Okay, so that’s not new, but I still can’t get over it. Who is it that needs something like this? Has anybody been crying out “DogGONE it, why do I have to miss the commercials when I go get something to eat? If only there were a TV right there on the refrigerator door so I wouldn’t have to miss the next spot from FreeCreditReport.com!!!” If we’re going to start to be that lame and lazy, why not bring the mountain to Mohammed — why not a TV set with a fridge in it? I mean, sure you’d cut down on all that thin screen action, but you wouldn’t have to lose valuable seconds going to and from the kitchen.
5. And of course, North Korea may test nuclear weapons this weekend (HERE), and if it does, the UN is almost certain that it will be very, very angry about it and do something, but it doesn’t know what yet.

….. tick tick tick tick tick …….