If You're Gonna Do It, Do It Big

Item: A pedestrian in California (had to be California) was talking on his cell phone when he came to a railroad track. The gate was down, which generally means “train’s coming, don’t cross,” so he kept talking and walked around the gate, crossed the tracks –well, halfway across the tracks- and got pancaked by an Amtrak train. “The number you have dialed is no longer a working number.”

Item: There are some big asteroids out there. Most of them have already hit whatever they are going to hit. The moon, for instance; us, for another instance. But every so often one of a certain size flies by and, in case you haven’t anything to worry about today, we often can’t tell they are near us until after they’ve passed. Sort of, “Wow! What was that?”

One such will be passing our way around 2012 (oddly enough, the year the Mayan calendar runs out) and it’s going to be a close call. If another asteroid bumps it, the occasion might be closer than we really want. Anyway, its next pass will be on the day I turn 87, assuming I last that long: April 13, 2029. It will come so close it will be passing between us and our communications satellites. Unless, of course, it gets bumped a bit and does a direct hit; that could easily be all she wrote.

Item: I still want to be shot by a deranged pope. It’s the only way I can see that I will end up on the front page of the New York Times, which is a secret goal of mine. If anyone has other ideas, let me know; my way isn’t very likely.