Apocalypse this.

For the last year and a half or so, every couple of months I suddenly remember that CNN.com has an Odd News section. It's great. I recommend checking it out. But anyway. I've actually developed a fun little self-contained two or three day lesson (for a high school English class...the older the better) out of this news section and a book by Thomas Bernhard called The Voice Imitator. It's a creative writing lesson, writing short shorts -- helps kids discover rhetorical devices via imitation of Bernhard's style.

Anyway.

All that is to say: these are some news stories I've come across recently that are disturbing for various reasons.

Bill Capell (52 years old) is a retired grocery store clerk from California. He gets a call early one morning. The voice on the other end (a strange phrase that doesn't really make much sense when you think about it, unless we're talking about those things no one ever really used as a kid with the two cans connected by a long piece of string, but still a phrase I think in common usage) identifies itself as that of a British reporter. This reporter's voice informs Bill Capell that one of his cousins has passed away. Bill goes back to sleep. But should Bill get a similar phone call sometime in the near future (god forbid, if you believe in that sort of thing, Bill), Bill will suddenly be the Right Honorable Lord William Capell, the 12th Earl of Essex. Now that's no duke-dom or marquess-ship, but it's nothing to shake a stick at either, you might say (if, you know, the younguns refer to you as Gramps). Two catches (three if you count the fact that yet another cousin -- the newly-named 11th Essexian Earl -- would have to die for this to occur): (1) there's no money or estate involved, just the title and some symbolic honors; and (2) in order to become Lord William, Bill would have to give up his American citizenship (a powerful testament to the power of words, I should think). Which, of course, immediately brings to mind the following question: where does a grocery store clerk get off retiring at 52? That must be one hell of a retirement plan, Mr. Earl-in-Waiting.
.....
The Harry Potter series of books is apparently quite popular among the 510 prisoners (apologies: detainees) being held by the U.S. at Guantanamo Bay. Several of the detainees (in searching through my mind for an alternate term, I came up with "roommate," which made me think a Real World Gitmo can't be far off) have read the series, and at least one has requested the movies. The 1200-volume Gitmo library, however, does not have the fifth or sixth book in the series (two additions that would no doubt help pass the time three years after having been picked to live in a cellblock, and have their mouths taped). Now, if you;ve been in a bookstore at any point during the last few years, you probably know how I feel about the world-sweeping Harry Potter craze. So it won't surprise some of you that I consider housing these piggy-bank destroying tomes in the prison library an offense that should be on a watch-list somewhere as a form of torture. But. With a less rabble-rousing sentiment, I wonder whether one might be able to garner heretofore withheld information from said Potter-addicts by dangling the Half-Blood Prince in front of them. I also wonder which would have outraged the American public more: (1) a new revelation about unspeakably un-American torture occurring in an U.S. internment camp; or (2) news that Book 6 had been offered to Gitmo detainees prior to the midnight release date last month.
.....
Not that this necessarily follows from either or both of the previous posts (post hoc ergo propter hoc, it's hardly ever true...my fellow West Wing'ers know what I'm sayin). But hardly ever ain't never, you know what I'm sayin? So here it is. Judge for yourselves. Thousands of tiny toads have invaded a small farming community in north-central Montana. There are so many of the toads on the ground that it is difficult at times to walk without stepping on them. So many that some lawns look as though the grass is moving and pulsating. So many that one resident offered the colorful comment that driving is a bit tough because the roads are slick and sticky -- because of what must be thousands of tiny smashed toad bodies that people have been unable to avoid running over with their SUVs. Now. I'm not saying that life is imitating art here (specifically, Magnolia). And I'm not saying that the (or any) apocalypse is coming.

I'm just saying a retired grocery store clerk might soon be in the line of succession for the British throne.
And so-called terror detainees can't wait to find out how Dumbledore dies.