It’s no secret that our world is going to end one day. Even
if our planet never faces a cosmic natural disaster and the Bible is wrong
about Jesus coming back to destroy the sinners, after x-billion years, the sun
will use up its hydrogen supply and eventually die, swallowing our puny planet
in the process and destroying human civilization as we know it.

Just ask the History Channel, which loves to air
Armageddon-day specials on topics originating from possibilities as real as
extinction-level (read: dino-style) asteroid collisions to the ridiculous
prophecies of 16th-century French mystic and apothecary Nostradamus.

I watched a program this weekend detailing apocalyptic
scenarios for which mankind should prepare. Among them were super-massive
volcanic eruptions, asteroid collisions (obviously), worldwide nuclear war,
uncontrollable pandemics and — President George W. Bush’s favorite scientific
evidence to refute — irreversible global
warming (insert rising sea levels here).

And that’s all fine and dandy. To be honest, I’ve already
planned for those situations, should they happen to occur. In fact, I think
everyone would do the same thing: get drunk and run around like crazy people.

I mean, really, what else would you do if you knew an
asteroid the size of Nebraska was about to smash into Earth? And consider how
people would react if a Rage-esque epidemic swept the planet or a
multiple-megaton nuclear warhead was going to hit their neighborhood in T-minus
12 minutes.

Although it’s true that our planet faces threats of cosmic
proportions, I think more attention should be paid to here-and-now problems
that are actually solvable. Where’s the two-hour History Channel special about
ending 5 p.m. traffic gridlock on La Jolla Village Drive? And what about an
educational program on the Discovery Channel about using your blinker properly?
(Come on people, the blinker makes that annoying clicking sound for a reason —
how the hell do you not realize you left it on?)

Seriously, I don’t really care about being engulfed
Pompeii-style by magma from some undiscovered volcano. I just want people to
learn how to merge correctly, because then I could actually move more than five
feet per hour on the I-5 freeway during rush hour.

Common roadway dilemmas such as incompetent lane-changers
(you gotta want it, people) are among the most complex problems facing humanity
today, yet for some reason the History Channel always foolishly excludes them
from its end-of-the-world lists.

Unless cable television shapes up and addresses real-life
apocalyptic scenarios like traffic congestion, we’re all going to end up
rotting in our cars at the Rock Bottom intersection. I can only pray that
humanity realizes that idiotic drivers are destroying the planet with traffic
jams before it’s too late, because that asteroid is still a long way off.