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If The World Ends, Should I Get Dressed Up?

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By STEVE OTTO | The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 12, 2008

You know how it is. You're half dressed, trying to get ready for work while chugging down that cup of coffee and listening to the news on the tube at the same time.

It was pretty much the same as always: There was a hurricane swirling around in the Gulf, traffic was backed up coming into downtown, children were missing school buses because the system is messed up, the Bucs were losing games and raising ticket prices and there was a chance the world was going to come to an end over the weekend.

Actually, that last item caught my attention, but they had already gone to a commercial break.

I stood there for a second staring into the mirror. I could go ahead and shave, I thought, but if the world was going to come to an end, did I really need to dress for the occasion?

I waited through a handful of commercials, mostly for miracle drugs that also seemed to have minor side effects such as constipation and death, and then it was back to Bill Ratliff and Gayle Guyardo, the morning anchors. They didn't look all that concerned about the world coming to an end, but then TV people don't worry much about anything unless there is good video to go with it.

It seems the Europeans, who don't have much to do these days between soccer matches, have constructed something called the Large Hadron Collider. It's a 17-mile particle-accelerator tunnel deep under the ground in Switzerland and France. The idea is they eventually will be able to fire particles in opposite directions, and when they collide, scientists will be able to understand what immediately happened after the Big Bang. It is allegedly one of the great secrets of the universe, right up there with Col. Sanders' fried chicken recipe.

Forget Taking Out The Trash

The only problem is that some scientists were suggesting that the collision in the tunnel might cause a black hole that would swallow up everything, including the Earth. Most scientists were dismissing it as rubbish, although I seem to recall the experts once thought the world was flat.

What bothers me is that, like the rest of us, I still have a few things left to do and I wish I could have a little more notice if scientists are messing around with destroying the Earth.

For one thing, we still have all those emergency hurricane supplies that really aren't going to help out much if we get sucked into a black hole.

And what a shame it could be all coming to an end just as the Rays are so close to winning a pennant. A lot of fans would have believed hell would have frozen over before the Rays beat out the likes of the Red Sox and the Yankees, but to get this far and then get vaporized seems a little unfair.

No More 'Wheel Of Fortune'

So many disappointments ... our dog's graduation from obedience school next week, those chicken wings still in the fridge, those TV shows that were taped and will never be seen. What am I going to do with all those leftover Gasparilla beads?

The mayor won't get to see her Riverwalk finished. The county commission won't get to finish paving over the county, Joe Redner still won't win an election. All those fans who paid the Bucs extra for seat licenses that would allow them to renew their seats won't get to use them and we will never know who was going to do the halftime show at this year's Super Bowl right here in Tampa.

Oh, what a world, what a world!

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