I’ve been trying to decide if this was a joke or not, and the thing is, I just can’t. I mean, really, how can you not read that and have your first response be, “Oh, wow, that’s funny, good one, I almost fell for it” and then immediately following on that, “Oh, wait, are they for real?”

For the White House, the possibility that the dramatic events described in Thessalonians 4:13-18, in which “the dead in Christ will rise, then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord,” presents an obvious dilemma: if President Bush is summoned to meet his maker, who among the “left behind” can govern the country? According to the Presidential Succession Act of 1947, if the president is incapacitated, dies, resigns, is for any reason unable to hold his office, or is removed from office, he is to be succeeded by his vice president, in this case Dick Cheney. But top White House officials have expressed concern that Cheney’s health may make such a transition impossible, especially after the shock of witnessing his boss disappear through the ceiling of the Oval Office.

Here’s an interesting thought to ponder: what if the Rapture does happen and George W. Bush isn’t taken into heaven? Think he’ll try to nuke heaven? “Anywhere in the clouds, General! Let’s see how ‘Almighty’ God is against our nukes!”

Wouldn’t surprise me much.

Well, y’know, if Kerry decides to run again in ’08 for the presidency, even he should be able to defeat a guy named for a lizard.

One of my New Year’s Resolutions was to stock my fridge.

The other resolution was to get out of debt. This is something I’ve been trying to do for years but I’m going to give those credit cards and car payment a whammy for sure this year, or so I hope.

In the last five years, I have accumulated an incredible amount of debt. On credit cards I owe roughly thirteen-thousand dollars. The why doesn’t matter – let’s just say that experience is the best teacher when it comes to managing money. Most of that debt was avoidable, some of it not so much.

In addition to the credit debt, I also owe in the neighborhood of eleven grand on my car.

The first two parts of my New Year’s Resolution regarding my debt was this: the first, to pay off half of what I still owe on my car by the end of the year ($5700 divided by twelve…), and the second to pay off my Capital One ($600), Discover ($800), Chase ($1100), Dell ($1000), and Goodyear ($1100) accounts by August. If I’m successful in the latter, I might also be able to pay off Providian ($2200) by December.

The third part of the resolution was to address the root of the credit card issue — generally, when I’ve used credit cards lately, it’s been because I haven’t had any cash to pay emergency bills (i.e., when I blew my clutch out). Since September, I’ve been making an effort to put $50 a week into my savings account, and only dipping into it when absolutely neccessary – as of yesterday, my account totaled nine-hundred bucks.

The big part of this is, of course, financial discipline. I drew up a budget last night accounting for my rent, my utilities, insurance payments, gas and grocery expendetures, ‘spending’ money, et al. I’m working on a draft of scheduled payments to the credit cards, taking into account my timeline of August.

Before I moved out, my Dad told me that what kept him awake most nights was his debts. I didn’t really understand what he meant, and I suspect most young people don’t, I know that I treated those credit cards like free money, and now I’m paying (literally, out the ass) for that mistake, as I should be.

Here’s to killing the credit cards and chopping them into tiny little pieces.

And anyway – I can’t buy a 6-speed Jeep Wrangler until I get all of this shit paid off anyway.

It just goes to show you — drunks shouldn’t operate nuclear submarines either.