Although I know the world is an intricately more complex place than it appears to most people, although I understand in my blood and bones that humanity is a turbulent family aboard an endless train, on an infinite journey to shores that can only dimly be imagined by the living, I don’t see signs and portents everywhere I look.

Most often, a haloed moon means nothing more than that reflective volcanic ash has made its way into the stratosphere, and a two-headed goat is only a genetic curiosity.

The mommy-porn genre currently sweeping the book industry and the Babylonian excess of most television shows probably fall within the historical norm in our culture’™s sleaze index and are not omens of the imminent collapse of civilization, though if I were not so busy, I might start building an ark.