The End of the World and related matters

Look! We have Internet for a few minutes! It may be due to the open window, through which mosquitoes (baby ones too, I just found one on my hand) and other fascinating bugs are coming to investigate my screen light and the lamp.

(Shoot, my mosquito-slapping reflexes need to be honed.)

Everyone should read The Hunchback of Notre Dame, even in English. I know it sounds like a dry old classic, but it is truly more of a comedy, so far. Just listen to this:

Meanwhile, the licensed copyist to the University, Master Andry Musnier, leaned towards the ear of the furrier of the king's robes, Master Gilles Lecornu.
"I tell you, sir, this is the end of the world. The students never were so riotious before; it's the cursed inventions of the age that are ruining us all, -artillery, bombards, serpentines, and particularly printing, that other German pestilence. No more manuscripts, no more books! Printing is death to book-selling. The end of the world is at hand."
"So I see by the rage for velvet stuffs," said the furrier.

Yes, and when they come out with an automatic translating device that deals with idioms, it will be my turn to say "The end of the world is at hand!" And when they figure out a way to just tell computers and technology what to do, it will be the turn of my software engineering siblings. And when they develop a hybrid grass that grows to two inches and never past, it will be my darling mother's turn to say it.

Or it's like that weather forecast where the annoying sarcastic little dog gasps, "Oh NO!!! On Tuesday and Wednesday it is going to be cloudy in Hawaii! Hawaii, it is the Apocalypse for you!!"

By the way, while we are discussing the end of the world and other seemingly remote things, I would like to publish my last will and testament for if they ever get to Time Travel. Please, please, send me anytime but the Eastern Hemisphere before 1491. No matter how early or remote, life will always be civilized if there is chocolate. (And I really think life would be more civilized if we kept it to the days before they started adding sugar to it.)