Cheryl likes to cite the annual WIP Wing Bowl as an example of the most obvious sign of the coming apocalypse...

but there's a better one in my view.

When I was a kid, besides literally having to walk a half mile to the bus, uphill both ways (to the end of Black Horse Road at rte. 401), it was the kids who tried to cheat on tests (not me!!!) and the teachers who caught them and turned them in.

Now it's the teachers who cheat and the kids who turn them in:

3 dozen school administrators and teachers indicted in Atlanta cheating scandal

By Kate Brumback, Associated Press / March 30, 2013 at 9:35 am EDT

Atlanta

Juwanna Guffie was sitting in her fifth-grade classroom taking a standardized test when, authorities say, the teacher came around offering information and asking the students to rewrite their answers. Juwanna rejected the help.

"I don't want your answers, I want to take my own test," Juwanna told her teacher, according to Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard.

On Friday, Juwanna — now 14 — watched as Fulton County prosecutors announced that a grand jury had indicted the Atlanta Public Schools' ex-superintendent and nearly three dozen other former administrators, teachers, principals and other educators of charges arising from a standardized test cheating scandal that rocked the system.

According to Howard, Juwanna eventually told her sister and later told the district attorney's investigators. Still confident in her ability to take a test on her own, Juwanna got the highest reading score on a standardized test this year.

Sitting in my car at a 4 lane intersection, waiting with a couple dozen cars waiting for the light to change, I thought:

Wouldn't it be fun to have a fake gruesome head or a big snake that you could hang upside down from the end of a telescoping pole that you could poke out your window and extend it out to the front of the car in front of you and hang over their front window?

We have heard anecdotes about the reactions from people just seconds before they die, such as when Steven Jobs died, he said Oh WOW! and died moments later. And we hear from people who have had NDEs (Near Death Experinces) where they were clinically dead for short periods, and they come back and tell us of the amazing beauty they saw on the other side.

And for the people who experience those NDEs and come back, they often tell of refusing to die, that there was someone or some people they still wanted to spend more time with, such as their children.

I wonder how often people in those situations actually have an option of refusing to die, and how many of them are so overcome with the beauty on the other side that they think - heck, this is nice - I'm stayin'!

Seems like more and more over the past decade you can tell whether someone is more likely to vote Republican or Democrat by figuring out first and foremost which upsets them more:

How little the rich have to pay in taxes or how little the poor have to pay in taxes.

I went to a few funerals earlier this month, each for someone of my parents' generation. At the second of the two, there were so many people there, in a non-denominational setting, that I had to stand along one side of the packed room, giving me an opportunity to spend time, as I waited for it to start, looking at the assembled mourners.

To say that I was among the 5 youngest non-family attenders of the hundred or so gathered was obvious. It was a very grey looking crowd (not that I'm not!). And it made me wonder...

I think part of the appeal for young women in going to weddings, besides the opportunity to dress up and to dance and drink and celebrate and be among friends, is the chance to imagine what her big day will be like - a day they spend a good portion of their young fantasy life imagining things like what color schemes they'll use, what flowers they'll carry, who'll be in it, where it'll be, who they'll invite. I'm sure I can't even make a dent in all the things they have to consider. All with the goal of making it just perfect.

So, as I looked around the room at the 70- and 80+ year olds, I found myself wondering if part of their interest in attending any given funeral was for the same reasons: to imagine what they want their service to be like - who would speak, where it would be, and ultimately wondering if people would say as nice things about them as were being said about the person they were actually there to honor.

I have to admit, I've given some thought to that last point myself. I'm sure there are enough decent things I've done that people can scrounge up a few fond memories or traits they had the chance to observe, but I also know no one would be out of line in saying a few things about what a grump I could be. I'm not proud of that part of me, but it is me and all's fair, not just in love and war, but also, I suppose, in death.

But in the end, all I really want to know is what Father Guido Sarducci would say about all this

Trev and I go to a thing called Guys Read at the local library every month where dads and sons discuss whatever book they've chosen to read the previous month.

At the meeting earlier this month, the boys were off discussing what kind of superpowers they'd give their own alien, leaving the 4-5 dads to make small talk, which is routinely awkward, none of us being the sort of outgoing, jovial-types who thrive in such situations.

But this time, someone brought up the topic of the Pope having recently announced that he was going to resign and one dad said the rumors had already started as to what the real reason for it could be.

I quickly said that I hoped it was not some new scandal that would surface, as the church, and any of us even barely interested (which would describe my level) had already had way more than they/we could handle.

But then he went on to say that one theory was that the Pope may have been previously married or fathered (Or would it be Fathered) a child, at which point, I, perhaps a little too excitedly, corrected my point, saying I hope that if the scandal involves something illegal, then I hope it doesn't happen, but if it involves something legal, like marriage (gasp!) or father hood (Oh, no, say it ain't so, yer Eminarience!), then I very much hope it does come out as true.

God, I would love that. I'd like to say that the previous sentence was an actual request to God, but of course, he doesn't listen to me, just the Pope, so no point in my trying to bother him.

Cheryl and I had an awesome weekend away a few weeks back. I'd call it a Red Berenson weekend, though to be fair, he accomplished his amazing feat in 60 minutes, where it took us almost exactly 60 hours, going from late Friday night to Sunday afternoon.

I'm not sure he scored again the next night though, so we have that going for us.