It’s Friday the 13th, Twinkies are going belly up, and the Doomsday Clock was moved ahead 1 minute to 11:55. For crying out loud, we’re only 13 days into a new year. What in the world is going on? Did Nostradamus predict this? What about the Mayans, are they at it again?
Before we start to panic (and by we I mean I) let’s take this one calamity at a time, beginning with Friday the 13th. In fairness, we shouldn’t be surprised by its arrival, the date’s right there on the Gregorian calendar. Even so, I was startled by the appearance of today’s date in my day planner. I feel so ambushed.
After I had a chance to think about it, though, I realized most days are like Friday the 13th. I’ll have 364 more of them this year. Unless. The actual date has the completely opposite effect and brings me a regular day of glad tidings and happy surprises. That seems reasonable, doesn’t it? Either way, air travel and doctor visits are out.
In the grand scheme of things, one day of bad luck is a blip. A world without Twinkies? That’s a catastrophe. Hostess Brands, the makers of Twinkies and Sno Balls and Ding Dongs, is going bankrupt. Again. They emerged from Chapter 11 last September, but decided to try again. They’re still nearly a billion $ in debt.
Hostess has issued statement after statement promising to keep the Twinkies coming, but what if they don’t? Can we go cold turkey? Can we just forget about them, put them out of our minds? No, they’re part of American culture. Remember the Twinkie defense? How about ‘That’s a big Twinkie’ in Ghostbusters? I do and I’m going to stock up.
But I’d better hurry, according to the Doomsday Clock we’re a full minute closer to apocalypse. The hand is standing at five minutes to midnight. Shoot, we were a lot closer in 1953, the clock was down to two minutes. So we’ve gained an extra three minutes, if you’d like to look at it that way. Which I very much do.
See there? Everything’s fine, nothing to worry about. We can just go on about our business and have a nice day : )
Copyright © Publikworks 2012
the whirly girl 
12 responses to “: speaking of doomsday :”
I heard this announced on NPR last week and I about crashed my car. How can we go on without Twinkies? I think stocking up is an excellent idea. We know they have the shelf life to live out most of our life spans.
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Some comedian said if Hostess can’t make a profit selling sugary treats in the fattest country in the world they deserve to go bankrupt. I thought that was funny.
If we don’t eat all the Twinkies we’ve stockpiled, we can bequeath them to our surviving relatives. They’d make nice parting gifts, don’t you think?
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Lisa .. I saw you liked my last post, and I immediately thought, “Where is Lisa? I haven’t seen her in days!” I quickly popped over to your blog and what did I see but a post you wrote 6 days ago! The question isn’t where is Lisa – the question is where is Lenore?! Holy smokes.
I can’t believe I missed this Friday the 13th post. What’s worse – I totally slacked off for at least 1 minute on Friday, and now you are telling me we are one minute closer to doomsday? Man, I wish I could get that one minute back.
Who runs this doomsday clock? They need a better alert system.
As for the Twinkies….. I’m a Moon Pie kind of gal.
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Hi, LD! I like all your posts, kiddo, not just your last one (which was terrific, by the way — I love those internal dialogues you do).
Yep, we’re one minute closer to doom, but I feel a little more confident now that it’s Thursday the nineteenth instead of Friday the thirteenth. So what do you say we kick back and have a MoonPie? My treat.
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Sno balls! I had completely forgotten them. They were truly vile, which makes it hard to understand why I had them after my peanut butter and jelly lunch sandwich – every day. Also makes it hard to understand why I’m still alive after a childhood diet like that…
But, Friday the 13th is a great day. My boy was born on one of them. Luckiest day of my life.
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Congratulations on doing so well in the Diablog Awards! I knew you would, your post was really terrific.
As a kid I peeled off the marshmallow ‘skin’ on Sno Balls. Without that they tasted suspiciously like Suzy Qs. Imagine that. Your Friday the 13th experience is wonderful, you should write about it.
Thanks for dropping by, Eileen, it’s great fun hearing from you.
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It’s like the mayans somehow knew that in 2012 twinkies would go away thus ending all of man kind in a zombie apocolypse fashion.
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Oh, those Mayans, they didn’t miss a trick, did they?
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I would have commented earlier, but I had to stop in the middle of reading and run to Costco to buy hoards of Hostess products. I don’t generally imbibe, but if I know I will have no access whatsoever no matter what ever again so help me (what do you call it if you’re atheist?) Allie the dog – well I simply couldn’t take that. Thank you for the information.
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I felt it was my duty, Kim. The good thing is, you can enjoy the Twinkies you bought today for years and years to come. Their shelf life is something like 200 years. It was good to hear from you.
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Dang! Now I almost missed friday the 13th.! How did I made it through the entire day without any major disaster? Maybe it is because we do not have Twinkies here in germany?
Have a great weekend, Lisa and Bart. =)
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I’m hoping for a similar letdown, Min. So far so good. You all have a great weekend, too.
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