Wow! That was a close one!
 
Lest you mistake it for the sound of plummeting investor confidence, that "Whoosh"-ing noise you just heard was the sound of a giant asteroid nearly colliding with the earth. Not the kind of drop-in visitor we want to encourage.
 
The empyrean traveler is described as being "as large as a soccer field." There are as yet no reliable estimates of its weight because we can't be certain how many beer bottles were involved.
 
Had the roving rock actually collided with the earth, the devastation might well have been of nuclear proportions. Scientists say that such close-shaves are not uncommon, and that it is even possible that several could descend upon us at once. In such an event an umbrella would be of no use whatsoever. Even if you had three or four it wouldn't matter; you would be squashed like a bug.
 
Once the universe starts tossing minerals at you you want answers, and you want 'em fast. Administration officials, whose minds naturally run to calamitous suspicion, are demanding to know why no one even suspected the existence of the bolder boulder until a scant three days before its passage. Some of a more alarmist turn are toying with the notion that the event presages a massive assault by Al Quaida, or liberals or some other form of wickedness.
 
But gentle theologues of calmer kind are more philosophical. The Reverend Doctor Felicity Fangheart, founder of the Church of Environmental Euphoria, has put forth the notion that the celestial visitor was pitched at us as a reminder that our arrogant and wasteful species is only here on approval.
 
Whatever our initial intentions to dismiss her supposition, they were set aside when we learned that, concealed within the sound of its passage was a single basso profundo utterance of the word "BOO!"
 
Now might be a good time to sign that Kyoto agreement.
 
In other preternatural news, while perusing the Dictionary of the Ephemeral (Dorian-Gray, Publ., 2nd Ed.), staff philologists at the Honk Bleakly institute for Writing and Stuff Like That were disturbed to find that the word "settlement" had disappeared and apparently been replaced by "neighborhood." Immediately thereupon it was discovered that "assassination," had -- in some versions -- metamorphosed into "targeted killings," and in others into "holy martyrdom." The word "lunatic" remained unchanged in both versions.
 
Of equal concern, "democracy" appears in increasingly fainter type.
 
Speaking of the vanished, we grow ever more concerned for the welfare of Colin Powell, our reportedly frustrated and apparently benched Secretary of State. It might help to offer the general some advice culled from our considerable journalistic experience and general news industry savvy: the classifieds are in the back.
 
Of course, what with the job market being as it is...
 
Honest to goodness, Colin has us so confused! Following the President's recent statementoid on peace in the Middle East (all of the words were in English, and yet...), the General was obliged to offer a bemused dithyramb of support for many of the very points he had publicly disavowed mere weeks before.
 
Mr. Powell says that the U.S. believes that the present Palestinian government is not "the right kind of democracy." (Apparently one must look to Saudi Arabia for a better example.) And with reference to the President's echo of Israel's insistence on cessation of violence as a precondition for talks, Mr. Powell said "it is very difficult to move down the path of peace when bombs are going off..." Silly old us! We ashamedly admit that prior to this we had thought that to be a particularly opportune time for such discussions. They hardly seem necessary otherwise.
 
As long as we're hobnobbing with the supernatural we might as well peek into the future. Peering intently into our Windex-challenged crystal ball we espy a third President Bush delivering himself of a commencement address in the all too near future. Put on your cap and gown, and join us for the ceremonies attendant upon "Making Your Way Under America."
 
That's it for now. We have to hurry back to our reading. This week it's Martha Stewart's "Ten Lovely New Ways to Frame Your Indictment!"
 
Until the week following this one,
 
Hank
 
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