literary ambition = apocalypse

I'm going to take myself off to the book store later today, in search of books about 1816. This was a year where temperatures fell so drastically, owing to a major volcanic eruption on the other side of the world, that hundreds of thousands starved because of crop failure.

While surfing for appropriate books, I happened upon a Smithsonian article about suspected apocalyptic events. Seems that even the Assyrians were not immune.

An Assyrian clay tablet dating to around 2800 B.C. bears the inscription: “Our Earth is degenerate in these later days; there are signs that the world is speedily coming to an end; bribery and corruption are common; children no longer obey their parents; every man wants to write a book and the end of the world is evidently approaching.”

The belief that an urge to write a book was a sure sign of a global shitstorm was pretty funny to me.  Even though my attempts to write books were never more than half-hearted, and haven't emerged for some time.

At least the 1816 volcano wasn't nearly as bad as Lake Toba, an eruption that's believed to have wiped out most living things on earth. But then Yellowstone Park contains the potential for a butt-kicker of a volcano that's expected every 600,000 years. Which isn't bad except that the Yellowstone caldera is technically 20,000 years or so behind schedule, according to some (but not all) geologists. Is Yogi Bear doomed?