The proverbial boogeyman, the phrase "end of the world as we know it", is not particularly significant to me because it is, literally, always true, because any progress at all, anywhere, means that tomorrow will never be like today, and so "the end of the world as we know it" can be extended to mean "and it will be better and better!"

So, it is not very significant, especially when I get argumentative by being literal and obtuse about it, like now, which is my mood lately.

But when you use the phrase "end of the world as we know it" in the metaphorical sense, meaning "some terrifying catastrophe, to the maximum, in spades", then it means something much uglier and catastrophic, which you already knew since I use the word "catastrophic" earlier in the sentence, teeming, as it does, with evil portents of ravenous beasts eating you and your family alive, your agonizing screams mixing with squawking vultures pecking hungrily at your liver, and the dead rising from their graves to pursue us endlessly so that they can eat our brains.

Anyway, that's the way I have it figured, having distilled an entire lifetime of watching TV down into these kinds of little philosophical nuggets.

And since I am by nature dyspeptic and paranoid about the inevitable, horrible result of a growing government, a growing class of people dependent on government, and a Federal Reserve constantly creating more and more money and credit to accommodate them both, I think that I understand the use of the "end of the world as we know it" in its most disturbing sense, because ruinous inflation in prices - the Grim Reaper of economics! - is thus inevitable.

What to do? Well, the sad truth, that you learn as part of attaining True Mogambo Enlightenment (TME), is that nothing can be done, as proved by the One Freaking Fact (OFF) that if debts could be made to just disappear - poof! - by printing money, then everyone, and every country, would do it! And would always have done it!

But nobody, and no country, has ever succeeded in printing money to pay their debts without causing hyperinflation in consumer prices, as the people rose up in revolt, the whole country disintegrated, it was a big mess and everything was ruined.

This - this! - means that you should look deep, deep into my eyes so that you can see the Utter Mogambo Sincerity (UMS) in my eyes when I say that this means to everybody with one functioning brain cell that it Can't Be Done (CBD) simple by virtue of the fact that nobody in history has ever done it, although many, many, many people have tried everything they could think of to do it, including putting merchants to death for daring to raise their prices high enough to cover their inflating costs!

This is one of the tried-and-true ways that governments ("desperate morons in charge!") seem to think will actually work, despite the obvious stupidity of it, and that is why I was shocked when I saw that Obama is endorsing legislation to prevent health insurance companies from raising prices! Unbelievable! Gaaaaahhhhh!

As indicated by the sound effect in the "Gaaaaaahhhhh!", one can only manage a scream of Loud Mogambo Outrage (LMO) at the sheer, staggering, socialist stupidity of declaring prices, a sound not unlike the Freaking Sound Of Doom (FSOD) already ringing in your ears or you wouldn't be reading this, which is a clarion call, if ever there was one, to hie thyself, to make ready, the Mogambo Bunker Of I-Told-You-So (MBOITYS), because, brother, one of these days very soon you are going to be glad you did.

And if you bought gold, silver and oil with a gasping, grasping, gluttony of greed, then, likewise, one of these days very soon you are going to be glad you did!