by Robert Kroese

To purchase this book from Amazon.com, click here.

True believers have been trying to pin down the apocalypse since angels first visited the Apostle John on Patmos, a crazy evening 1,900 years ago that included a few too many late-night chili-dogs. Some of these prognosticators of man’s demise are charismatic, by which I mean that they will force-feed you grape Kool-Aid in your sleep or train you in the use of semi-automatic weapons. Some are even crazy enough to craft multi-volume fiction bestsellers, only to have their main characters played by former child TV stars in low-budget theatrical releases.

But in every pack of end-times extremists is a voice of reason, someone who will make the muddy eschatological waters crystal clear. And standing next to him is Robert Kroese, the class clown, the person who, whether for right or for wrong, is able to bring true joy to something that—let’s face it—is a real downer. In Mercury Falls, Rob’s new novel on the apocalypse, the curtain that separates this world from eternal realities is torn open, revealing a glimpse of heaven normally only seen in a Department of Motor Vehicles field office.

The story centers on Mercury, a middle-class angel in the heavenly bureaucracy who, despite having friends in really high places, is feeling uncomfortable with this whole end-of-the-world thing. Through his dealings with angelic airport stewards, demonic call center agents, and mundane humans, Mercury manages to take the apocalypse to the very brink of Armageddon.

Although the theology in Mercury Falls is a mess, it might just succeed in opening your heart to the joyful parts of the Bible’s final book. Five stars!

All members of Humorfeed are peer-reviewed to ensure that the quality and consistency of their sites and articles are of the highest level. But it’s still funny stuff. Beyond the daily postings, the site hosts an annual Satire News Competition each January.

If you’ve already signed up to receive Humorality.com’s articles, why not sign up for Humorfeed.com as well? Your funny bone will thank you.

Tired of the same old boring news? Worried that the talking heads will give you nightmares? Worried that nightmares will give you talking heads? Now you can wipe these fears away with the new headline service from Humorality.com: Humor Flash.

Humor Flash takes the latest news from all around the world, erases it, and puts something better in its place: humor! Sure, you could read a newspaper or listen to hourly reports on the radio. But statistics show that people who do those things end up dying sometime in the next 120 years. Why take the risk?

Sign up for Humor Flash now by becoming a follower of Humorality.com’s Twitter feed:

http://twitter.com/humorality

And remember, Humorality.com makes a great conversation starter for those awkward silent moments at parties. Be sure to visit Humorality.com regularly.

• On the web: http://www.humorality.com
• On Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Tim-Patrick/105237502964
• Good old Twitter: http://twitter.com/humorality or @humorality
• In the White House: 2016 (maybe, but probably not)

[Image Credits: The Children's Television Workshop -- Thanks Kermit!]

Now in its twenty-seventh year, this international fiction contest draws thousands of submissions from dark and stormy typewriters across the globe, each with a single purpose: to craft the worst possible opening sentence to the worst possible imaginary novel.

This year I submitted eight opening lines to the contest. When the results of the 2009 contest were announced in early July, it was with much sadness that I found my name absent from winners’ page. But perhaps it is all for the best. The contest winners receive as their reward “a pittance” and the chance to be known forever as someone who can generate truly pathetic prose.

To experience the eye-damaging results for yourself, visit the contest web site:

http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/

For your consideration, here are the eight sentences I submitted to the contest.

• Fred hated geometry, but here it was again, angling for his attention, bisecting his feelings, and arcing past the hopes of his youth, and he felt that his life was once again taking a big tangent as he started to sign and cosign the loan documents.
• Charles hated geometry, with its circles and dodecahedrons, its angles and vertices, its endless lists of rules and formulae that threatened to dissuade him from his plans for world domination, and as he sat down in the classroom’s gum-encrusted chair-with-desk, he remembered that it was geography, not geometry, that he hated.
• Smith—and it just goes to show you how you can’t always judge someone by their given name, since in Smith’s case his quest for adventure in the darkest jungles of Africa, his near-hero status on five continents, and his MacGyver-like ability to overcome whatever malice the enemy could throw at him carried him far beyond the generic qualities of his common surname—died.
• Gwendolyn’s golden locks cascaded over the delicate lace and puffed sleeves of her powder-blue gown, the gown she knew would ignite the fires of passion in Roberto’s eyes, and as she fingered the insignia and badges of military honor that graced her womanly form and that identified her as the ranking officer on the ship, she quickly realized that her author had once again put her in the wrong book.
• As he cruised across the California desert and into the hot Arizona landscape, Bruce thought about how he would have to pass through Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas,  Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois,  Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts,  Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada,  New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota,  Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota,  Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming before he could claim to have driven through all fifty states, although not necessarily in that order.
• Mark boarded the eastbound train from Track 9 in Los Angeles’ Union Station, his thoughts already 2,000 miles away in the Windy City, and as he read again the tear-stained letter from Beatrice, he realized that a westbound train departing from Chicago station traveling at 40 miles per hour would meet with his train in 20 hours, assuming his train traveled at a constant 60 miles per hour and departed at the same time, which seemed unlikely given the railroad strike.
• From a glance at the blood-red coloring on his clothes, the heavy boots wiped clean of any incriminating dirt or fingerprints, and the bag he carried that contained heaven-knows-what, I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick.
• As I looked with love on the face of my wife Delores, knowing how much this once-in-a-lifetime trip to Las Vegas to see the Rat Pack meant to her, I was unprepared for the guttural screams that emitted from her mouth as hundreds of rodents filled the stage.

The sponsors of the Internet would like to take a moment to introduce you to a new humor web site, Humorality.com. A spendid site for humorous news and social commentary, Humorality.com is suitable for those who are the life of the party, as well as those who prefer to sit on the sidelines and watch the Type A’s make things happen.

Humorality.com is the brainchild of Tim Patrick, which in itself is somewhat gross given that brains don’t have children, at least not male brains. Tim has been a software developer since the early days of personal computers, so you know he’s qualified to write offbeat humor. And that’s just what you find in the pages of Humorality.com.

That’s it for the announcement. There’s nothing more to read here, so why not head over to Humorality.com and see what all the fuss is about.

New From Microsoft!

Since 1991, Visual Basic has held the hand of new and experienced programmers as they meandered their way through the minefield of Windows application development. That’s why we here at Microsoft are pleased to announce some of the exciting changes included in the upcoming release of Visual Basic 2010. These new features will simplify each and every programming task you encounter, and will help bring about an age of language parity never before offered from any company that owned a collection of popular programming languages.

Here are just a few of the great changes included in Visual Basic 2010.

• No More Line Continuation Characters. Hit the Enter key whenever you want; we don’t care! To assist you in identifying the end of each line, use the new “Full Line Termination” character–the semicolon.

• Variable Declaration Simplification. As a Visual Basic programmer, you’re always looking to simplify your programming experience. So now, instead of the verbose, wasteful variable declaration syntax found in past editions, you’ll be able to use the new time-saving syntax. (Don’t forget that new Full Line Termination character.)

Old: Dim customerName As String

New: String customerName;

• Simplified Control Structure Syntax. Block statements such as If/End If and For/Next are great, but they don’t allow you to easily find the end of the block from the beginning, something that is especially vexing in large block statements. The new Block Match feature of Visual Studio lets you jump quickly between the start and end of a block. To support this feature, Visual Basic requires the new “Curly Brace” syntax for loops, conditions, and Select Case statements.

• Lower Case Alternatives. If your pinkie fingers are all tuckered out from typing the mixed-case keyword names that define Visual Basic, you’ll love our new lowercase alternatives. For instance, instead of “Imports,” try “using.”

These are just a few of the productivity enhancements you find in every box of Visual Basic–if we were still shipping physical boxes, that is. And remember, kids, the new version of Visual Basic makes a great gift for the C# programmers in your life.

(Text copyright (c) 2009 by Tim Patrick. Image Credits: Microsoft)