I HAVE long feared that the world as we know it, is coming to an end.

Now, before I go any further, I should probably tell you that no, I have never seen or exchanged pleasantries with a burning bush and as much as I would like to have a little chat with God, every time I try calling, it goes straight to his voice mail, which, personally, I find somewhat annoying.

It must be great to be God. He (or she, I don't want to offend the rest of the melting pot) can carry on as he pleases, and we all love him for it. It reminds me of that cool line from The Witches of Eastwick where Satan, played by (who else) Jack Nicholson, says "When we make mistakes, they call it evil. When God makes mistakes, they call it nature."

Do you spend much time thinking about the end of the world? Or death, what about death? Do you think about death a lot? I do, well, not so much these days, but I used to think about it all the time when I was a kid.

Why, you ask? Well, I wish I could give you some deep meaningful answer but I can't because the simple truth is this: I don't know.
I mean, that's the beauty of childhood. No explanation is necessary. You think about all kinds of things when you're a kid and it's all fun and games, even horrible things like death.

Personally, I blame television. I used to blame my parents but we've settled the lawsuit now, so it's all good.

I was always gripped by the concept of the end of the world, like how would it happen if it turned out to be real. Would it be quick and painless, all quiet and then nothing? It's not the brightest of subjects, I agree, but I guess I think about things like this because it's a way of asking myself what matters to me.

People love to throw big words around like "love", "honour" and "loyalty" and a whole bunch of other words that supposedly mean something but, at the core of it, when push comes to shove, what are we about? What is truly important to us, that makes us get personal with something beyond ourselves? I don't know. I'm not a deep thinker by any stretch of the imagination, but they're fun questions to ask, don't you think?

It just feels that as we continue to progress with time, as we adapt to the way of life ahead, we are becoming less and less capable of identifying what is personal to us, or what we feel should be personal to others, and these things will differ with each and every one of us. We all have our own little twisted view of the world we see, and none of us is an angel, absolutely none of us.

Those guys packed up and left town a long time before any one of us was even a naughty thought in some intoxicated brain, and that's a shame because now, you can't tell saints apart from the sinners, and that's when they're staring you in the face, so what about when they're just a name on a computer screen?

I go on Facebook sometimes and am truly shocked at how much some people are willing to share about every aspect of their life online. Each to their own, I guess but I would imagine you'd like some things to be private, right? Yeah, I know it can only be seen by your friends but come on, out of over 700 Facebook friends, are you honestly going to sit there and tell me that you trust every single one of them?

Yes, by all means, feel free to leave a comment, seems like we spend a lot more time typing out conversations than actually having them. Pretty soon, you'll be able to download your mates the same way you do music.

It's brilliant, now you can become friends with someone without ever meeting them, buy them a present without any thought, give them a nickname, poke them in the morning and super-poke them at night and it don't matter, it doesn't cost you a thing.

Maybe I'm a control freak, or maybe technology scares me the same way the DVD player scares my grandmother. Actually, I am a complete control freak, and so are you, so there, I admitted it for you, so you don't have to, so chill, your secret's safe with me. But you so know you are, we are all.

I'm not saying we make our beds with hospital corners, but we all want what we want and we build our lives around getting it, and if that means getting tough about a certain aspect of your existence, you can bet every last one of your principles that you'll do what you have to.

If you don't agree, that would only mean you haven't found anything you want that bad yet. You'll stumble upon it one day, and when you do, when you wake up and realise how much you were willing to compromise, do you know what you're going to do?

Of course, you don't, neither do I. Maybe you'll think about the end of the world, or love or death or scene from a movie or a song, or maybe you'll just go online and say hello to a few friends. Who knows and who cares, you never took the time to think about it anyway.