We’re All Going to Die

All over Philly this morning, people are thinking: maybe that Gore fella really is onto something!

Authorities report that a “fish kill” — shorthand for a flotilla of snaggle-toothed, three-headed fish, floating belly-up — has been found in the water that winds its way through the city.

The Health Department advises us “not to swim, fish or boat” in the Schuylkill River, or in the Wissahickon Crick (which practically flows through my backyard) because of high levels of toxicity. “Just don’t touch the water” is how one official summed it up on WHYY.

We’re assured, however, that our drinking and bathing water is safe, even though the city thought it prudent to shut off forty percent of the city’s water supply. Just a precautionary measure. Everything is fine.

Coming off my prescient prediction that Argentina would win the World Cup — which the team quickly backed up with an utterly convincing 6-0 dismantling of Serbia this morning — I’ve begun to think that I may possess Nostradamus-like qualities.

And so, here is another startling prediction: you won’t have Philly to kick around much longer, America.

Screw the new smoking ban — might as well smoke ‘em if you’ve got ‘em. The end is nigh!

Somewhere — perhaps on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. — a Dallas Cowboys fan is laughing.

Update: Well, they lifted the ban for the river, at least, but it remains in effect for Wissahickon Creek. They still don’t know what contaminant killed the fish, but whatever it was, it killed about 1,000 of them:

[Regional Manager of the State Fish and Boat Commission Jeff] Bridi said the fish that were alive along this stretch of the river “were displaying an avoidance type of behavior. Some were literally jumping out of the water, indicating that something was irritating them.”

Lovely.