Can you hear it? You have to listen very carefully, but it's there. That faint buzzing noise you can't quite hear is the humming of a plague of locusts that will accompany the end of days. The apocalypse is upon us. Repent now. Or sin your ass off, whichever suits your fancy.

How do I know this, you ask? Have I seen the number of the beast? Encountered the scroll with seven seals? Run across the Antichrist? (Well, there is George W., but that's another story entirely...)

No, it was none of those. It was something much more insidious, more unbelievable than all of those. When I came home this evening I found that the family room had been straightened up and my older daughter, or rather, the alien who is now inhabiting my daughter's body, was *washing the dishes* and NO ONE HAD SCREAMED AT HER MULTIPLE TIMES TO DO THIS! Scary, huh? Then she proceeded to tell me that she did it because - brace yourself - she thought I might like coming home to a clean house. I must have looked at her as if she was speaking in tongues. And, even more frightening, it does not appear as if she wants something from me. I just had to shake my head in complete and utter disbelief.

Maybe that noise is actually the four horsemen of the apocalypse...