Hell or Helium? A Crack in the World!

Be afraid. Be marginally afraid…

By Ed Goldman

For years we’ve been told that our core values are shrinking. But CNN is reporting it’s much worse than that: the earth’s core may be leaking! 

“Scientists have detected a surprising amount of a rare version of helium, called helium-3, in volcanic rocks on Canada’s Baffin Island, lending support to the theory that the noble gas is leaking from Earth’s core — and has been for millennia,” reports The Most Trusted Name in News (reported by CNN).

While the story doesn’t overtly state that all of us will be burned alive, at least before the Superbowl—in fact, about 20 paragraphs in, it quotes a scientist as saying, “Helium leaking from Earth’s core doesn’t affect our planet or have any negative implications”—it doesn’t rule out that when we all start breathing the helium being leaked we’ll sound like a convention of ducklings.  

Accordingly, since this is The Most Trusted Column at This Website, here’s a hasty 20-point Action Plan for you in response to the threat of either possible doom (if you didn’t read the entire article) or helium-induced cacophonous quacking:

1. Pay only the minimums on your credit card bills.
2. Limit your membership renewals of Netflix, AARP, newspapers, magazines and weekly organic vegetable box clubs to six months.
3. Suggest to your Book Club friends that you meet more frequently but review only pamphlets for a while.
4. If you’ve donated money to eponymous scholarships or arena naming rights, see if you can get some of it refunded in case future scholarship recipients or sports fans are incinerated before your current commitment needs to be refreshed.

5. Tell Amazon it’ll need to speed up its same-day delivery.
6. Stop flossing immediately.
7. Pull all the funds out of your Roth-IRAs, Keough and Crypto accounts. —Well, never mind about that last one. It’ll self-destruct without any if your help.
8. Stop thinking about how much money you’d have saved on your electric bills over 20 years by having gone solar.

9. Cancel your kids’, grandkids’ or trophy wife’s college savings account. Even if they make it to the first semester, the likelihood of their earning four-year degrees is just wishful thinking. Consider, instead, regaling them with the merits of obtaining a two-year community college degree in nursing or a five-month certificate in interior design.
10. Take advantage of every offer to purchase an RV, a bedroom set or a time-share offering a “no-money-down” and “no-payments-for-12-months” deal.
11. Forget about learning a new language when you retire.
12. Forget about retiring.

13. If you’re already retired, see #7 above.
14. Learn everything you can about helium inhalation. Yes, it can make you sound like a duckling but can it also make you airborne? If it can, research how far you could float from a day’s worth of helium in your system. (How high, too, in case heights frighten you.)
15. Forget about eating apples, taking vitamins or swallowing your Lipitor pills on schedule. 
16. By all means, begin smoking filterless cigarettes, drinking 10-grain alcohol and starting the day with a bowlful of opioids. (Don’t pour half-and-half over them in case you’re watching your weight—though why should you?)