A few issues back, I ranted about the unprecedented proliferation of reality shows flooding (no pun) the airwaves. America seemed more concerned with the travails of TV survivors pitted against contrived tests of physical challenge and competition than with the soldiers and hostages dying daily in Iraq. Now, when we consider the catastrophic acts of nature that have occurred over the past several months, it’s hard not to lift one’s thoughts to a Divine Being. This Divine One must have decided that He/She is "mad as hell, and...not going to take this anymore!"

On December 26, the Sunday of a weekend set aside for spirituality, family, and celebration, an earthquake struck west of Sumatra, forcing the seabed upward 10 meters and creating a giant surge that crashed onto the coasts surrounding the Indian Ocean. In the span of 15 minutes, it is estimated that 283,000 people in 11 countries, including Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, and India, were literally swept away — by a monstrous tsunami. The sheer number of lives washed away, without a trace, is difficult to fathom. The psychological and economical repercussions will be felt for generations.

On our own West Coast, where it seems to have rained for 40 days and 40 nights, there have been deadly mudslides in Ventura County and the Hollywood Hills. In Park City, Utah, an avalanche measuring 300-feet high and 15-feet wide buried and suffocated vacationing skiers. And an extreme storm system traveling across Nevada, Arizona, and Utah brought rain, flood waters, and collapsed river banks, and led to the evacuation and displacement of thousands of families. The month of January was a series of nonstop floods, blizzards, and ice storms.

In times of crisis, apocalyptic soothsayers always unearth the predictions of the 16th-century French prophet Nostradamus. Published in 1566, these quatrains (four-line poems) for the Third Millenium seem to have accurately predicted the reign of Napoleon, the rise of Hitler, World War II, the death of JFK, nuclear submarines, and missile warfare. There is ample mention during the period of 2000-2050 of earthquakes, global flooding, tidal waves, famine, pestilence, Euro-Arab conflict, global warming, even a polar shift. If you read these prophesies and the headlines, there’s a lot to obsess about. Remember, researchers believe that it was a catastrophic act of nature that killed the dinosaurs. Maybe we are the next dinosaurs, soon to become extinct.

A recent post-tsunami summit in Thailand of representatives of 57 countries and agencies resolved to expand the network of tidal gauges and seismic sensors that have been in place in the Pacific Ocean for decades. Almost simultaneously, Sen. Joseph Lieberman introduced a bill in the U.S. Senate which would pledge $30M in U.S. aid toward the creation of a global tsunami detection and early-warning system in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans.

Considering the vast need for funding for this safety system and for ongoing social services in Asia, it’s hard to comprehend that NASA was given the green light to launch a most ill-timed mission, Deep Impact, just 17 days after the tsunami hit. A space craft is now on a programmed path to collide with Comet Temple 1 at 23,000 mph on July 4, 2005, creating an explosion equal to four and a half tons of TNT and carving out a crater the size of a football stadium from the 9-by-3-mile icy mass, which should reveal secrets of the origin of the Solar System. NASA scientists promise that the impact will hardly change the comet’s orbit around the sun, nor put it on a collision course with Earth.

Hmmm… we can’t help but remember the 1998 disaster film titled Deep Impact, in which astronauts tried to save the Earth from an approaching comet by blowing it up; unfortunately, the explosion split the comet, with one half crashing into the Atlantic Ocean, creating...a massive tsunami on the East Coast.

Here we go, tempting fate...again! With natural disasters and terrorist acts happening all around us, we are voluntarily flirting with obliteration through cosmic demolition. Sounds like lemmings to me. Surely the mission’s $330M price tag could have been better spent if directed toward the victims of the tsunami, or toward the financing of the expanded early-warning system.

Somewhere, there is a reality show producer lamenting the fact that he didn’t have a Survivor cast on the beach at Banda Aceh, Thailand, when the tsunami struck. Disasters make good TV. Period. And so will this Independence Day comet busting. Acts of nature are the ultimate reality shows. We’re all living these episodes, and we can’t turn them off. Mend our ways, we’re being told, if we want a change in the programming. Maybe the Divine One has just had enough of our reckless attempts to create contrived weekly programs of survival on primetime TV. Maybe the Almighty is pointing out the ineffectiveness of our war games with mere guns and explosives in the Middle East. Or maybe a Higher Power is just trying to remind us of the fragility of life — of the tenuous hold we have on this planet.

From where else could this mass destruction come? Maybe we should blame the usual suspects… à la Martha Stewart, Bernie Kerik, or Judith Miller? Or, perhaps we should be searching in Iraq AGAIN, but this time, for WMNDs—Weapons of Mass Natural Destruction.

The Almighty, the executive producer of this production on Earth, is not pleased with our performance. The message is clear. We’re fired!