Yesterday I had a great day in the yard — the weather here has turned glorious after a brutally hot summer with forest fires everywhere — and ended the day by calling friends and family.

None of whom picked up.

I started with my old friend (we go back to high school) Sheila. Her significant other’s voice answered in a profoundly annoying faux-French accent:

“Sheilah eez not here. She eez currently lost in zee Amazon Basin. Eef you weesh to leave a messahge, she weel return your call as soon as she eez found and rescued.”

So I left her a messahge:

“Theese eez zee Coalition of Amazonian Fire Ants. Eef you weesh to see Sheilah alive again, you must return theese phone call. Ask for Guillarme. Call alone. Otherwise she weel be returned to you in eety-beety pieces. Mixed with eety-beety beets of leaves and bark.”

By the time I got to my son in Chicago, my messages had become something like this:

“I am so DISAPPOINTED in you! Really! Here it is, a beautiful summer Saturday night, and you are NOT waiting by the phone for my call. I’m hurt and I’m angry. Call me.”

ANYWAY, I had much better luck this morning, and got to talk with everyone except Sheila, who is presumably still lost in the Amazon. She’d better get back soon, or I’ll have to cross her off my Christmas list.

During my conversation with my ex-wife, the conversation turned somewhat political. I made a comment about the “perfect storm” the United States is facing — peak oil, environmental catastrophe, and a pending collapse of the economic system — with a verbal shrug and the admission I had no idea which one would bring down the country. After all, any one of the three would be enough, but all three at the same time?

“But it’s gays and lesbians who are destroying the country,” she said.

Now you have to understand that my ex-wife and I remained very good friends after the divorce, since the thing that broke us up was an irreconcilable similarity. We both like women. In pretty much the same way. Though I’m more of a leg-man, I think. I guess I should say leg-person.

I thought about her comment for a while, and then I said, “You know, the problem with gays is that nobody knows what they’re good for.”

“How’s that?” she asked.

“Well, look at the illegal aliens. The Republicans went after them with a whip, so they did the smart thing and left the country. Then the farmers all started screaming, because all their cheap skilled migrant labor went away, and the prison work-gangs couldn’t handle the heat, and they couldn’t get any white unemployed Tea Party Republicans on food stamps to sign up for the jobs. So the Republicans had to quit being dicks about illegal aliens and just shut the f**k up. The only place still beating the illegal alien drum is Arizona, and that’s because they can’t grow anything there but purple sagebrush.”

“I see your point,” she said. “It’s like when Disney went after gays, and all their best writers and artists quit. Then Disney had to back down.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Just like that.”

“You know,” she said, “up here [Minneapolis] we have a ballot item this November to make gay marriage illegal forever in Minnesota. It’s really weird who has come out for and against the vote. Big companies are very much against it, because it’s going to trash their skilled workforce. And every sign on lawns, even up in the [Michelle] Bachmann suburbs, is against passing the law.”

“Well, yeah, who wants a sign on their lawn that says, ‘Hi, I’m a bigot!'”

“Yeah, but they’ll vote for it anyway and then slink away.” She sounded a little depressed.

“Hey, it’ll all work out,” I said. “Those folks are all pigging out on Chick-Fil-A and congratulating themselves on their holiness. Maybe they’ll eat too much fast food and all die of heart attacks.”

And right then is when I realized that this is exactly how the Rapture will come about.

None of this nonsense of being ripped through the soft-top of your Mustang convertible to meet with the rest of the Blessed (I always wondered somewhat grimly what would happen if the Rapture occurred while you were driving an Abrams tank — sounds a little uncomfortable, as a nurse might say.)

Nope, just a quick and easy heart attack, and next thing you know, you’re singing with the choir and getting your harp all tuned up for Jesus’ Return Engagement Tour party.

Which made me realize that there is a Greater Purpose to the whole Chick-Fil-A thing. It is one of the Signs. Yea, verily, it must reach every corner of the world with its message: eat more chikn. And love thy neighbors, unless they’re the same sex as you, in which case don’t get too chummy or you’ll go to Hell.

I think I know why Sheila is hiding in the Amazon Basin. The Chick-Fil-A franchise hasn’t made it there, yet.

Maybe I’ll join her.