Does anyone have the time?

Last week the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists pulled the second hand of the Doomsday Clock back one minute.

Dang me.

It's a symbolic clock created in 1947 by scientists at the University of Chicago. It signifies how close the scientists think we intelligent people of Earth are to blowing each other to smithereens because we can't get along. Over the years the second hand has been pulled slightly back and pushed slightly forward, depending on how world leaders are feeling about each other. After the change last week the clock now rests at six minutes to midnight, with midnight being the zero hour.

The scientists moved the time back one minute because they're feeling particularly optimistic right now about everyone wising up over the horrors of nuclear weapons and climate changes. The move is purportedly good, because during intense global conflicts in the past the second hand has been jiggered to as close as one minute to midnight.

Double dang me.

Not to sound nihilistic, but those scientists aren't doing me any favors. Ever since I got married I've been counting on the clock to get me out of doing stuff.

Here's how it works: It's Thursday, and I have failed to do the chores my brown-eyed girl asked me to finish Monday. She knows this because dirty dishes are piled practically to the ceiling and there's the distinctive aroma of cat doo circulating from the uncleaned litter boxes. She walks up as I'm splayed across the couch, my stockinged feet dangling over one end, my chubby face expressing bliss at the other as I chomp chocolate.

"What's the deal?" she asks, hands on hips.

"Huh?" I answer, spraying chocolate bits all over her nice, white shirt.

"My chores are done. What about yours?" she says. "The smell in here could kill a yak."

"Doomsday Clock," I say.

"Not this again."

"The second hand is close," I warn her. "It's just a matter of time before it strikes twelve and someone drops the big one on us and poof! we're dust in the wind. Under the circumstances I say we forget about our thankless chores and meaningless jobs and concentrate on squeezing every bit of joy out of life while we still can."

Now, believe it or not, this actually worked the first couple of times I tried it. We were still freshly married and the bloom wasn't nearly off the rose yet, at least not on my side, although her petals were looking a might scruffy. She wanted me to hang curtains, which, if there's one thing I'd rather hang precariously by one toe from a weak strand of spaghetti than do, that would be it. So I flipped through my Excuses Rolodex to find one I hadn't already worked to death, and somewhere between "Dog Bite" and "Dry Heaves" I found the clock. We were still testing each other's limits so I went for broke, even welling up with tears as I explained how the curtains could wait while we spent every waking minute together in fear of that evil second hand.

These days she'll ask me to take out the garbage and I'll point to our wall clock and shake my head grimly, even though it shows only four-thirty, and that huge vein in her neck will start throbbing and I'll know not to push it. Just like I should know now.

"There are six minutes left until Doomsday on that clock," she says. "If you start now, you can get the litter boxes cleaned and still have enough time to get back on my good side before we're annihilated."

"Yeah, but it seems so pointless," I persist. "Going through all that stinky trouble when, in the end, the second hand is going to strike and we're all just going to be toast, anyway."

"Let me tell you something," she says while grabbing my ankles and pulling me to the floor. "The only Doomsday you need to worry about is the one that's going to hit you a lot harder and sooner if you don't do the dang dishes and clean the dang litter boxes right now."

Triple dang me.