"it's 6-6-06," the old lady said to me abruptly and in a strangely confident way, "are you scared?" what? oh, right...mark of the beast and so on and so forth...no, and i wouldn't be scared if i spilled salt either. infact, you sound like a crazy person right now. "i'm, uh...i'm still standing," i reply. "well, i'm not scared," she declares before revealing the source of her confidence, "because i know where i'm going when he comes back." there is -to me what feels like- an ackward pause. i'm moving out of the bible belt in less than two months, and it's not coming soon enough. "i heard a report saying that the mark of the beast was actually mis-translasted -it's something like 676 or 696, so really people should be worried about tomarow or friday" i say, i don't know why. "you hear that on the davinci code movie or somethin'," she says more than asks. "npr." she doesn't know what that means, and i'm not sure why i'm still standing there. i have places i could be. it's left at that. the people who burned folks at the steak for saying the earth is not the center of the universe and for turning thy neighbors into toads are circleing the wagons. me, i'm afraid of fire...i'm doing what they tell me...i'm moving to france.