The sound wave tears through first, shredding my eardrums in a white-hot explosion of pain, leaving only a dial tone. The remains of Mount Rainier advance on Puyallup at 40 miles an hour, in the black wall-like form of a thousand-degree pyroclastic flow of mud, ash and pumice. The P-wave yanks the ground from under my feet. Tornadoes roam through Yelm and Federal Way like angry kaiju, imploding those cities along vivid mile-wide gashes. Tsunamis race toward the coasts after massive disruptions along the Ring of Fire. The very sky rips asunder like an old pair of pants, disgorging the feathered serpent deity Quetzalcoatl. That mighty dragon king unfurls his vast, Archaeopteryx wings and descends upon the ruins of a once-great civilization. Yet I clutch the earth like mad Nebuchadnezzar, howling in dismay at not being able to buy a few lousy ounces of foie gras, I mean seriously!

With all due respect to the pre-Columbian Maya, I think I know a little something about the End of the World. I wrote a novel called Lightfall, in which an unknown higher power hits Ctl-Alt-Delete on the cosmos. I prepared by reading thousands of pages of doomsday and Rapture scenarios. I interviewed dozens of people, from Baptist ministers to survivalist "preppers," and invented a whole town, "Sugar Roses, Oklahoma," solely for the purpose of demolishing it. Lightfall was released on a Friday the 13th in 2009; my friends and I celebrated by catching an opening-night screening of 2012, in which John Cusack can save neither Western civilization nor his own box office prospects.

We here at the Weekly Volcano have mourned the earth's impending demise throughout its final year, yet somehow this ritual felt incomplete without a wake. Ragnarok deserved one final, defiant exclamation point. We resolved to knock items off our respective bucket lists before meeting our collective Maker. Publisher Ron Swarner, Reverend scribe Adam McKinney, and I brainstormed a blowout so intense it'd give Lindsay Lohan the sweats.

Twilight

What's on your bucket list? I know most mature people, meaning those who aren't writers, hope to swim with dolphins or circumnavigate the Via Dolorosa before joining the choir invisible. As for me, in the immortal words of Lex Luthor, "Thank goodness, my needs are small." I just want to catch up on all those awesome amoralities I somehow responsibly failed to commit during my 20s and 30s. I've never successfully ingested a hallucinogenic. I've never had a threeway with Brazilian supermodels. I've never vandalized the Vatican or hid Latin incantations in a theater review. For some unfathomable reason, the Swarners declined to admit these feats of depravity into the pages of this journal, so I was obliged to keep our fiesta "barely legal." I resolved to come up with morally questionable party activities that somehow skated past the jot and tittle of the law.

My first idea was salvia divinorum. We've discussed salvia, aka Sally D, in the pages of this journal before. It remains legal but, for many, packs the pharmacological wallop of psilocybin in a 30-second trip. Sadly, however, I knew from previous experience that the only thing salvia makes me is $40 poorer. Next I thought about bringing exactly one ounce of pot, which is, as you may have heard in passing, ostensibly legal in Washington state. Trouble is, while it's legal to possess an ounce or less for personal use, it isn't legal (yet) to sell or buy it sans medical permit. I lack such a card, and it didn't seem likely that a baggie of marijuana would suddenly pop into my hand from outer space.

But wait! There is a singular substance, one elusive ambrosia, fully legal in our neck of the woods but even more controversial than Mary Jane or salvia. I'm referring to that culinary Grail known as foie gras, French for "fatty liver." Pronounced "fwah grah," it's the result of subjecting a duck or goose to an Adam Richman-worthy mountain-of-corn diet. The bird develops a liver jam-packed with rich, buttery triglycerides. By all accounts, it's mind-blowingly delicious. It's also vegan Auschwitz, which is why the good folks at PETA had it banned in California. Until recently, foie gras wasn't difficult to find in the South Sound. It was featured, for example, on the menus of Dockside Bistro and Cicada in Olympia. Ye gods, I should've bought it then and hoarded it like anti-union Twinkies.

Now foie gras shopping feels like trawling BackPage.com for erotic massage. When I asked for foie in restaurants, waitrons glared at me as if they were mobsters who suspected me of wearing a wire. I asked a server at Dockside Bistro if she had any foie gras in the fridge I could buy. "Not that I could sell you," she snapped, sniffing indignantly. "It's illegal." No, it isn't! Not here, anyway; and even in California, a few Bay Area chefs ignore the ban, which California admits it has no serious notion of enforcing. Brix 25° in Gig Harbor just hosted a banquet of foie gras last month.

Y'know what? Good for Brix 25°! I raised poultry as a misguided teen, so let me tell you: an overdose of corn is the poultry equivalent of a day at the Magic Kingdom. Ducks and geese feel about corn the way 20-something Lou Reed felt about heroin. We're going to kill the poor bastards anyway, so why not let them die the exact way they would've chosen?

I've been assured foie gras is on Marrow Kitchen + Bar's winter menu, which rolls out in February. Unfortunately, the South Sound will be an ashy devastation by then, so no dice. Instead, I made plans for a death row meal of nyotaimori, the Japanese party trick in which sushi is served on the body of a nude or nearly nude woman. Volcano writer Nikki McCoy expressed interest in embodying such a platter. I believed she was kidding, but the joke went on so long it generated false hopes. Until 8:42 p.m. the night of the party, there was still the distinct possibility we'd be enjoying hamachi warmed by Ms. McCoy's adjacent heartbeat. I know the exact time, because it was stamped on the email I received immediately after dropping $50 on sushi at TWOKOI: Ms. McCoy and her torso would be unable to attend.

MARROW KITCHEN + BAR:  It serves a delicious beef heart salad with pickled figs and celeriac.

Nightfall

We began the night at Marrow, where Joann Varnell, Pappi Swarner, my better half Amanda and I feasted on exotic proteins. I chose the geoduck sous vide and a fiery bison hot dog. Amanda ate a pork belly slider, Ron had scallops and a salad of pickled figs and beef heart, and Joann indulged in fried cheese. Everything was delicious. (I'd have gone with the oxtail and bone marrow en croute, easily one of the tastiest dishes in Tacoma, but I wanted to try something new.) The party then moved to its final, most decadent phase.

Many thanks for the gracious hospitality of Cheri Rae, who gave us free range of her swanky B&B at 915 S. 8th St. in Tacoma. The place is gor...geous. I mean it. Rev. Adam arrived with four estrogen-American friends, thus sparing Amanda the indignity of being the only female attendee at an End-of-the-World sausage-fest. Adam commenced to mixing a pitcher of "Faux Loco" from a "Recipe for Disaster" he discovered online. After two glasses, my eyes developed an interest in exploring other skulls. I started jabbering like mid-career Robin Williams. There's a reason kids died on this stuff. It's like Kool-Aid for tweakers.

It was about this time a solution to the nyotaimori problem presented itself. By joyous coincidence, the lobby of Cheri Rae's B&B includes a statue of a reclining mermaid I'll call Becky. Becky, in the manner of her species, is unabashedly shirtless. (This makes sense, as Ms. Rae's house doubles as a massage therapy office.) We bathed her, draped a baran leaf over her youthful appurtenances, and deployed $50 worth of sushi thereon - sushi Adam, Ron and I devoured in less than three minutes flat.

The night wore on. We lucky eight imbibed the rest of Rev. Adam's Faux Loco, plus 750ml of The Glenlivet 12-year single malt. At some point we lost Ron. I don't mean he died, I mean we just lost him. I daresay a fine Apocalypse Eve was had by all.

The Morning After

Here's the thing about Armageddons: they come and go. Dec. 20 is simply the last day of the 13th b'ak'tun, or cycle, of the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar, and it will be followed immediately by the 14th. The Maya never viewed such transitions as cosmic reboots, nor did they fear the advent of Quetzalcoatl. Their prophecies were far less catastrophic, in fact, than those of Jeane Dixon, who predicted a planetary alignment would off the world in 1962; Charles Manson, who foretold a global race riot in 1969; Hal Lindsey, who credited Soviet nuclear strikes by 1990; Nancy Lieder, who warned of "Planet X" in 2003; Pat Robertson, who expected to be Raptured in 2007; or Harold Camping, who's been wrong about six different End Times. As you read this, a supervolcano slumbers under Yellowstone National Park, a 900-foot-wide asteroid called 99942 Apophis swings around on a crash course, and lethal viruses lurk in the Amazon, hankering to melt your guts into marinara sauce. Seasons don't fear the Reaper; neither should you. Some of us partied like it was 1999 back in 1999, too, till Y2K landed with a deafening meh.

Live a little. Drink good scotch. Fall in love. Have some sushi, especially if it comes on a 34B plate. You have all the time in the world, Gentle Reader - at least till you croak, or the sun expands into a red giant around Five Billion A.D., whichever comes first.