BUFFALO BILL RIDES AGAIN. AND AGAIN. AND AGAIN.

Yisrayl Hawkins, formerly "Buffalo Bill" Hawkins, might have had better luck if he'd remained a drunken Texas cop. His batting average for doomsday predictions is pretty low.

Trouble is, he kept having these pesky dreams. It wasn't until after he was fired for having alchohol in his patrol car that Hawkins realized something: When cops named "Buffalo Bill" have dreams, it's really God speaking to them. (Well, okay. Not God. Yahweh.) And when Yahweh speaks, doomsday prophets listen.

So there he was, unemployed and with extra time on his hands. Yahweh saw this and suggested Bill take up a hobby, so he did. He started a collection of followers. In 1975 he and his brother, Jacob, founded the (now defunct) House of Yahweh Odessa¹. He and Jacob had a falling out over how one addresses God, and in 1980, Bill moved on to found the House of Yahweh Abeline². A franchise was born.

A couple of years later, he changed his first name legally to Yisrayl. Changing your name must be one of those extra 603 Commandments he writes about, since hundreds of his followers have had their last names changed to Hawkins³.

To his credit, Buffalo Bill came up with a neat little mascot that puts Geico to shame: The Nuclear Baby. Superimposed over a glowing mushroom cloud, the evil Nukie holds a baby bottle in his left hand and an ICBM in his right.⁴ Even with such an appealing image, though, I'm not quite ready to join.

You get your pick on this one. Obviously, if Yahweh is speaking to Bill, Bill needs a hearing aid. He's made at least 4 different doomsday predictions. We're anxiously awaiting more.