A Covenant with the Apocalypse

First thing every morning I find myself checking Americas financial and emotional pulse on an almost daily basis...it gives me a sense of longing, for all that I am, and can ever be, is a bystander to this great financial and social engine.
The first individual I always check is a girl who lives in Brooklyn...I'll call her Lisa...she is the powerless flotsam and jetsom of the American whirlpool, the first defenceless level of human pain for all that happens financially, and the one they take aim at when something foes wrong. She is gifted, immensely so, but doesn't always realise it. She is heart stoppingly beautiful, in a Carrie Fisher sort of way, with a vulnerability and honesty that is brutal, and worn on her sleeve like a badge. She is world famous...must be, I know about her, and I live on the other side of the planet...although she thinks that she is anonymous and insignificant. She is the person who is laid off from her job with no notice, which I as an employer find appalling, and one of the great travesties of the American system. Are the controllers of the peoples wellbeing so stupid that they cannot forsee that you don't save a company by firing a $13 hour worker. These jackals aside, I find it fascinating, and almost addictive, to vicariously watch her life unfold.
The second person I check upon is a 78 year old man who lives in Omaha, Nebraska.He is a savant, a mathematical genius, a man who is driven to a level of perfection that has rarely been attained by anyone in this worlds history. I worked it out once that he has made 95 cents every second, of every minute, of every hour..ya de ya, since Jesus was born. With this last crisis it is prolly down to a paltry 45 cents, but I'm sure that he will recover. He owns a company called Berkshire Hathaway, and it is one of my aims to take advantage of this world financial crisis and own just one of his companies shares...so that one day I can attend his companies Annual general meeting, and of course to meet him. The only problem is that the cost of one of his shares, despite being discountedby 40%, would still buy a medium size house where I live, and that always creates some conflict.
The third person I visit is a tall skinny fellow named David Letterman, who last thing at night, tells me what is happening in New York city...where, if I didn't live here, then I would try to live there...
My fourth person is Barrack Obama, although I don't visit him. A man whose soaring oratory, and gentle demeanour, seems to come from an honesty of 'self' that we should all aspire to...and whose fulfillment of promise fills me with such pride for the people of America who did the right thing by electing him. I didn't know however, before I tried to do it, that a foreigner cannot contribute to an American politicians campaign fund.
Meanwhile I continue to focus on this accursed Ironman, an event which before it has even started has stolen 10lbs from my midriff...and given me a life so narrow it feels as if I am living in an infomercial. I continue to pare my life into slivers, shaving the peripheries, and do nothing that doesn't contribute to progress towards this race. I loathe being this disciplined, it hurts, and it savages my Anglo Saxon Protestant work ethic, as I suffer the anxieties of not being a whole person. I have now six weeks to go before I fulfill my side of the covenant that I have entered into...I suspect that it will be a covenent with the apocalypse.