It figures.

The “it” in this case being our home planet’s inner core. If you didn’t know it had an inner core (like a golf ball!), you’re certainly not alone. But never mind that.

Turns out, Earth’s inner core “may have paused and could even go into reverse” according to dozens of news outlets citing an international team of nerdy bug-eyed Chinese scientists.

That means while Earth’s surface, it’s skin, if you will, goes whatever way it goes, say left to right, maybe, Earth’s inner core, which is made up of things inner cores are made up of (rubber bands!), has decided to take a break and might even decide to go in the other direction.

Sounds about right, given the times we live in. Next thing you know we’ll find out what I’ve always suspected. Namely, people who like bro country are from another planet and eat hamsters for lunch.

Anyhow, the stories I read Wednesday morning say this thing is really nothing to get worked up about, since Earth’s inner core tends to do something like this from time to time, say every 60 or 70 years or so. They think. But then, you can never be too sure with science. That’s what makes it fun.

Anyway, I will reserve judgment on whether or not I should be alarmed, since it seems to me that if my inner core stopped and started going backwards I should probably get it checked out. I might need my tires rotated.

But a balky inner core helps explain why the world nowadays seems overly populated with nuts and charlatans and hipsters and all these people with beards. The inner core is messing around with our biorhythms on a global scale.

Closer to home, it may explain why this part of Georgia is rapidly turning into a combination of Detroit and Los Angeles and Pittsburgh and Florida, with a lot of Ohio and New Jersey thrown in for good measure.

And so while Bryan County and its sidekicks are busy becoming the electric vehicle manufacturing capitol of the U.S. and maybe the world – which, lest we forget, has an inner core that is out doing its own thing – the rest of the Coastal Empire is turning into warehouse central for the Georgia Ports Athletic Association.

I know this because I used to live in a rural area. Life was good. We had cows across the street and a farmer out back, and I could chase lightning bugs naked in my front yard in the evening if I wanted to because my nearest neighbors were down the road chasing lightning bugs naked in their front yards.

But then developers and industrial authorities, who never met an acre they didn’t want to turn into something that will turn loose even more traffic on area roads, fixed that.

Now it’s all part of some vast zoning nightmare, where an increasing number of residential neighborhoods are punctuated hither and yon by an increasing number of industrial parks filling up with giant cube shaped warehouses. There are probably a half dozen such conglomerations within a two-three mile radius from my front yard, and more are on the way every half hour. Trees, it has been said, don’t stand a chance anymore.

By the way, I am a fan of the idea of electric vehicles and a cleaner planet. And I do get the need for warehouses. On their own they’re fairly innocuous and probably have some stuff my wife needs stacked on pallets somewhere inside their cavernous depths.

I wouldn’t know because I’m too dumb to drive a forklift and nobody will let me drive a semi for fear I’ll get wound up and decide to flatten a couple of strip malls. I’d probably throw in a couple of those cheesy subdivision entrance signs, too, before the cops got me.

But never mind that, because therein lies the rub in our search for bigger and better.

Just as it’s true anywhere you have subdivisions and strip malls you’re going to have lots of cars and pickups and the occasional maniac on a moped or four-wheeler, anywhere you have warehouses you’re going to have trucks.

Lots of trucks. Hundreds. Thousands. Billions.

Naturally, some get stuck in ditches after drivers looking for shortcuts try to take turns on roads not built for tractor-trailers. And some wind up broke down on the side of the road or run out of gas in the turn lane. Some get stole at truck stops or parking lots.

But most trucks get to where they’re going, then get out and are on their way, the Knights of the Highway delivering the retail goods of America the way God, Henry Ford and Ronald Reagan intended. Only to be replaced by another truck, and another and another. Day after day, year after year.

Still. It’s probably better than living in Pooler.