The Apocalypse Will Not Be Televised

 

So, end of the world.

Again.

Seems pretty quiet here in Alaska, apocalypse day and all.

Anybody know what time this thing starts? The invitation just says 12/21/12.

Can we do it before 5PM Alaska Time? I’ve got a meeting at two and if it’s all the same to everybody I often fantasize about the world ending when I have to sit through a bunch of Power Point slides. If we wait until five, I’ll probably be comatose and miss the whole damned thing.

And seriously, I’d really, really hate to sleep through the destruction of the earth.

Again.

How many times is this now? How many times have we managed to survive the end of the world? The Apocalypse? The Rapture? The End of Days?

I don’t want to sound like I’m bragging or anything, but I figure I’ve managed make it through Armageddon at least fifty times by now. At first I thought surviving the end of the world made me seem like a real badass, but it turns out that pretty much everybody else survived too, so it’s really not that big of deal.

“I guarantee you by the end of 1982 there is going to be a judgment on the world!”

That was Pat Robertson in 1980. Half the 700 Club wet themselves on the spot. Pat Robertson guaranteed us! End of 1982! Judgment Day! Judgment Day!

Of course, Pat was right. After all, the world’s bestest Christian wouldn’t bullshit us, right? Of course the world ended in 1982. You remember it, don’t you? Giant flaming Jesus spitting fire and thunderbolts, the earth cracking open, zombies, screaming babies falling from the sky like fat balloons full of chunky spaghetti sauce and exploding the sidewalks. Also Nazis.

I missed it. I had to work that day and by the time I got home, showered, and changed into my Rapture Duds, the whole thing was pretty much over.

1982 was a big year for apocalypses, the world actually ended three different times. Which was about average for that decade as it turns out, the world ended fifteen times during the 80’s – of course, I was living in Europe then and had to watch the various apocalypses via time delayed TV repeats on A-Farts (The Armed Forces Radio and Television System).  The 90’s kicked off with Elizabeth Clare Prophet’s nuclear war, twelve years of darkness, followed by, you guessed it, the end of the world. A year later the world ended again when Louis Farrakhan declared the First Gulf War to be the actual War of Armageddon, which as you know is the final war, followed by, yep, the end of the world.  In fact, the world ended something like twenty five times during the 90’s. For a while there it was ending once a week, which, to be truthful, started to get a little tedious. And of course, who could forget when Y2K struck and all the lights went out and robot cannibal zombies roamed the land thirsting for human brain tissue – or maybe that was the turn of the century New Years revelers in Times Square, it was kind of hard to tell the difference. Jerry Falwell and Ed Dobson welcomed Jesus’ return, twice, at the turn of the century. The End Times came and went and really who could forget the sight of all those saved souls suddenly flying naked up into the sky just like it says in the Bible:  and the faithful men floated serenely toward Heaven with their willies flapping in the holy breeze, and the lord smiled for the joke was upon them.  The first decade of the new century saw the world end fourteen more times. Nancy Leider’s alien brain implant warned us of a pending pole shift and impact by planet Nibiru in 2003 while in 2007 Pat Robertson once again stood next to angry bearded thunderbolt tossing Jesus and pointed out all the people he didn’t like. I had my first professional digital camera that year and got some really nice shots of Jesus smiting the sinners, to which I added some Lutz and uploaded to the LOLcats site. Good times, good times.  The second decade kicked off with Harold Camping and the jerky dance of the happy rapture monkeys, which was followed by the world being destroyed no less than four more times before we made it to 2012.

And here we are, finally, at the Mayan Apocalypse.

A week before Christmas and they schedule the End of the World?  Seriously? On a Friday? Who schedules the end of the world on a Friday? Monday, sure, fine, whatever, nobody would care, but Friday? WTF? And it’s the Holiday Season, Goddamnit. Cookies and fudge and presents and Christmas ham.  Two four day weekends back to back. And this is when we decide to end the world? Who ends the world in December? Do it on April 15^th, and people would be thanking you, Americans anyway.  But now?

Whose dipshit idea was this anyway?

Probably the same pointy haired dickhead who schedules a two hour meeting at three-thirty on a Friday afternoon before a big weekend. 

What’s that you say?

The who?

It was the Mayans who scheduled this? Two thousand years ago? 

Oh, well, the Mayans. Sure. The Mayans. Well then, I guess that makes it ok. The Mayans. Because really, the Mayans.  A pre-Columbian Mesoamerican Paleolithic civilization living in the jungles of Central America, those Mayans.

We don’t believe the science and the scientists and the terabytes of data and the evidence of our own eyes when it comes to climate change, but some big rocks buried a Central American jungle by Stone Age people who have been dead for a thousand years, yeah, for that we’re going to sell all of our worldly goods and buy a one way ticket to the Alien Launch Pad on top of a mountain in France to await the coming of Jesus.

Right. The Mayans. Sure. 

Not only that, but a whole bunch of people are actually looking forward to it, looking forward to the supposed end of the world. 

Who does that?

These people, the doomsayers, the preppers and the prayers, will spend fortunes on guns and bunkers and crates of MREs (and seriously here, if I have to live on MREs again, I’ll end the world myself. But I digress) but they won’t lift a finger to help save the world or prevent the collapse of civilization.

And I’m not just talking about the silly New Age goofs who are even now standing naked and forlorn on top of a pile of rocks somewhere in the Yucatan jungle clutching their magic crystals with The Age of Aquarius playing on their iPods and staring hopefully at the sky, but supposedly normal people too. People like Pat Robertson and all the TV Christians who daily pray for The Rapture and the End of Days so that they can fly away to some cosmic orgy instead of actually working to make this world, this one right here, a better place.

They could help make this world a paradise, but for them it’s not Heaven if all the rest of us get to share it with them. 

I don’t understand these people, I really don’t.

 

I just can’t wrap my head around the absolutely degree of selfish assholery it takes to buy into this nonsense.

 

So far, this apocalypse is starting out pretty much like all the other ones I’ve been to. 

I admit that I was hoping for something more, I mean, come on. In addition to Jesus, the usual Running of the Damned Souls, and a potluck at the end of time, we’re getting hit by the giant planet Nibiru, and an asteroid named Eros, and a comet. The earth’s axis of rotation is due to reverse and there’s going to be a magnetic pole flip. We’ll have some big earthquakes accompanied by giant waves and a Justin Bieber concert. An alien invasion is scheduled for later this evening. And for the finale, the sun is going supernova.

It seems a little much, doesn’t it? Especially in this economy.

And you really have to wonder what they’re going to do next year to top it. I mean, come on, what beats a supernova?

Jesus riding a robot cannibal T-Rex towing a black hole?

Which, you know, on second thought, ain’t a half bad idea.

I’ll be in the bunker with Shopkat if you need me.