A Silver Lining

There's always tomorrow...

DOH!

There's coming out -- or it's just out -- a movie about the pending "end of days", prophesized to be coming on or about December 21, 2012. The "transformative events" to the more hopeful, and the "end of days" to the more liberal *wink*, is anticipated on or about that date, thanks to the existence of the Mesoamerican Long Count Calendar, or Mayan calendar, that analysts, scholars, Yoda and others have long analyzed and argued over, as being the finale for life as we might know it on this h'yar orb.

Granted, a growing number of voices are mocking and dismissing the alarmists who run about in chicken suits, holding "the End is Near!" signs at football games, collapsed bridges and plumber conventions. Scientists roundly denounce the alleged prophecy from the aforementioned calendar as "pseudoscience".

How many of them tossed their credibility away by signing onto AlGore's human-caused climate change fraud, is not revealed.

But not only scientists are mocking the 2012 Mayan calendar prophesy; so are researchers of Mayanist history and culture. More on that later.

In a very brief, imprecise precis, the Mayan calendar was designed to run, more or less, 5, 125 years. As best can be determined, that calendar began around 3114 BC, and is therefore slated to turn it's last page on or about December 21, 2012. At which time -- and here you can pick from your personal choice of twits, dorks and/or flakes -- the world will experience a "transformative era", whatever that means. Or, it will experience an "end of days" apocalypse.

For some, that could mean something as traumatic as the cancellation of any future seasons of American Idol. But I digress.

There's a bunch of technological, astronomical and spiritual references to various theories which run the gamut from "galactic alignment" and "timewave zero and the I Ching", to things like "geomagnetic reversal", a collision with the planet Nibiru, blackhole alignment, or possibly even the return of discoesque polyester leisure suits.

Anyway you look at it, like the build-up ahead of Y2K and before the kind of letdown that Geraldo's TV flop on the opening of Al Capone's vaults was, it won't be long before we know if the ancient Mayans were prescient, or just among the first with a sense of humor and eye toward very long-running pranks.

Speaking for me, I have little choice or affect on what comes on or about 12/21/12, assuming I'm still waking up each morning by then. If Uranus finally launches that long-anticipated counterattack -- because of what we named them -- or I wake up that morning and have won Powerball, and the transformative era begins with a 100% tax rate reduction, it's six, one-half dozen the other in my book, though I'd choose the latter, if I may be so mean-spiritedly- conservative bold.

Meantime, I plod on, knowing that whatever the future holds, it isn't prone to bluff with a pair of 2s. Life goes on, until the expiration date on the box is reached.

But that'd be a boring way to end this boring blog entry. So:

I choose to seek a silver lining, in the event the doomsayers prove to be righter than they personally really want to be (aka, the "be careful what you wish for" philosophy). Thus, the Some 10 Things to Consider IF the Mayan calendar doomsayers prove to be right:

10. Retailers will hold pre-post-Christmas sales early in '12, with the greatest bargains you'll never see again. Don't bother saving receipts.

9. If you turn 50 in 2013, no colonoscopy to worry about next year.

8. You can parody the lyrics of Auld Lang Syne, into something like I Go Bang 'n Resign, and sing it with gusto, even if you can't carry a tune in a bucket, like me.

7. For those who are NOT enamored of the current president, no second term!

6. We won't have to "celebrate" the 100th anniversary of personal income tax!

5. If you've been stockpiling Doritos and dip for the great "End of Days" party, you is da bomb.

4. The hellthcare fraud..er..plan that is being jammed down our throats doesn't actually start until 2013...bwhahahahaha.

3. It will no longer matter to David Letterman's female staff what he did with his pants, let alone what was supposed to have been kept in them.

2. What's left of Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews that anally morphs in the wake of the cataclysmic explosion, can bitch in perpetuity to the Uranians about Dubya; it's as likely that they, like most of us (look at their ratings), won't care.

1. And the single greatest silver lining about the potential "end of days" on December 21, 2012: we can collectively tell the IRS to go pound glass-infested sand and NOT file our 2012 1040s. Phfffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffft.

Now, THAT'S change we CAN believe in.

However...assuming that the nay-naysayers prove correct, and we all wake up on January 1, 2013, in the light of a new and unexpected future some of us hadn't reckoned on...eh. At least Seymour won't have to find a new home planet, and *bonk* some poor schlep on their multi-eyed haid, during landing.

And for those who so believed and prepared for the "End of Days" that aren't, and awaken unprepared for a future they weren't supposed to have to worry about, there's a piece of advice from one Mayan scholar to help them with their post this-isn't-supposed-to-be,-dammit depression: "go buy a new calendar, llama lips!"

Those Mayan scholars....what academic hoots.