I don’t have a whole lot on my mind today, so I thought I’d just open up a thread for you guys to talk. My suggested topic is the end of the world, as scheduled by the Mayans for the 21st of this month (or not). Any parties being planned? Seen anybody building any mountain-top bomb shelters in your area? Has Nostradamus come back from the dead yet?
What bemuses me the most is the number of people who apparently expect the world to end next week, on 12/12/12, instead of 12/21/12. Somehow the number 12, repeated 3 times, is sufficient proof for—well, whatever.
Anyway, open topic: share your favorite Mayan calendar story, or bring up something completely different. It’s up to you.
What time zone? I plan to get a good night’s sleep you know, please for the love of doG don’t make too much noise when the clock strikes zero…
I’m sorry, my calendar is too full to fit in the end of the world this month. Could it be postponed until January? February would be even better for me.
Do the chronic brain dead plan anything for this auspicious occasion?
I would have thought that Camping would have been all over this like a rash!
Now that would be a piss off…it takes another religion and another calculation from another time to get the timing spot on!
Bet the ego would smart a tad and one wonders what they would think of their hero spook then?
Allowing a dead religion to predict xtian glory!
Popcorn at the ready!
It’s twice the number of the beast! (I’m sure somebody will say that.)
I’m going to be playing D&D on the 21st. Just like every other Friday for the past 5 years.
I think a game of Shadowrun would be more appropriate. Even if it’s just a one-off. I should see if anyone is setting one up around here.
End of the World party, of course! One of my friends throws a big-ass shindig every time the end is nigh. Always a great time. The only rule is that you have to drink like there’s no tomorrow.
I was going to watch a NHL game, but the world ended on that already.
I’m guessing only 0.1% of believers think it will definitely happen. The other 99.9% will feel a little bit nervous, but when the day passes without incident they will shrug their shoulders and say, “I’ve heard NASA is predicting a huge solar flare in 2013…”
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tomchivers/100008500/nasas-2013-solar-flare-warning-how-much-do-we-need-to-worry/
The rumours will continue.
That’s now called a Solar Erection, or haven’t you heard?
No I hadn’t heard. That’s two things this year!
I have a coworker who believes it is going to happen and that it’s all part of biblical prophecy. Of course, this is the third end of the world he’s predicted in the two years we’ve been working together. Just to give you an idea of what I have to listen to, he ALSO believes: Obama and Romney are both tools of the NWO as orchestrated by the Builderburg Group, 9/11 was an inside job, UN Agenda 21 and FEMA concentration camps, and earlier this year he was convinced the bible predicted a rogue planet was going to strike the Earth and bring about the Rapture. As you can imagine talking to him is an exhausting experience.
I had a discussion like that recently, with a guy who believed that Superstorm Sandy was caused by HAARP, as some sort of nefarious plot by Obama to do, er, something that was never really made clear (to me, though I’m sure it was clear as day to him). The thing I learned from this is that beliefs like that one are part of a belief structure, in which no one thing can stand on its own, supported by independent evidence for it, but are “proven” by association with the other beliefs (and it’s not even just loose idea association- each belief makes the others in the structure necessary, and that necessity is what holds the whole thing up). There’s usually some core belief which makes putting the structure up necessary to begin with, a keystone for it. In this case, it was his conviction that “Obama is the AntiChrist”- which, of course, carries the implication of a whole other belief structure; but that was as far as I cared to go with it.
The (sort of) funny thing is that this guy is, to all outward appearances, an otherwise sane and intelligent individual (and a pretty good electrician). It’s funny what compartments we can divide our minds into…
I can reassure you that Obama is NOT the Anti Christ (who is definitely coming soon) because William Tappley, Third Eagle of the Apocalypse and Co-Prophet of the End Times, has definitively proven the case! Go to YouTube and listen. The Third Eagle also plays a mean Casio Keyboard!
Dec. 21st is my daughter’s 21st birthday. That’s a much better excuse for a good party. Besides, I’ll probably still be cleaning up the house from the Hobbit premier party the week before. And then all the Christmas gatherings follow right after that.
There’s only so many parties I can organize! The apocalypse will have to wait until a better time.
Either way, I’ll be working, so I probably won’t notice much difference.
All the woo-infused friends I have believed last year that the world would end this year (but, in a haze of pot smoke, decided not to actually act like they believed the world would end in a year). Now they all believe that the date will be “transformational” and usher in a new “golden age” for the “Universe”.
My husband and I plan to spend the 22nd cuddled up on the sofa laughing at movies that purport to warn us about the end of the world happening the previous day. 🙂
I’ll be putting up my Festivus pole. Just in case.
I will probably revisit the Penn Museum’s Mayan exhibit: http://www.penn.museum/sites/2012/
This exhibit is open through January 13. I call that a vote of confidence. Part of the exhibit I really like is the filmed interviews with actual Mayans who say that the hype did not come from them and is nonsense.
I’m in the process of purchasing property from believers, at the rate of one cent on the dollar. The contract states that I gain sole ownership of said property at 12:01 AM on the 22nd. It also allows any survivors of the apocalypse to buy their property back at only five cents on the dollar! A bargain at twice the price. Any takers?
It might be simpler to sell end-of-the-world insurance. One could sell $1,000,000 of EOW coverage for a mere $1,000, payable only if the world ends totally. With disclaimers that radical transformations or spiritual renewals, etc. are not true EOW events.
Note that a return of Cthulhu or assorted Old Ones is not an EOW either: it is just very, very disagreeable.
You think? Sounds great, really!
But, nah! Even those idiots aren’t stupid enough to fall for that one.
Are they?
12/21/12? Since when were there 21 months in the year? The American way of writing the date is almost as stupid as the continued use of inches, miles, gallons, pounds etc. which you share with us Brits. The sensible approach is the Swedish year/month/day, which I use (it means you can alphabetically sort dates), but even the British day/month/year makes some sort of sense. What sort of sense does month/day/year make?
I use the Swedish system for naming date files! Why do I have a craving for Herring all the time?
Life is a going concern. So I think we should all go on living our lives, loving our families and friends, working to make our world a little better, enjoying today while preparing for tomorrow, just as we always do.
i am gonna watch “2012” and max out my credit cards.
If the Mayans didn’t predict a couple of hundred drunken Spaniards invading, we shouldn’t take them seriously on the end of the world.
Anyway, my understanding is that the Mayan calendar — written in base-20 with the last-but-one digit in base-18, giving a 360-day year; accurate enough if you insert the odd un-numbered day, or have a few “stay up all night” festivals with both days numbered the same — simply overflows from (using modern numerals) kkhk to 10000 on 2012-12-21 (I’m British, but I use MySQL a lot in my job :p). The monks who made the daily predictions, at a rate of more than one day’s worth of predictions per day, got ahead of themselves and saw this rollover as a sensible point to take a break for awhile.
Then the Mayans were wiped out by the aformentioned invasion, before they could continue …..
No, the Mayans were not wiped out, although they were subjected to mass murder, enslavement, land theft, etc. – and indeed, still are. Yesterday, as it happens, I attended a talk by a member of Edinburgh Chiapas Solidarity, about the Zapatista movement in the eastern part of the Chiapas province of southern Mexico, where local Mayans have expropriated landowners, and set up autonomous health, education, subsistence, craft cooperative and local government systems. See here.
In sixty-three years, I’ve been through so many ends of the world I can’t keep track anymore. When this one is over, we still have global warming. Run for your lives! The oceans are rising!
Oh, wait. No they aren’t.
Is the end arriving already? I’m so far behind on preparations. The mead cellar is almost empty, I haven’t reconfigured the labyrinth to lead celebrants over the precipice, and I still need to order next era’s mesoamerican wall calendar! I hope they aren’t out of stock.
My Great Poo Pet of Love will arrive late the 20th. We should be cavorting like greased weasels in the first minutes of the Last Day. Daylight should see us reacquainting pale Northern flesh with sunlight during breakfast on the veranda. Intermittent frolicking will compete with the allure of the aforementioned sunlight until evening, whereupon a Mexican-influenced meal utilizing the last of the hot peppers from the garden will be presented. Later we shall retire to the backyard, well stocked with thick, dark beers, to end the evening with some star gazing as we await the Dome Of Heaven to crack and the world to end.
Next day, we’ll get up and do pretty much the same thing over again.
After much thought, I’ve decided to make a big bowl of popcorn and watch the movie 2012 at the time the world is supposed to end.