"But There's Nothing To Do..."

My Doomsday Diary.

Here's how I spent what was supposed to be our Final Day on Earth. Except for the Happy Ending, I found myself that day fervently hoping the planet would, indeed, split wide open and burn to a cinder. It started with my nephews.

I feel somewhat badly for today's children, mostly because they have been robbed of all the things that I believe should make up childhood.

I've been thinking about this notion this past week because of what happened last Saturday...

I have four nephews, aged 14, 13, 11 and 5. They're great boys, and by that, I mean that I love them very much, not that they're the best behaved. In fact, my nephews have the manners of a pack of wild boars...wild boars with toothaches and hemorrhoids, I mean. They can be a touch ornery and rambunctious, to say the least. Part of this is just The Age; two teenagers, busily exploring the boundaries, pushing every envelope. The two younger ones, naturally, mimic what they've seen the older ones get away with, which is quite a bit as my sister and brother-in-law are a bit lax in the discipline department. When I was their age, if I pulled half the stuff they did -- and got caught -- I'd be on the phone looking for organ donors, just in case I needed them in the aftermath of the truly horrendous beating I was going to get.

Worse, I grew up in a house with my grandparents and my uncle and his family. Stepping out of line -- and getting caught -- meant, potentially, three beatings. Even worse, I went to Catholic school, which meant stepping out of line included a bonus beating from the nuns, then three beatings when you got home. Considering that I was a beastly little swine as a child, I'm amazed that I was able to survive a John McCain-like experience of near-constant physical torture. Fortunately, for me anyway, I seem to have gotten away with just enough to avoid permanent brain damage.
 
My nephews have, thus far, been spared the experience of a truly epic beating at the hands of their belt-and-wooden-spoon-wielding grandparents, wooden-hanger-wielding mother, and the open-hand buttocks assault of an ex-Marine Uncle, and in today's Catholic schools you couldn't find a Shao-Lin- ruler-wielding nun if your life depended upon it. Besides, they all go to public school, except the oldest, and the Catholic school he attends is generally regarded as 'soft'. I went to grammar school with Dominican Nuns who moonlighted as hand-to-hand combat instructors with the Green Berets, and a high school with Black-belt Christian Brothers, half of whom seemed to be tough Hell's Kitchen Irishmen, and every last one of them claimed to have been a Golden Gloves boxer in his youth.

Suffice to say, short of being raised by the Spanish Inquisition, with alternate weekends at Gestapo Headquarters, very few people know physical discipline like I know physical discipline. Today they'd call this 'child abuse', but back then, it was just what parents did to straighten their kids out when that was necessary.

But, I digress...

Anyways, I had occasion to 'babysit' my nephews, despite the fact that none are babies anymore, but the oldest are certainly too irresponsible to be left to care for the younger two when their parents are away. Their father had pulled a weekend overtime shift. Their mother was dragooned by the Little League they've all played in to do her 'volunteer' service. My mother, a woman whom God certainly sent to annoy the living shit out of every other living being on Planet Earth, came along. Heaven forbid she should have to sit at home and rely upon her own wits to keep herself entertained for a day. It began, predictably enough, with constant complaints about 'the Sciatica', her back hurts, her legs, her knees, her sinuses, and even her fucking ass. It's all an act, by the way, it's all a play for attention because she's sympathy junkie and a drama queen.

This is the First Indication that I'm going to have trouble at some point. But I'll get back to that in a moment. Let's start with the Second Indication that it's going to be One of Those Days.

If there's one thing I really dislike about Modern Kids, it's the silly whining they all engage in about having 'nothing to do.'

Mind you, my nephews live in a house which has FIVE televisions, all with cable access including 150 channels and On-Demand programming up the Wazoo, two DVD players (with an extensive library), a Playstation 3, an X-Box 360, and a Nintendo Wii, each again with an extensive library of games. The garage is simply overflowing with bicycles, skateboards, kick scooters and roller blades, not to mention a bewildering array of portable ramps and rails for them. All my nephews play baseball -- Little League, High School, and Travelling Teams -- so there are enough bats, baseballs, and gloves laying around to equip a Major League Team. The only things missing are Buck and McCarver, chewing tobacco, and Yankee Stadium.

There are two computers in the house, both with internet access. I know they have internet access because guess who installed the cable modem and Wi-Fi router (that would be...Me)? There is a vast array of computer games available, as well, not to mention two or three Nintendo DS consoles. There are enough Lego bricks (the five year old is a Lego junkie who might soon require methadone treatments to wean him off of them) to build a life-size replica of the Manhattan Skyline.
 
There is a small library of age-and-theme-appropriate literature, and for good measure my sister has stocked the house with all manner of Art Supplies, colored pencils, sketch pads, crayons, markers, paints, and so forth, that would have made Van Gogh lock himself in her basement, and kept him far too busy with it all to even have time to think of cutting his own ear off.
 
Oh, and the three Big Ones have cell phones, too, and text message Lord Knows Who constantly. She just might be raising a passel of boys with the strongest thumbs on all of Staten Island.

I can understand the five year old complaining "I have nothing to do", because, well...he's five. Five year olds have attention spans measured in RPM's, although, like I said, he's a Lego junkie and when he's in his zone you don't hear a peep out of him for hours at a time.  

And the Swimming Pool hasn't even been opened for the season yet. On a good day, my nephews will protest, loudly and in a manner which reminds me of a menstrual girl, if their mother suggests they go outside to play. They've been known to cry about 'how unfair' that is. Did you ever know kids to complain they're being sent outside to play? They'd rather ride their kick scooters IN THE HOUSE, on her marble-and-ceramic-tile floors, and she lets them get away with it.
 
So, who has 'nothing to do'? Well, the 13 and 14 year old, naturally. They're the biggest pests of all that way. They decide that since there's 'nothing to do' why not engage in a bit of absolute stupidity and build a tree swing?

Now, about this swing. It's my brother-in-law's fault. He decided one day that it would be a good idea to find himself a length of rope, toss it over a high branch on the tree out front of the house -- over 30 feet in the air -- attach the broken seat from an old office chair to it, and then encourage his children to swing from it. Even the Biggest Doofus. There's just two problems with this swing; the first is that once you're on it and gain any sort of momentum, you're swinging out into the street, and since there's about 20' of rope involved, you're swinging 20' out into the street and into traffic. The second problem is because of the peculiar position of the anchor branch, once you begin your 're-entry' from the street, you're likely to crash headlong into the trunk. If you're, say, 14, and weigh about 150 pounds and gather enough momentum to make the swing worth your while, if you hit that tree you're probably doing 20-25 MPH when you make contact.

Considering that the other three launch the 5-year old with enough force to loft the Space Shuttle, he's probably going to hit it at closer to 30 mph, assuming he manages to keep his grip at all.
 
For that reason specifically -- the five year old must be kept off of this dangerous contraption -- they are forbidden to do this thing without their father being there to supervise, so that they don't get stupid and carried away, and a 911 call has to be made. This Swing-erecting event also leads to the most inhuman arguing and crying you've ever heard over 'who's turn' it is; it's like listening to sorority sisters argue about who gets to use the Big Mirror, and there's no place for me to plug in my curling iron in the common bathroom with 12 other girls already in it. The whole operation is far more trouble than it's worth, if you ask me.

But this is exactly what they want to do, and they keep insisting they have the right -- and permission -- to do it whenever they fucking want to. Except that I know they fucking don't. So, I tell them; No Swing, find something else to do. This pronouncement gets the expected grousing, and unfortunately, no surprise at all, a lot of cursing.
 
I would have swatted them good for sassing me, but I'm not allowed to touch my sister's children that way. Consequently, neither does she...not until they've reached the point of being in close-to-riot condition. No wonder they push the envelope; there's no consequence for even having the audacity to dare it. Someone should smack them around. I took things from them I wouldn't take from a grown man without insisting he step outside and defend his honor. 

The Law has been laid down. No Swing. I go back into the house. The The First Indication is now heard from, and you would think the Gates of Hell had just burst open and poured forth a vast horde of soul-stealing demons, red in tooth and claw, fire and brimstone flowing from their flared nostrils.
 
A bit about my Mother, first, so that you can get some idea of what's about to happen when I continue this story. My Mother is, without a doubt, the most disagreeable person in this Solar System. She's not a bad woman, she just has some rather strange ideas and an overly-inflated opinion of herself which is totally detached from reality. The first problem she has is that whenever she says something, no matter how stupid, how inane, how inappropriate, how non-topical, insulting, no matter how unasked for, she believes it should be treated as if Moses carried the decree down from the Mountaintop engraved in stone. As soon as the words are uttered, she either expects whatever it she wants to be done right this very second, or that it is to be regarded with the same reverence and respect that we have for the law, worthy of immediate attention and action, and we should all fall to our fucking knees and thank the shit out of her for having graced us with her words of wisdom. 

I beg to differ. She was a rotten mother who offered no real guidance, and who's children suffered for her poor choices in husbands, and the bad decisions she made that ruined her life. These required her children to pick up the pieces for her, because that would require effort, and then support her for the last 25 years of her life. She's fortunate that we haven't taken her out into the woods, slathered her in animal fat, and left her there to face the grizzlies alone, or just tossed her off a convenient pier in cinderblock underwear, already.

As if this wasn't annoying enough, this distasteful personality trait is attached to a woman with an anxiety complex so monumental, and a variety of other mental issues of the Poor-Me type (the very worst), that it has kept the best therapist on Staten Island busy for 25 years...with no improvement to date, whatsoever. Which leads me to the question; just who the fuck was it who said she was the best in the first place? Because she's convinced that her every word should be an Imperial command, and because every second that passes between command and action builds up the cycle of anxiety and impatience, and because it all plays into this martyr complex of hers, nothing is ever simple. Everything is a fucking imperative, Earth-shattering emergency that is accompanied by That Sound.  

That Sound. Look up the word 'cacophony' in the dictionary. Doesn't even come close to describing it. Imagine it like this: the sound of 4,000 cats being castrated simultaneously with a rusty, unsharpened garden scythe, set against the background noise of a pack of constipated wolves baying at the moon whilst being serenaded by some great locomotive that hasn't had it's moving parts oiled in a couple of centuries moving at high speed, which then tries to come to a screeching halt upon a dime.

That's almost it. But still not quite. You also have to imagine someone pouring table salt into your eyes when you're hearing it. 

It's a terrible sound. Hearing it gives one the impression of great shards of jagged glass and ten-penny nails being pounded into your skull. The sweat breaks out on your spine. Your teeth are set on edge as if someone just slit your asshole with a razor blade and then poured lemon juice and Liquid Plumber into the open wound. You'd rather be sucked into a jet engine -- and survive -- than to hear that sound. You'd rather have someone open an umbrella up your ass repeatedly than to listen to it. You'd rather be the sex slave of some Al'Qada dude with a sandpaper and blowtorch fetish. It's a sound I've heard -- even in my sleep -- almost every day of my life for the last 44 years, and the amazing part of it all is that I haven't killed her yet.

MAAAATTTTYYYYYY! Come up here...NOW! Ohmygodohmygodohmygod....Look what that LUNATIC is DOING! STOP THEM!

The Swing is being set up. They can't even get the rope over the branch, and already, it's as if someone has just been struck by lightning, run down by a garbage truck and shot eleven times...all at once. And I absolutely HATE being called "Matty". I'm not a seven year old in short pants and knee fucking socks.
So, I tell them. No swing. Now knock it off. "But we have nothing to do." Bullshit, find something else.

Ten minutes later:

MAAAAATTTTTYYYYYY! LOOK WHAT THESE KIDS ARE DOING! Gooutthereandbreakhisass, goddammit!

Guys, I said Knock It Off. No Swing. Do us all a favor, and don't give that pain in the behind inside another reason to start wailing. I don't want to hear it, and it's pissing me off. Just shut her up and stop, or I'm taking this crap away from you.

Not two minutes later, it starts all over again:

So, I take the rope, the seat, and the garden tools they're using trying to get the damned thing over a 30' high branch. Find something else to do, fellas, because if I have to listen to that woman one more time, someone's getting killed, and it might not be just her.

At this point, the little guys want to go to the schoolyard and ride their scooters. Of course they do; it's only a mile walk, and naturally, the Big Ones don't want to go. I can only imagine what I'm coming back to when these two, naturally, resume their stupidity behind my back and Ye Old Nervous Windbag inside has several hours to witness and endure their nonsense and get progressively more aggravated, frustrated -- and even shriller -- because they ignore her repeated commands to stop it.

I take the Little Guys to the schoolyard, and we have some fun. They get to ride their scooters, they jump around on the playground, we play with a football they've found...and I get hit on by a chick. There's two scifoozas that we run into on the street nearby who talk as if they were taught to whisper in a sawmill, and use language that's...well... 'salty' is an inadequate description. It's even worse than mine.

Scifooza Number One can't stop talking about her boobs. In front of my two young nephews. She's telling Scifooza Number Two that as soon as she gets her "chemical balls" (admission: I have never heard this term before) she's going to get "my tits done", and "finally fucking get myself a fucking husband because all they want is fucking D-cups". Sciffoza One apologizes profusely for using such language in front of My Sons. There not my Sons, they're my Nephews, but it's okay. I'll just tell them to ignore you.

"Do you think my tits are alright, or should I get 'em bigger?" Sciffooza One asks. Scifooza Number Two feigns being flabbergasted. One gets the impression that Number One asks every random man she meets this question, and Number Two is obliged to pretend to be embarrassed, even though she's probably shown her tits to twice as many random men. And she might get paid to do it, too.

"Nah, nothing wrong with what you got. They're just fine."

"You boys are soooo lucky! Your father is such a nice man..."

"He's not my father, he's my uncle."

"He's soooo nice!" I'm now having my shoulders and biceps felt up and pinched as if she were looking for a ripe cantaloupe in the supermarket. She apparently likes my hair, too. I'm about to smack this bitch.

"I'm not married, you know...", She says.

"No? You? Can't imagine why not..."

"You have beautiful sons. I wish I had a son...."

"They're my nephews."

"Really? I thought they were your kids..."

"If you could shut up about your tits for three seconds you would have realized you were told otherwise three times. Maybe that's why you're not married: you can't shut up about your tits, you're pushy, and you don't listen very well."

 Number Two finds this uproariously funny. We leave. If I ever wanted the local equivalent of Trailer Trash, I now know exactly where to find it. I wouldn't marry this chick for a Green Card and a mention in her father's will. It took near an hour to reach the schoolyard, if only because the five year old has little legs that don't carry him so fast. Twenty-five minutes after we get there they want to go home. Another hour back. And...

There's the FUCKING SWING...naturally. And a crowd of neighborhood kids all waiting for their turn. Mommy Dearest is apoplectic, and on the verge of having puppies. I figure if she does manage this astounding feat, it ought to look like something out of Aliens, only with fireworks and more gunfire. It's now all my fault that this happened because I was away for three hours doing GOD-KNOWS-WHAT-STUPID-SHIT-YOUR-BROTHER-IN-LAW-IS-AN-ASSHOLE-FOR-SHOWING-THEM-THIS-SHIT-GODDAMMIT-WHERE-IS-YOUR-SISTER-THAT-INCONSIDERATE-BITCH-THEY'RE-DRIVING-ME-INSANE.

And people wonder why I am the way I am? If you had my life...

Anyways, here's what I mean by 'losing their childhood".

In my day, if we were told 'you can't do that', we simply found something else to do. And since we didn't have a billion beeping-and-bright-lights-electronic geegaws, we had to make due with whatever was at hand, and somehow manage to have fun with it. Worse, I grew up in Brooklyn, and there wasn't a front lawn, an open field for miles, or a swimming pool in the back yard. We didn't even have a back yard worth the appellation. In those days, we played a lot of wiffle ball (no one plays wiffle ball anymore), and a ton of stickball. These were games that were pretty cheap, and in which you could improvise equipment if you didn't have any, and play for hours. In winter, we played tackle football -- in the street -- and during the fall, we played tackle football...on the concrete in the schoolyard. Hockey was played year-round, either road hockey or roller hockey, ice hockey being something extremely rare: skates were super expensive (your parents might blow a week's salary on skates then), and the only ice was at Coney Island, which required a death-defying trip on the B or D train, dodging muggers and streakers. We used a roll of electrical tape worn smooth on the sidewalk for a puck. It works remarkably well on the well-worn blacktop of a city street.

Protective equipment, if you could find any, usually consisted of a mish-mash of catcher's gear, baseball gloves, football helmets and shoulder pads, and the simple expedient of stuffing magazines into your socks to serve as shin guards. A hockey stick in those days cost about $10, and that was a ton of money, so no one took slap shots -- the best and easiest way to break a stick on blacktop.

There were exactly seven television channels -- and one of them was PBS. Video games consisted of Pong, and if your family could afford it, you might get lucky and have an Intellivision, Atari -- or the Cadillac of them all -- a Commodore 64 with something like 3 really crappy games. Otherwise, you needed to scrounge quarters to go to the local candy store to play pinball, or maybe Space Invaders or Asteroids. When PacMan came around, kids seriously considered taking up a life of crime to support their habit. You dreamed of the days when you had enough quarters to just play a few games of PacMan AND get an Egg Cream. That was like Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous to us.

We played a lot of common childhood games: Johnny-on-the-Pony, Red Rover, Stoopball (kind of like baseball, only with 'phantom' runners, where you tossed the rubber ball with all your might against your front steps when you were 'up'). We played handball and basketball in the schoolyard, boxball on the sidewalk (like tennis, using the square sections of the sidewalk as a court). When your rubber Spaulding ball split at the seams (they always did) from all that stick- and boxball, you simply took the two halves and played Halfball (a variant of baseball, played with the half a ball and a short length of thick rubber hose).

When you didn't even have a ball, you played Skelly. In this game, you shoot bottlecaps that have been filled with melted wax around a square 'board' drawn on the sidewalk or street in chalk. If you were really serious about your Skelly, you carved your Skelly Board into the hot asphalt of the street in summer with a screwdriver. Kids got very creative with their carved Skelly boards. Some were really intricate and quite challenging.

We didn't have trees to climb, so we climbed fire escapes and 'laundry ladders'. These were skinny, metal ladders, often 30' or more in height -- and not always anchored very well -- that one found behind most houses or apartment buildings, and to which tenants attached clotheslines from their back windows. Climbing a laundry ladder was usually something you did when playing 'War', in which we ran around the streets and the back-alleys in mock combat with toy guns. Try that today, and the local authorities will drag your kids off to a mental institution, just in case they want to grow up to shoot a Democrat. Any fence was like an open invitation to 'come climb me', and it didn't matter if there was barbed wire or razor wire, or even if it was rusty; we climbed them, especially if there was something 'cool' on the other side...like access to Tar Beach (the roof of an apartment building from where one could launch water balloons, or watch the local girls sunbathe).

Bikes and skateboards were rarities. In the Brooklyn of that time these things were likely to get stolen. At knifepoint. I was mugged at knifepoint, twice, before my thirteenth birthday. Nowadays in Brooklyn, they definitely would be stolen, only you'll receive multiple gunshot wounds and might get your house burnt down just so there's no witnesses to the crime for good measure.

Everyone played with matches. Everyone played with magnifying glasses and anthills. Everyone played with magnifying glasses, anthills, model glue and a can of hairspray. You circled the anthill with the glue, set fire to it with paper and magnifying glass, and when the ants came up to escape, you used the hairspray can like a flamethrower. We knew how to make slingshots, and makeshift crossbows with a piece of two-by-four, a thick rubber band, wood staple and a clothespin.

Disputes between kids were always settled with fisticuffs, or a wrestling match, and three minutes after someone got his ass kicked everyone was friends again. We collected comic books, baseball cards, bottlecaps and Matchbox Cars. We 'flipped' baseball cards, we pitched pennies, we played a lot of catch, Tag, Dodgeball (or a rougher variant, Kill the Man With the Ball), Red Light-Green Light, Ringolerio and Bulldog. We built model airplanes and ships. We knew how to build and repair our own toys, or adapt them to other uses. We did it in the CITY, too, with a lack of open spaces and grass, and with what nowadays would be considered Third-World-level disposable incomes.

In short, we knew how to be BOYS. We never had 'NOTHING TO DO'.
My nephews, for all the love I have for them, would have been lost in that world. They would have been constantly bored because no one would be giving them anything. As it is, they get so bored despite all they have, that they become single-minded of purpose when it comes to a tree swing that even in my day would have given Evel Knievel second thoughts. Now, granted, there's some creativity and a sense of danger involved in that swing, but the point is if we were told 'don't do that', we found something else to do, and we had enough of a store of made-up/improvised games/activities at our disposal that it wasn't difficult.

Nowadays, kids seem incapable of doing this. Try to teach these things to them, and they look at you as if you've just emerged from a spacecraft with three heads, green skin, and antennae. They aren't interested unless there's a flashing light, a large price tag, a beeping sound, or a degree of extraordinary, bound-to-end-in-the-emergency-room danger -- they call these things Extreme Sports nowadays, but in my day, they were simply the things The Stupid Kid Who Always Had a Broken Bone did.

There was a degree of danger in what we did, too, but it was always a calculated danger (kids were smarter then, I think). We knew the limits. An equivalent to this swinging between traffic and a great fucking tree trunk in my day was called 'Skitching'. In Skitching, one either wore roller skates, or did it in winter when the streets would be full of packed snow that you could slide on. You simply grabbed onto the back of a stopped bus or truck, and got low where the driver might not be able to see you easily, and got yourself pulled along as if water skiing. At least until the vehicle stopped, and you didn't...you usually only stopped when you got a face full of back bumper. The worst cases saw the Skitcher eat the bumper and then slide under the now-stopped vehicle, and being too stunned to move, get trapped under a wheel to get themselves run the fuck over. Never did it myself, never wanted to. It was just too stupid and dangerous.

But such was the life -- and the joys -- of a city boy in the 1970's, and amazingly, we did these things with no adult supervision, whatsoever. Makes you wonder just what the hell happened to the world and what happened to the Spirit of Boyhood. These kids today are such pampered, spoiled, over-supervised, whining little pansies who don't get beaten on a regular basis for their misbehavior, and who don't know how -- and who can't be trusted -- to play on their own. And who suffered for it all this fine day? Why... I did.

I'm not even their parent, either.

I had to listen to a Screaming Banshee who turns my insides into a knotted mass, and who could curdle used motor oil with her voice alone. I had to hike two hours to and from a schoolyard I didn't want to go to, and we barely stayed. I was nearly sexually assaulted on the street by a bimbo I wouldn't screw with a stolen penis, and who didn't even have the courtesy to offer me a drink before putting her hands on me. I had my nephews actually tell me to do something anatomically impossible -- twice -- and I'm not allowed to feed them their teeth. When my sister finally gets home, she wants to know why I 'didn't do anything to stop those kids from putting up the swing' and has the nerve to ask me if I'll watch them again the following day.

It's a good thing it was supposed to be Doomsday, and there was a 'We Didn't Die' party later that evening. I managed to play a few other games that night that also don't require flashing lights and electronics, or adult supervision...only adult participation.

That was something else we learned to do in the schoolyard, too. 

End-of-World Fearmonger Disappointed...

The man seems beaten and dejected, and is perhaps the first casualty of a long, silent war against extreme Christianity?

And yeah, it is extreme Christianity. If we can have Extremist Islam, why not Extremist Christianity? Anything which disguises itself as a religious faith, yet fervently prays for the End of the World and the horrible deaths of billions of people it considers 'sinners' while screaming selfishly for it's own salvation -- fuck everyone else! -- is extreme.

And fucking crazy.

We may have just seen the first 'convert'; a formerly-dedicated follower of this stupidity just had his deepest and most cherish beliefs tested. And they failed. In front of crowds, television cameras, newspaper reporters, in front of the entire world. Now Mr. Fitzpatrick apparently wants nothing more than to withdraw from the world, and there's even hints that his own family has now ostracized him. I almost feel sorry for him.

Almost, because I happen to know he got a good education (I went to the same high school as Fitzpatrick) and I know they taught him how to think. He forgot that, and instead let unquestioning credulity (they call it 'faith') guide him instead of his innate reason. Where did it get him? He's flat broke now, having squandered $140,000 on bus and subway ads telling people to repent. He's been embarrassed before the eyes of the world. His family holds him at arm's length. Everything he's believed in or ever felt passionately about turns out to have been a false hope.

I'd be fucking depressed, too.

Some people just weren't fazed at all and will continue on with their mindless stupidity as if nothing had ever happened, and these are the really dangerous ones, if you ask me. The true fanatics. Under different circumstances, every last one of them has the makings of a suicide bomber.

It's Not The End of the World...

Warning: This is going to be offensive...very offensive. And on so many levels, too. You were warned.

So, it wasn't the End of the World, but it was supposed to be. Let's put aside, for a moment, the mentality that was on display by the so-called Prophets of Doom; we'll get to that in a minute. While I was always pretty certain that the so-called Bible-approved Date of Departure wasn't really coming, the really disappointing part of the whole "May 21st is Doomsday" hoax was that it's almost a shame that it didn't happen. I said almost.

It's disappointing in this regard: Had Reverend It's-This-Time-For-Sure been right, some of the great questions which have caused so much rancor, hard feelings and bloodshed would have been answered unequivocally. If you're a Christian, you would have known that all that kneeling and mumbling had not been in vain, and the proof -- that God, does indeed, exist -- and the Christian version of Her (I figure God must be a woman, because only a woman could fuck things up this badly and then still have the nerve to demand to be worshiped) would have been upheld above all others. You would have been proven right, and those Jews and Muslims and Hindus and Buddhists would have been left standing there with egg on their faces, boy!

Wouldn't they have felt retarded knowing they had been worshiping at false altars? Could you imagine what, if it were possible to find out just what they might be thinking at that exact moment of...ahem...revelation, Osama Bin Laden and Ayotollah Khomeni might have thought? Would it have been "Ooops! Sorry!" or would it be "Damn, I guess this elevator is on it's way to the ground floor, after all!"

Another interesting question that would have been answered would have been "Will Tim the Annoying Jesus Freak From Accounting be getting Raptured, or is he just the sanctimonious putz that I always took him for?" By that, I mean would all the self-satisfied people you know who are so secure about their eventual place in Heaven -- and can't stop talking about it -- still be here, and could you imagine both the surprise and the horror on their faces if they weren't? But I guess that's mean of me to think of it that way.

Imagine the confusion, consternation, and the sound of 2 billion simultaneous palm-to-forehead smacks if the Christians, Jews AND Muslims had been left behind, and only the Druids were Raptured? The Jedi Knights? The Moonies? Talk about being pissed off and played for suckers!

Anyhow, if you're like me (and you survived 10 years of Catholic schools without murdering someone) you pretty much knew the whole thing was bullshit, if only because, well...consider the source. The Great Non-Event will be explained away in the coming days in the following manner;

The True Intent of the Almighty is often simply beyond the means of Man to discern, and despite what we think about our having 'knowledge' we truly have none when it comes to whether, when, or how, God will see fit to finally bring about the End of Days. The ways of God are mysterious, and we've made a grave mistake in trying to get inside God's mind instead of doing that which we are commanded to do, which is to get inside God's Good Graces. We've sinned by trying -- the sins of Pride and Arrogance -- and because we've sinned, God has decided that we're just not ready to see fulfillment of Her Prophecy at the present time. She will do so on Her terms, and not our's. Still, if it brought one person back into God's loving Embrace, and made just one Sinner repent his sins, it doesn't matter whether we were right or not: a much greater good has been served.

And five years from now Reverend Global-Holocaust will be entirely forgotten. He'll still be exceedingly rich and running his nationwide radio empire (it's amazing how that happens), but forgotten. At least until he makes another (wrong) prediction based on his peculiar blend of prophecy, Bible study, and numerology (Shocking! Numerology is usually so goddamned accurate!) This is the second time he's been wrong about the Date of Departure for his fellow morons, but apparently being wrong about Armageddon is sort of like being a stockbroker: You still get paid no matter what.

Considering the system Reverend Camping uses to predict these things is pretty much the same thing your broker uses to calculate a P/E ratio, I figure they're more or less in the same business -- selling false hopes, usually based upon faulty data, a great big wild-ass guess, and questionable accounting methods.

Oh, by the way, Reverend Camping has also predicted that God will incinerate the Universe sometime in October. Mark that date on your calendar. But even this beggars a question: if God is going to destroy the ENTIRE UNIVERSE, why bother to destroy this world five months early? For someone who's supposed to be All-Wise, this doesn't sound very smart to me. Why not do it all in one go, and save some time and effort?

Then again, God doesn't appear to be very smart at all. A cursory reading of Genesis -- the very first book of the Bible! -- pretty much tells you that God hasn't always got Her shit together;

There's actually TWO versions of the Creation of Man in Genesis. In the first one, Man and Woman are created together from the dust of the Earth. In the second one, Adam is all alone, and so God puts him to sleep, grabs a rib and makes Eve. Woman isn't even made from a Prime Cut. This would, taken literally, make it seem as if Adam has TWO wives. In many interpretations of Genesis, this is indeed the case; the First Woman (named Lilith) simply refuses to play a subordinate role to Adam and is banished from Eden for being a complete bitch and not knowing 'her place'. She believes that since she and Adam are created simultaneously that they are equal.

You would have thought that a perfect, all-knowing God-with-a-Master-Plan would have anticipated that if Her intention had been otherwise. Anyways, Lilith proves an unsatisfactory companion for Adam, and so God creates Eve, or as I like to refer to her "the Original Airhead". God, apparently, had this very same problem with Her other Creations, the Angels. Some of them didn't take too kindly to the idea that Man would be held higher in the esteem of God, even though She created them first. One of them was Lucifer, and another, Satan. You would think She would have seen that coming, too.

So Men, next time you wonder why it is that you just can't understand Women, just think of it this way: Even God took two swings at it -- She fucked it up twice -- and then gave up, probably in frustration.

We're told that God is All-Knowing and All-Seeing, and yet, God is often curiously absent when critical events take place in the Bible. When Eve is tempted by the Serpent, God isn't there to save her. After all, Eve doesn't know any better and needs guidance, especially so because God forbid her to eat from the Tree of Knowledge, which means God probably intended to keep us all stupid in the first place. And if so, then why put a Tree of Knowledge in the Garden at all? And what a rotten trick to play: put a Tree of Knowledge in there and then tell Eve not to eat from it, knowing full well that God has implanted the Human Nature Chip in us... and then She punishes us for following our programming! I'm telling you, someone's off Her game. When Cain kills Abel, God is, likewise, AWOL; She only knows something has happened because Abel's 'blood calls out' to Her. She doesn't even know what's happened, or who did it, which is pretty lame when you consider there ain't that many people to keep track of at the time. You don't need Columbo or Sherlock Holmes for this case. Why is Abel dead in the first place? Because God didn't like Cain's gift, the ungrateful witch!

Maybe She was making a sandwich or taking a dump when those things happened? Maybe it's just me, but you would think a being capable of creating an entire universe in the blink of an eye would at least have the ability to multitask.

Yeah, yeah, I know: you aren't supposed to take it literally, because it's only supposed to be illustrative and instructive. In that case, why take "Thou Shall Not Kill" literally? Why even take "Love one another as I have loved you" literally? Either it's the Truth, and meant to be taken literally (otherwise, why even bother?), or it's just a handy tool that can be used to justify anything; today's "don't take this literally" is tomorrow's "But God said...".

God, I think, must have been a lawyer.

See, this is the problem with having been educated in the Catholic Schools. On the one hand, the Catholic Schools teach you to think when it comes to mathematics, sciences, or even writing in a simple business letter, but then on the other, it demands unblinkered credulity when it comes to matters of Scripture. Only they call it 'faith'.

That's the problem with religion, period. You're expected to believe without having to think, react without thinking, behave without thinking, to just accept without critical thought.

Which is why I'm positive that this past week that someone blew his life savings, simply giving it away in the belief that he wouldn't need the money anymore. After all, he was going to be Raptured. Pastor Bob said so. And now that he hasn't been Raptured, he's going to have survive and feed his kids, and put a roof over their heads, and maybe not have the wherewithal to do it because he believed -- he had faith -- in a different outcome.

I'm almost going to guarantee that some people, perhaps many, actually committed suicide in anticipation of the destruction of Planet Earth to spare themselves -- and maybe they took their families with them? -- the horrors of a post-Apocalyptic World. Reverend Douchebag's 'Whoops! Got the date wrong, but I meant well" excuse isn't gong to bring those folks back, is it? I wonder how he'll square that circle with the Almighty when he's finally -- he hopes -- measured for his gossamer wings and halo?

I wonder how many people died around 6:00 Saturday, and how many of those deaths can be attributed to the stress and anxiety of wondering whether the world would end, how it would happen, or whether they would be saved? It's impossible to know, but I'd bet there were some who just couldn't take the suspense and keeled over.

How many people actually LOST THEIR FAITH -- disillusioned by the false promise of a complete knucklehead -- when the Prophecy didn't come true?

And what about the sins Reverend Camping inadvertently encouraged with his little piece of stupidity? In these parts, there were actually Doomsday Parties (I attended one!), and the debauchery at many would probably rival that of Caligula's Court. Hey, if you're gonna die, might as well get drunk and laid one last time before you go, right? So the "it still brought people to Jesus" excuse is pretty much nullified; I can promise you that while there might have been an awful lot of folks on their knees Saturday, the vast majority of 'em probably weren't praying. Maybe some were begging, but certainly not for Salvation.

Religion, I guess, is what you make of it. If it provides you with a moral compass, a guide as to how to live your life, an inner peace, or just a plausible explanation of all the Great Questions of Existence -- why are we here? what is my purpose? why do the wicked seem to prosper and the good die young? is Life a series of accidents, random events and occurrences, or is it all some sort of logical plan? what happens to me after I die? -- then good for you. I don't happen to agree with you, but I'm not going to stop you or try to convince you to give it up.

My only request is that you please keep your religion to yourself.

Because when some people insist on foisting their beliefs upon others, bad things usually happen. Airliners get hijacked and flown into office buildings. Thousands get slaughtered over a piece of desert. Billions are set against each other and use the Word of Fill-in-the-Blank as an excuse for murder, rape, dispossession, slavery, and worse.

And then some idiot who can't extend that reasonable courtesy to others, and instead broadcasts his stupidity around the world -- like when you insist you know the exact date and time of Armageddon -- and his predictions do not come to pass, you make the good folks who can keep their faith to themselves, and who just want to believe in something beyond the work-a-day world, look and feel obscenely foolish and you make them an object of ridicule or maybe even hatred or a target for violence. And that's just not fair.

Now, if that's how one 'brings people closer to God' -- by scaring the fertilizer out of them, causing them to do all sorts of stupid things, cause them to question their deeply-held beliefs in a negative way because they accepted your mistake, or lie, as serious truth -- then someone is a fucking dipshit, and taking that person's advice or seeking his opinion on anything, let alone the Will of God or the End of Times, is probably asking for trouble you could better do without. Reverend Camping and his friends deserve to be ignored.

If there were truly any Divine Justice in the Universe, Reverend Hump and his Acolytes would be taken away, alright...to a cloud with rubber walls.

Tomorrow, 50,000 People Are Gonna Beat The Piss Out of Him...

Staten Island Douchebag who predicted End of the World on May 21st calmly awaits his Mother Ship.

Notice that with less than 24-hours left until Armageddon, Dickhead still found time to give a newspaper interview. You would think a guy about to move into the Pearly-Gated Community would have better things to do.

What's stranger? This dispshit went to the same High School that I did.

Tomorrow, when we're all still here, expect to hear the following explanation as to why God didn't pull the plug when The Signs were all pointing to it:

We must have misinterpreted the prophecy. You know, the ways of God are mysterious and we mortals simply cannot fathom his ways. Perhaps The Almighty meant for this to be a dry-run, a drill, if you will, a warning to us all that we should repent before it's too late. If I brought just one person to repent and closer to God with my little misunderstanding, then it was worth it -- the media attention, the panic, the unwarranted trepidation and feelings of impending doom, the fear-mongering and needless anxiety, the seventy or eighty suicides which will soon be linked to my prediction -- and justified in the Eyes of God.

I'm betting one of the following things happens after this 'prediction' turns out to be false:

1. Mr. Fitzpatrick goes back to being the same crazy dickhead who will take the word of a radio televangelist on all matters Armageddon. The fact that the prediction turned out to be false having absolutely no effect, being unable to penetrate both his thick skull and the thick layer of batshit-insane just below it. His 'Street Cred' gets raised amongst the Rapture-and-God-Hates-Fags Crowd, and he gets fantastically rich -- flogging his books -- because if there's anything a good Evangelical Nutjob wants to do more than suck God's cock, it's give gobs of money away to people who bullshit them and excuse it with an assertion that "I did it for Jesus..."

2. Mr. Fitzpatrick loses his faith and realizes that he's pissed $140k away. He seeks out the 'Reverend' Camping and beats his fucking brains out with a baseball bat. Publicly humiliated and ridiculed, he will find himself a nice quiet place to lay down and drop half a bottle of Percocets before wrapping a Hefty bag around his head, securing it firmly with a roll of duct tape. Just in case he manages to fuck that up, too, he intends to stock the quiet place with about 50 gallons of unleaded regular and light a stogie with a blowtorch before he finally nods off.

I'll see you all at 6 pm, tomorrow, assuming the earthquake, the rain of fire, the exploding gays and all the Angels trumpeting conspire to keep me from my 'puter

When Religion and Insanity Collide...

..it could cost you $140,000.

Man bets life savings that world will end on May 21, 2011.

I wrote about stuff like this earlier this week, too. It practically writes itself, really.

I have to really question the motivation and mental state of anyone who gets involved in any religious organization for the express purpose of 'saving' themselves when the world comes to an end. Many do this, it seems, not for love of God, or not because they want to become a better person in some way, but because they are so fucking disgustingly selfish that their personal salvation -- whether here or in The Great Beyond -- becomes the driving force in their lives. In fact, it often becomes the only thing in their lives, this pre-occupation with the Next Life and Their Place In It, and this makes them susceptible to all sorts of douchebags ready to take advantage of them.

Like a doofus (who calls himself an Evangelist) who mixes 'numerology' and religion to predict the end of the world...every few years. I wonder how one squares this sort of 'prophecy' with the Bible's prohibitions against witchcraft and false prophets and so forth, but then again, there I go applying logic to 'matters of faith'.

Prophecy is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it's a load of bullshit. If you don't believe me, consider this: how many self-professed Nostradamus scholars do you know that became Billionaires utilizing his prophecies, rather than by selling books about their opinions on Nostradamus? Do you think Warren Buffet gets up in the morning and starts pouring over the Book of Isiah looking for stock tips? What do you reckon is the percentage chance on any given day when a prediction given to you by a medium you called on your telephone and paid $1.99 a minute to turns out to be correct? How often does your horoscope make any fucking sense, let alone give you any useful information?

Why is it that no prophecy ever seems to make sense until AFTER something has happened?

Giving Prophecy it's one prop, it is this: given enough time and the vagaries of history and circumstance, literally any prediction can come true. When Jesus says of the Temple in Jerusalem "not one stone will stand upon another..." it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that his real meaning is that "nothing is permanent".

Today's 'prophecy' is tomorrow's eventuality, sometimes, but the Prophet's defense when his prediction proves false is always "God doesn't take orders from me...".  Yeah, but some idiot with cash to burn is.

Having said these things, some may ask "But Matt, isn't this dope spending his life savings in order to save and warn other people; Isn't that evidence of a selfless motivation?"

And my response would be: Nope, he really isn't. What he is doing is stroking his own ego. He's attempting to score Brownie Points in Heaven. His religion tells him that he has been selected (the key phrase is the bit in the article about how God has 'appointed watchmen') for some important job, and it's that thought that drives him, because he believes it. He needs to believe it because otherwise his Life would be small, threadbare and pitiful, probably. Taken at first glance, I'm certain there's really nothing extraordinary about Mr. Fitzpatrick (not that I can make any claim to superlative accomplishment, myself), but he needs to think there is, because deep down he probably doesn't feel himself special. Religion -- especially extreme variants -- preys upon people like this the same way lions prey on crippled wildebeests.

The fact that he's managed to find a special brand of stupidity that mixes religion, prophecy, and numerology tells me that this is someone who has spent his entire life searching for...something...anything...that takes him out of his preoccupation with his crappy life. He's quite probably bounced around from one philosophy or discipline to another, and never showed any sort of constancy in his lifetime until someone came along and consolidated the disparate threads of his thinking and personal philosophies (if he ever developed any), and wove them into a tapestry that would guide him through the rest of his (soon to be over, if he's correct) Life. I know plenty of people like this, scattershot thinkers with no self-esteem, absorbed by astrology, numerology, and "the healing properties of crystals", and they almost, invariably, always wind up in a Church somewhere.

Now, whether they wind up there because religion makes some sort of sense to them, or because they have no place left to go, is open to debate. I just know that religions, historically, are very good at identifying the lost, the slow, and the stupid, and manipulating them. These people find no comfort or satisfaction in Life, and so they become pre-occupied with the Afterlife, and religion makes it easy for them to do so by telling them that all they have to do to gain their just reward is to follow the nonsense shouted at them from Scripture.

No one seems to realize that you first have to be dead in order to receive that reward, and that when it's described to you, it's always in allusions to the esoteric. At least Islam says there's 72 Virgins: Christianity either spins out a tale of a certain-to-be boring eternity of sitting upon clouds playing harps, or it describes the Afterlife in purely emotional terms, i.e. a state of continual bliss in the All-Encompassing Love of God.

Sorry,but I never saw Bob Barker give that away on the Price is Right.

The fact that it's Jerusalem which appears in the center of Mr. Fitzpatrick's apocalyptic poster tells you all you need to know. Not London, Not New York, Ankara, Beijing, or Wheeling, only Jerusalem. Even when these ultra-Evangelical douchebags support Israel, it's only because Israel is a necessary ingredient in the formula that will bring about the Rapture. So, support of Israel is, conversely, something the religious doofus only professes for the sake his own personal salvation. Once Christ returns, these idiots will tell you -- often with great glee -- the Jews won't be saved, anyway. Their only purpose is to, ultimately, be the rungs on the ladder of Christian Salvation.

Under different circumstances, Mr. Fitzpatrick would have probably become a suicide bomber, or would have poured gasoline over his head and ignited it on a public sidewalk. If he had tits, he would have become a 'Feminist Scholar'. Fifty years ago, this sort of soft-headed mindset and single-mindedness of purpose would have made Mr. Fitzpatrick the perfect Leftist Revolutionary. Instead, his religion just tells him to waste his money, which I guess makes him harmless enough.

At least his money didn't go to another one of those destructive douchebags that society pays far too much attention to: the psychiatrist. Somewhere there's a pill-pushing defective with an M.D. who's pissed off that he won't be able to get the leather upholstery in the new BMW this year.

And on the remote, slight, lottery-like, off-chance that Mr. Fitzpatrick and his Evangelical Numerologist just happen to be right, I'll be happy to apologize to him. I just hope I can find the right cloud in all the ruckus.

I expect to get a shitload of e-mail from the I-don't-take-a-dump-without-permission-from-my-Pastor Crowd, and it's entirely predictable what it will say; I can't prove that God doesn't exist, I can't prove that the Rapture won't happen, and I can't prove that Evangelical Numerology is an invalid predictor of the End of Times. You're right, but then again, your argument for these things is no better; you can't prove that any of these things actually do exist, or will happen, either, and simply believe that you don't have to. They're "matters of faith" (and credulity), after all, and it never ceases to amaze me that people who will argue for concrete proof of my assertions and beliefs, insist that I take everything they say seriously without them ever having to offer any of their own, secure in the smugness-bordering-on-arrogance-of-the-bulletproof-stupid hypocritical belief that they don't need to offer any.

P.S. I wonder how many people will leave this brand of stupidity in absolute disgust if Mr. Fitzpatrick and his Evangelical Numerologist turn out to be wrong? I'm guessing the actual number will be really small, because in the end this isn't about reality or truth, it's about people's feelings.

The World is Coming to An End: Film at 11...

I was talking to my friend Mike the other day, and he told me about something that was so uproariously stupid that I feel compelled to write about it, and share it with you all. It's what we do here at the Asylum; point out the stupidity of others and laugh our asses off over it.

Mike, it turns out, has been listening to Evangelical Christian radio. Not because he fears for his immortal soul, or because he believes in an Invisible Man in the Sky Who's All-Knowing and All-Powerful, yet somehow managed to create violent, irrational human beings, the platypus, the camel, and ABBA, but because he finds it so funny.
 
He was telling me about one of these radio Evangelists (you will not get his name here, because this is a seriously dangerous douchebag) who has told his retarded audience that the World Will End by May 31, 2011. I guess if you have any hope of being Raptured to the Right Hand of the Father, you'd best start packing now. Anyways, it appears as if people call this idiot for last-minute advice on all manner of things; people ask if they should take new jobs (the answer: No, dispshit, because the World will explode in a couple of weeks), should they still go ahead with that June wedding they had planned (answer: No dipshit, because the World will explode in a couple of weeks), and, naturally, How Do I Save Myself When the World Explodes in A Couple of Weeks? (answer: Go pray a lot...and send me money, Dipshit).
 
Now, apart from the obvious stupidity of people seeking life-altering guidance from someone who makes his living telling them they'll all be dead unless they pray real hard, the real stupidity lies in the premise that when the World Explodes that anyone is going to be 'saved'.
 
Mankind, in case no one ever told you, is ultimately doomed. Thousands, maybe millions even, of other life forms that have inhabited this planet have all gone extinct at some point in history,and there is no reason not to think that we too, in our turn, will also go the way of the Wooly Mammoth, the Triceratops, or the Dodo Bird. One of the consequences of Life is the Possibility of Extinction. How we ultimately meet our final fate, I think, matters not: the planet could be hit by a comet or asteroid, the Earth's crust might burst asunder under the strain of volcanism or tectonic forces, some minor flu will evolve into a super-strain that kills us all, we'll extinguish life with nuclear war, or our Sun will go nova and bake this tiny planet in an instant. There is little that we can do to stop these things. Our science and our intelligence only takes us so far, and short of Men making the great leap across the Universe to other worlds, we're going to be extinct, and  little to no trace of us will be left.
 
If it makes you feel better to believe that your soul, spirit, ghost, essence, chakra, ki, whatever, will persist after death, then by all means, be my guest. Far be it from me to tell you that I have all the answers, or that you shouldn't believe what you want to believe, but it seems that nowadays everyone is obsessed with the End of Everything.

It's gotten so bad that the History Channel now produces a show called Life After People, which is all about what happens to the world after mankind disappears, which is pretty stupid if you think about it: the History Channel is running a show about a time when History --as we perceive it --comes to an End. Go figure. Then again, it's probably better -- and more topical -- than Ice Road Truckers, or Swamp People. It's certainly more interesting.

Apocalyptic Christianity has become a big business, and is mostly a scam, in my opinion. It's purpose is to frighten people into the fold, and in the process, pry their cash from them. I'm certain when Pastor Asshole- on-the-Radio's prediction fails to come true on June 1st, he'll still be on the air, if only because people are truly dopey, and he has a ready-made excuse for why what he said will happen didn't; God will destroy the World Only When God Sees Fit To, and he cannot be prodded into it before he's ready to by Man, or, he was really just trying to get people to repent and make their peace with God before God really does Her thing with his Chicken Little routine. Or my personal favorite, the one that's supposed to end all debate or stop all questions; God Works in Mysterious Ways. No matter; the Ends justify the Means, especially if the Ends were several million bucks in donations and commercial fees and a higher public profile for Pastor Dickhead, and a few more fannies in the pews. I'm sure that will comfort the people who called off their weddings, or didn't take that lucrative job offer on his advice, to no end.

What people tend to forget is that the Bible was written by people -- and it might not be the best thing to take literally -- because as is often the case, people make mistakes, they misinterpret things, they let their biases creep onto the page, or they have agendas that they're pushing. Lately, there's been much talk about 'Bible Codes' in which it is said that there are coded messages hidden within the text of the biblical passages that can foretell future events, but I believe this about as much as I believe in my Lucky Astrology Mood Watch. The Bible is not the Word of God (beings that do not exist do not leave Words behind); it is a history --and a heavily-biased one, at that -- of the Hebrews and early Christians which seeks to provide a divine justification for what they have done. Mostly that was to kill and disposses Caananites and Phillestines and all the rest, because God 'promised' the land to them. You would think that an All-Powerful, All-Knowing God would just promise them an uninhabited place to live in, seeing as She (if there is a God, it must be a She) had just told them five minutes ago in the desert that Thou Shall Not Kill, Steal, Lie or Covet Your Neighbor's Goods (wouldn't that mean his land, too?), and all that.
 
The New Testament, as we know it today, is very much a political document; it was supposed to authenticate and legitimize Christianity, and thus, give it's great champion, Constantine, the divine cover he needed to explain his otherwise treasonous activities, i.e. leading a civil war and usurping the power of the Emperor of Rome. It had to be compiled and rewritten in such a way as to ensure that Christ could always be seen as the ultimate expression of ancient Hebrew prohpecy concerning a Messiah. The fact that the Christ myth as we know it seems an awful lot like the Roman adaptation and worship of the Persian god Mithras is conveniently forgotten... or mostly unknown.
 
If you're going to depend upon an ancient document, full of 'prophecy' as your guide to the End of theWorld, you could at least pick an ancient document that hasn't been (mis-)translated four billion times from seven thousand languages, and which has not been subjected to the requirements of political and cultural propaganda, I would think. The Bible as predictive tool is useless, in my opinion, because it has been so-obviously manipulated.
 
Another Apocalyptic theme that has gained much popular attention these days is the Mayan Prophecy, in which it is said that the ancient Mayans of Mexico have pinpointed the exact date of the End of the World, supposedly sometime in December of 2012. Which would really suck if a Republican managed to beat Barack Odumbass in November. The 'proof' that theMayan Prophecy will come true is that the Mayan Calendar comes to a complete halt in December 2012. Now, there could be a number of reasons why this should be so that don't necesarily mean Apocalypse; perhaps the astrologers/mathemeticians engaged in the project saw no need to go any further. Perhaps they were tired of making calculations. Maybe, there's another Mayan Calendar that picks up where the last one left off that we haven't found yet?
 
All I know is that people who suposedly had the smarts and the capabilities to accurately predict the future in such fashion should, logically, have been able to foresee their own demise; you would think they would have predicted the arrival of the Spanish...and smallpox. You have to wonder just how accurate and efficacious their predictive powers were if they couldn't even use them to save themselves.

Then there's the Nostradamus Idiots who constantly tell us that their hero has predicted every major event in modern history. The problem with Nostradamus, however, is that we never seem to hear of his 'predictions' until after something has happened. If Nostradamus was of any use, you figure someone would be able to tell you about it beforehand. So, we're told that Nostradamus 'predicted' the rise of Hitler (a claim long since disproven as Nazi propganada), the assassination of JFK, and 9/11, but always the announcement that Nostradamus 'predicted' this, that or the other comes only after the fact. Some prophet. Nostradamus is about as useful as a broken condom, or those Astrologers in your local newspaper. The Champions of Nostradamus will tell you this is because if they told people about one of these traumatic events beforehand, no one would believe them, but this is pure horseshit; I can say to you today that one day someone will have monkeys fly out of their rectum, and it's quite possible, given the vageries of time and history, that it might actually happen. Will I be celebrated as visionary prophet when that day comes? I rather doubt it.  
This, incidentally, is one of the problems with some modern scientific methods, too, like the Theory of Evolution; given a time scale of billions of years, and pure random chance, literally anything is possible. It doesn't make it true.
 
Still, I find it fascinating to watch people knowingly worry themselves stupid about something they have absolutely no control over. If the world comes to an End (as it surely must) just what, if anything, do you, the individual, expect to be able to do about it? Will you, personally, deflect that asteroid headed our way? Will you be able to keep the Earth's magnetic poles from shifting? Can you identify and find a cure for that Super-Virus that's out there waiting to kill us all? Probably not. And your government will probably be unable to do much of anything, either, and certainly not your Church; religions usually get people to do things which only benefit the religion, as an institution.
 
As for me, I keep a six-pack of Heineken's in the fridge, so that when the fateful day finally arrives, I can sit on the front porch with my Holocaust Heinies, and watch the fireworks, secure in the knowledge that when it's all over, one way or another, I will at least not have to pay another goddamned credit card bill, or scratch an income tax check, or sit through another Barack Obama use-lots-of-words-to-say-absolutely-nothing speech.
 
The Apocalypse, you see, isn't all bad news.