You know, I thought about it and I debated doing a blow-by-blow account of this big, predicted "Rapture" that's going to occur tomorrow, taking all true Cristains into heaven and leaving the rest of us to burn in a river of fire for all eternity.

But you know what?
I already wrote a journal entry about this, and I did it over two years ago.

Only I wrote it specifically about the alleged "2012 Mayan Prophecy."

But you know what? As far as I'm concerned, it's exactly the same thing.

So I'm just going to re-post the old entry and give all y'all some vintage

So just replace the word "Mayan" with "Fundamentalist, right-wing psycho-Christian" and "Insane conspiracy theory" with "Insane conspiracy theory."

Everybody leave your comments quick... BECAUSE YOU MIGHT NOT HAVE MUCH TIME!

Have a great weekend everybody!

"The Thirteenth (Bak'tun) will be finished
(on) Four Ajaw, the Third of Uniiw (K'ank'in).
... will occur.
(It will be) the descent."

-Translation of the Mayan "Tortuguero" inscription

"I worked in the Indiana steel mills, have a Master's in English Literature, have had 12 novels published, including coauthoring Gary Jennings Apocalypse 2012, and you will see from my Blog that I am convinced that the incredibly accurate Maya astronomers saw something that should worry us because in space, what goes around. . . comes back around . . ."

-Robert Gleason

"We hear these prophets working all the time. We see them on television. We read their books. They are never called to task when they are wrong, and they are WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, ALL THE TIME!"

-James Randi

Hey Everybody!

I hope you all are faring well in whatever corner of the world you call home.

Yes, you guessed it. It's that time again.
The restless human spirit, that part of us that can never be content with peace, serenity and stability and longs to knock down the things both us and nature have built up has risen it's ugly head in our collective consciousness yet again.

This time, the mass hysteria doesn't take the form of paranoia that all the computers in the world will fail because some nimrod forgot to punch a couple of extra digits into the computer date function, or the vague, nonspecific, superstitious fear that a palindrome will occur in our arbitrarily numerical dating system and churn up the "Number of the Beast."
No, This time the fear is over the cyclical calendar cycle of an agrarian, Mesoamerican civilization which was conquered by the Spanish in 1697.
The collective belief among the more pessimistic seems to suggest that the Mayan vigesimal calendar, which began it's cycle in the year marked by the Gregorian calendar as 3114 BC, will end as the last calendar round comes to a close in 2012 AD. (December 21st if you want to put a finer point on it.)
What will happen when that calendar round ends? Like most questions in life, the answer depends entirely on who you ask.
The answer will range from "Nothing," to "A complete re-alignment of all the galaxies and a rebirth of all human consciousness," to "The catastrophic and violent end of the world as we know it."

This interpretation of the end of they Mayan calendar cycle has gotten many to ask the question: "Did the Mayans predict the end of the world?"

Revelations, stories of apocalypse and doom prophesies are a recurring theme in the creation myths and religions of nearly every human culture.
It seems that both collective civilizations and individual humans can't help but fantasize about the day the tiny blue ball we inhabit will end outright, and the Mayans are definitely not the only ones to ponder the end of the planet earth.

The ancient Egyptians, the oldest and perhaps most prolific Civilization ever to grace our planet were accomplished architects, mathematicians and astronomers (Very much like the Maya.) and they too made a prediction about when the world will end.

Michel de Nostredame, more commonly known as "Nostradamus," was a french poet who wrote more than one thousand Quatrains in the course of his life, in which he outlined predictions for the future and, yes, you guessed it, the end of the world.

Knowing this begs the question, what makes the theories of the Ancient Egyptians, who's civilization was far older than the Maya and who had far more time to calculate and perfect their prognostications, have any less validity than those of the Aztecs?
The answer to that question has much to do with the fact that the dates surmised to be the Egyptians predictions for the date (or dates) of the end of the world have come and gone, and NOTHING HAPPENED!
Careful measurements of prophesies inscribed in the Great Pyramid of Giza, lead experts to believe the Egyptians predicted the End Times would occur in 1881.
Re-measuring of these prophesies after the fact gave researchers a new date of 1936.
Afterward, students tried again and produced the date of 1953.
You can see how well all those predictions turned out.

And Nostradamus? Well, for those who think he really had insight into the future, perhaps you should take a closer look at Quatrain X-72.

L'an mil neuf cens nonante neuf sept mois
Du ciel viendra grand Roy deffraieur
Resusciter le grand Roy d'Angolmois.
Auant apres Mars regner par bon heur.

Which translates into...

"The year 1999, seven months,
From the sky will come a great King of Terror:
To bring back to life the great King of the Mongols,
Before and after Mars to reign by good luck."

Yes, you guessed it. Nostradamus predicted when the world would end.
Remember when the world ended?
Remember?
Huh?

Huh?

Oh, wait a minute, that's right, the world DIDN'T end!
And if you take a careful look back on history, the doomsayers have been shouting about impending peril for many, many years now.

This [link] is a list of dates compiled by the James Randi Educational foundation, of predictions of when the world would end and who predicted it.
These were earnest prophesies that many people took as serious as a heart attack, and not a single one of them came to pass.
Read carefully every one of those forty predictions that failed and think about how many of them were taken seriously.
Once the year 2013 rolls around, I have every confidence that Randi will take undue pleasure in adding the 2012 hysteria to the list, and re-title it "Forty-Five End-of-the-World Prophecies——That Failed."

There is also an inherent danger in putting too much stock in the belief that the days of the world we live on are numbered, namely that it distracts us from issues of real importance and it makes us less inclined to preserve the environment and our resources for future generations in a world who's population is rapidly swelling.
There is even now a study of the end of the world called "Eschatology," wherein biblical prophesies from the Book of Revelations, as well as other sources, are examined in serious study.
In my mind there is no more a useless academic discipline than trying to determine the logistical facts behind the end of the world. Rather I think great minds could better devote their time to improving the lives of humans within the foreseeable future.
Brave scientists like Norman Borlaug have devoted their lives to bettering the world. Norman has introduced new cops and agricultural techniques to impoverished areas of the world, and by all estimates has saved the lives of over a Billion people who would have otherwise died of starvation. Compare that to the usefulness of devoting time and man hours to trying to figure out when the world is going to end and six Billion people will die.
To me, the epitome of the danger present in the belief that the planet's days are numbered  and therefore we need not worry about resource consumption is encapsulated in the response of Ronald Reagan's Secretary of the Interior James Watt when he testified before Congress and was asked if he agreed that natural resources should be preserved for future generations:

"I do not know how many future generations we can count of before the Lord returns."

Jonathan Schell opined in his book "The Fate of the Earth" on the Nuclear question, and proposed the simple (and entirely logical) thesis that we only have one planet to run the Nuclear experiment on.
The human species MIGHT survive a total Thermonuclear war. Nuclear winter MIGHT not ruin all the planet's topsoil and make it impossible to grow the crops that are essential to feed the human population. And we MIGHT be able to rebuild our shattered culture after they drop the big one and turn every major city into a smoking crater.
If the experiment succeeds and we as a species can survive Nuclear Armageddon, Yay us! If the experiment fails... Well, you get the idea.
The point is that we have only ONE PLANET to run the experiment on. It would be best for all concerned if we avoid it all together.
This is one of the reasons I whole-heartedly support Environmental and species conservation (to the extent that we can provide food and housing for the human population of course) And why I fervently oppose whaling, the unchecked decimation of the world's rainforests, the dumping of radioactive waste into the ocean and (former) Governer Sarah Palin's campaign of unrestrained plunder of the states wildlife.
The bottom line is, we only have one planet to run the experiment on. If we're wise, we won't run it at all.

And there is one final thing to keep in mind as far as prognostications regarding the end of the world: We don't need to predict when the world will end. For all we know it could happen 200 years from now, or a year from now, or a week from now. Statistically, the odds of an earth-shattering calamity striking our puny little planet are just as good in 2012 as they are while you're sitting here reading these words.

Humans are a very young species, and we have a long, long, long way to go before we can be counted among the earth's most prolific denizens.
The Rhinoceros has existed in various forms and variations for the better part of 55 million years, and in biological terms is a far more successful species than humans. (Hence why it's my Avatar. )
If you want a real idea of how little time humans have spent on the planet, stretch out your arms as far as they can go and imagine the tip of your right hand being the birth of the planet and the tip of your left being the present.
Multi-cellular life would not appear until the point where your left wrist begins, and on this scale, all human history could be erased with the single stroke of a nail file.
In the time which humans have not shared this planet with it's other inhabitants (which is a great deal) there have been a great many disasters that our fragile little planet has met with, both from within and without.

-Every year, hundreds of asteroids cross the earths orbital path. Scientists estimate that asteroids as big or bigger than the one that wiped out the dinosaurs at the end of he Cretaceous make up a good percent of those.

-The planet enters and exits ice ages all the time. Humans have evolved during a period of uncommon warmth. If the pendulum swings either way to the side of extreme warmth or extreme cold, we as humans aren't particularly well suited to live in either.

-Earthquakes have been an unpredictable bane to civilization since it's inception, and we still have no idea what causes the tectonic shifts that create them.

-Yellowstone National Park is actually a giant Caldera Volcano. Geologists estimate that every time it erupts, it expels enough ash to cover New York State to a depth of 6 feet. That much ask could easily ruin the topsoil in America's Breadbasket where much of the world's cereal and grain is grown.
The Volcano averages an eruption every 600,000 years. It's last eruption occurred 650,000 years ago.

These are only a few examples of how large scale death could reign down upon our puny little planet.
We don't need the calendar cycle of a civilization that believed human blood was required to move the sun across the sky to give us a viable glimpse into potential destruction.

But does all this potential doom both outer space and our own planet mean that we should all cash in our chips and head for the hills? HELL NO!
Worrying about the potential end of civilization is a waste of precious life and robs you of the time you could be taking to enjoy the time you've already been granted.

So the next time someone comes up to you and insists that the world is going to end in 2012, do me a favor:
Take a newspaper, calmly roll it up, hit the person on the snout and say "NO!"

And in the meantime, preserve and enjoy the bounty of nature, [link]
And enjoy  the life you've been given with all the pains, passions, pleasures and glories that are part and parcel with the gift of human life.

Good night everybody!
Now, sing along if you know the words.

[link]

"That's great, it starts with an earthquake, birds and snakes,
an aeroplane - Lenny Bruce is not afraid.
Eye of a hurricane, listen to yourself churn,
world serves its own needs, dummy serve your own needs.
Feed it off an aux speak,, grunt, no, strength,
The ladder starts to clatter with fear fight down height.
Wire in a fire, representing seven games, a government for hire and a combat site.
Left of west and coming in a hurry with the furies breathing down your neck.
Team by team reporters baffled, trumped, tethered cropped.
Look at that low playing!
Fine, then.
Uh oh, overflow, population, common food, but it'll do.
Save yourself, serve yourself. World serves its own needs, listen to your heart bleed dummy with the rapture and the revered and the right - right.
You vitriolic, patriotic, slam, fight, bright light, feeling pretty psyched.

It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.

Six o'clock - TV hour. Don't get caught in foreign towers.
Slash and burn, return, listen to yourself churn.
Locking in, uniforming, book burning, blood letting.
Every motive escalate. Automotive incinerate.
Light a candle, light a votive. Step down, step down.
Watch your heel crush, crushed. Uh-oh, this means no fear cavalier.
Renegade steer clear! A tournament, a tournament, a tournament of lies.
Offer me solutions, offer me alternatives and I decline.

It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it. (It's time I had some time alone)
It's the end of the world as we know it (It's time I had some time alone) and I feel fine.
(I feel fine)

It's the end of the world as we know it. (It's time I had some time alone)
It's the end of the world as we know it. (It's time I had some time alone)
It's the end of the world as we know it (It's time I had some time alone) and I feel fine.

The other night I dreamt of knives, continental drift divide. Mountains sit in a line
Leonard Bernstein. Leonid Brezhnev. Lenny Bruce and Lester Bangs.
Birthday party, cheesecake, jelly bean, boom!
You symbiotic, patriotic, slam book neck, right? Right.

It's the end of the world as we know it. (It's time I had some time alone)
It's the end of the world as we know it. (It's time I had some time alone)
It's the end of the world as we know it (It's time I had some time alone) and I feel fine.

It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it (It's time I had some time alone) and I feel fine.

It's the end of the world as we know it. (It's time I had some time alone)
It's the end of the world as we know it. (It's time I had some time alone)
It's the end of the world as we know it (It's time I had some time alone) and I feel fine.

It's the end of the world as we know it. (It's time I had some time alone)
It's the end of the world as we know it. (It's time I had some time alone)
It's the end of the world as we know it (It's time I had some time alone) and I feel fine...