We’re A’ Doomed

Several friends of mine are Scottish. Not really important but I thought, at this time, that I’d like to point out that I’m not a racist and my friends are from all over the place. Even Scotland.

And America. Cute, aren’t they. Americans. Unless they’ve got a couple of semi-automatic firearms and a hazy idea of right and wrong.

This doesn’t make them all that different from anybody else really although, on the face of it, it won’t matter very much soon, will it?

I refer to the strange idea that for some inexplicable reason it has been decided by someone we don’t know that at some precise point in history, that is hidden from us, that on the 21^st of December this year we are, all of us, going to die.

Actually, that is not what is said.

What is said is that the Mayan Calendar ends on this date. Exactly on this date. Midnight, even.

So there is a bit of precision in this prediction. Not merely, “At some point in 2012...” nor at, “Some point in December, 2012...” but at midnight.

Is that the first stroke of the clock or the last?

This is important. Because if it is the first stroke then we won’t hear the last stroke. If it is the last stroke we can all luxuriate in whatever final fling we are having while the clocks strike.

Which gives rise, for me, to another problem.

Whose midnight is it?

Is this a rolling ‘end of the World’ starting in New Zealand and spreading westwards? Shall we listen out for a sudden quiescence from the Antipodes radio stations?

I return to what I said before.

The prediction is based on the end of the Mayan calendar. It does not say that everyone is going to die.

Actually, it doesn’t say anything. It makes no predictions at all.

All the alarmist soothsayers who are peering gloomily into their crystal balls marked ‘product of Maya © King Doofry, AD 350’ are reading into it what they want to see.

It may well be that the World, as we know it, may come to some sort of end on 21^st December but that doesn’t indicate any sort of mass extinction of humans.

Of course, the Mayans might have predicted the ‘Rapture’ without knowing what it is so there is a possibility that a select few may disappear but, for the rest of us, don’t say anything untoward at your Boss. You will, very likely, be back into work on Monday morning, as usual.

I do appreciate some of the lampooning that is going on. Some are quite witty:

“If the Mayans were so good at making predictions, there would still be Mayans.”

Two Mayans - one with a tray and one with a large piece of rock. The one with the tray says, “Fancy a tequila?”

The ‘rock man’ says, “I really wanted to finish this but, what the hell, it won’t be the end of the World...”

Then there was a fellow who reasoned that it wasn’t really an ‘end’ it was just that they ran out of rock...

According to top astronomers there are no orbiting rocks that are about to hit us. At least, not big enough to wipe us out. Sunspot activity is on a peak but no more than it has been in the past.

Nothing.

This will, of course, be desperately disappointing to certain sections of the population. Some of them yearn for death for various reasons and others who are so bored that anything on this scale to happen in their lifetime will be the most exciting thing that could possibly happen to them. For a few minutes. Possibly.

I shall continue writing. Being that I am, possibly, one of the most boring people in creation I expect nothing to happen and life to trudge on as it has for the last sixty plus years.

That said, life has been, and continues to be, very good. Wonderful, in fact.

Expecially when you consider the alternative.

Which we shall find out about on the 21^st. Apparently.