I've been studying up on the end of the world. It's about two months away, on December 21, 2012.
It turns out that the Mayans, The Sumerians, and Nostradamus all agreed that December 21, 2012 would mark a catastrophe for our planet.
At least we think Nostradamus agreed.
He wrote something about a ball of fire and a trail of sparks, and everyone who knows anything agreees that he meant a comet would wipe us out two months from now.
A few dissenting analysts think he just foresaw those Youtube guys who accidentally light their butts on fire. But what do they know!?
The Mayans had a five thousand year calendar that ends December 21. The Mayans, everyone knows, were gifted at predicting the future. They once predicted "The seas shall rise," and by god, sometime in the last five thousand years there were some really big waves that washed up on some stuff and got everything super wet.
They figured out how long a year on Venus lasted.
Most alarmingly, they predicted how intense Steve Buscemi would be in HBO's "Boardwalk Empire." There's a hyroglyph, on the wall of a Mayan pyramid, of a man's face that looks so much like the poster for season 3, it cannot possibly be a coincidence.
Of course, as stand-up comedian Heneghen pointed out recently, they seem to have missed that whole part where the Spaniards come and wipe them out with war and disease. But who are we to judge? Which of us has never missed the forest for the trees?
The Sumerians are a tougher nut to crack. They left lots of tablets with symbols and pictures on them, but they are all in a dead language that no one has been able to fully translate.
So, while there is a series of tablets that many interpret as saying that a "planet beyond Pluto will make it's first appearance in the Solar System since 36,000 years ago, destroying all currently existing planets," it is also possible, according to some, that these tablets alternatively say, "There's a yummy thing in my pocket that I'm not going to share with you and - oh, darn it, it's all melted now and I have to go scrub my pants on the big rock in the river."
It's just hard to say who is right.
Of course none of this answers the most important question; how do you survive the end of the world?
The answer is simple:
Just before the comet strikes...
...Jump.
Peter Wick
October 13, 2012