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

Well, last week something happened that will only happen one time in our lifetimes. The calendar hit June 6, 2006, or 6-6-06, if you will. I was surprised about the hysteria that surrounded this date. I mean, it's just a date, right? Why should I be worried about a Tuesday, of all days? Maybe if this date fell on a Monday it would affect me differently. I mean, Mondays suck hard anyway. It would just figure that we would all die and go to hell in a handbasket on a Monday. It almost makes sense, actually.

But Tuesday? Tuesday is the forgotten day of the week. Monday sucks because it's back to school/work day. Wednesday is "hump day" and most people figure if you've made it this far in the week you'll live to drink some more on the weekend. Thursday is another almost forgotten day because it's after Hump Day, but before Friday, which everyone knows is just the opening montage for The Weekend, which consists of Friday night, all day Saturday and part of the day on Sunday. Sunday actually has several significances: for religious nut jobs it's the day where the flock get to rub elbows and feel better that they aren't going to hell but we all are. It's also a day of rest. For a several dreadful months out of the year, it is also Football. All day. So much so it even spills over on Monday. And, on a bit more of a downer note, Sunday after 5 PM signals the fact that you squandered your weekend away doing absolutely nothing of note and you are slapped with the realization that your boring, monotonous life will take over again when your alarm clock goes off on Monday morning at stupid o'clock.

So where does that leave Tuesday? I've never heard anyone say "Thank God it's Tuesday" or groan "Damn Tuesdays." I'm pretty sure that if Tuesdays ceased to exist nobody would even notice, other than we would get to the weekend 24 hours faster. So it seems fitting to me that The Father of All Lies and The Great Deceiver should pick such a non-descript day to have his own holiday. I mean, let's face it. Satan was never one for grand entrances. God is the one that has to get noticed by manifesting himself as a burning bush, a bunch of plagues and a rainstorm that makes Hurricane Katrina look like a leaky faucet. No, ole Lucifer has a bit more panache, more subtlety. And God just doesn't know when to stop partying, does He? We must have at least a handful of God-inspired holidays a year, every year.

What about Old Nick? He has to wait once every one thousand years for his date to pop up. (And for you ignoramuses that are asking "What about Halloween, Ms. Smarty Pants?" I will gently remind you that Halloween has nothing to do with the devil. Do society a favor: since you're online wasting your gray matter away chatting with RPG gamers and FBI agents posing as 11 year old girls, do some research on the matter yourself.)

So, finally, Christians around the world had reason to get excited last week. 6-6-06 was finally here again, and boy did they get to work on whipping their crowds into a frenzy! The funny thing I found was that Christians were making more of a big deal about "devil's day" than Satanists were. I saw where in Los Angeles there was going to be some sort of convergence of a first-ever Satanist gathering and black mass to honor the day. I guess it was kinda like a church revival, but without the yelling, speaking in strange "tongues," snake handling or anything else that no self-respecting Satanist would be caught dead doing. But the Christians on the other hand, damn. They were really eating this shit up. I kept seeing news reports about women who were scheduled to have their babies that day reschedule the planned deliveries for the next day. One woman went so far as to have the hospital stop her labor when her water broke at 4:30 that morning. (Now, any responsible doctor would have taken the health and safety of the baby into more consideration than superstitious heebie jeebies, but the fact that it happened at a Methodist hospital is worth some note.)

Also, churches were advertising all day "pray-ins" and invariably you had one outspoken church member on a street corner yammering about how the world was going to end at 6:06 PM that night and God was going to come down and save the faithful and smite the sinners. I happened to have the good luck to run into one of these meatheads standing outside my favorite Starbucks on my way in to work. He intrigued me. I wanted to listen to him a bit more, and see if he would also stop obstructing my path to the entrance of the Temple of Holy Caffeine.

After a minute or two of listening to his ranting, I stopped him to ask a question. I wanted to know how he knew the world would end at 6:06 PM. He looked at me like I was the stupidest person in the world and the answer was so obvious that Stevie Wonder would be able to see it spray painted on a wall. It was because at that time it would be 6:06 on 6-6-06. Surely it was a sign so powerful that no person could ignore it, even the unbelievers!!!

So I went on to point out that since the first year A.D. we've had at least two other instances of 6-6-06 occurring and unless their books have it all wrong, I don't know anything about God coming back at those times and doing anything. Then, before he could finish digesting what I had just told him, I pointed out that if his logic was correct, the world should have ended at 6:06 AM, which was almost three hours prior, not 6:06 PM. When he looked at me quizzically, I noted that 6:06 PM was actually 18:06, not exactly the right set of numbers there. He jumped in that 6 x 3 = 18, therefore with three 6s it's still possible. I decided I had enough of fighting a battle of the wits with an unarmed person, and with no caffeine to boot, so I stomped into the Starbucks to get some chai. Hell, if the world was going to end, this was where I wanted to be anyway.

But here we are, a week later. No horrible floods happened. No massive earthquake. No "rapture" of the righteous, and no hellfire on Earth for the likes of you and me. So what was the big fuss all about? People have been predicting the end of the world for so long I'm surprised anyone even still believes it when you are given a specific date. And I'm curious about one thing: For those people that predict a precise time and place for the Apocalypse, and it doesn't happen, what then? What do you do? How in the hell do you still have a following of faithful believers after they have irrefutable proof that you're a dipshit moron with less intelligence than a spoonful of peanut butter?

It makes me scared for the future of our society to know that people will continue to believe what is force fed to them regardless of all the evidence thrown in their face that it was a pack of lies said to gratify one megalomaniac's personal ambitions. This same mentality is how George W. Bush got into office and stayed in office (vote rigging notwithstanding), and why Marion Barry will probably be Mayor of DC again sometime in the future no matter how many times he's been busted for smoking crack. I mean, come on people. Wake up and smell the sulfur. The Apocalypse won't happen, at least not the way the Bible says it will.

More likely the end of the world will come when President Jeb Bush finally declares war on what's left of the Middle East and Japan decides to invade China again and Israel and Palestine finally start going at it with each other and we get nuked by North Korea because Kim Jong-il was tired of running around naked with A-bombs strapped to his head while dancing the Macarena on the South Korean border and nobody would pay attention to him. And with the way things are going right now, I can guaran-fucking-tee you that my end-times scenario will happen much sooner than your end-times scenario. In fact, I'll bet you a Starbucks Venti Skim Chai that I win.

Since Marie has already been told numerous times this past week that she's going to hell, don't bother writing her to tell her that. It's old news. Write her if you want her to save you a seat on the bus ride down. You can contact her at poisongirl@hobotrashcan.com.