The end is near ... again

- Henny Youngman

Folks, I have some bad news. The world is going to end on December 21st, 2012, at 11:11 AM.

How do I know? I heard it on the Discovery Channel. And the History Channel. And read it on about 200 websites. So it must be true.

How do they know? They heard it from the Mayans. And Nostradamus. And if there is one thing on which all 6.5 billion of us earthlings can agree, the Mayans and Nostradamus have never, ever failed to predict things accurately.

Um ... wait. Is that right? Hold on a sec. Let me look that up ...

INTERMISSION

Well, as it turns out, there are a few chinks in the divination armor of these ancient prognosticators. First, let's start with the Maya and their now famous calendar. Wait, you haven't heard of the Mayan calendar? Gadzooks! The question is not whether you have been hiding under a rock, but just how long have you been there?

It seems that nearly everyone has become an overnight expert on the Mayan calendar - pseudo documentaries on cable have that effect on people. For the purposes of brevity, let's just say that the Ancient Mayans (not to be confused with the current Maya peoples in Mexico and Central America, population six million) did have a calendar, and it's strikingly dissimilar from the Gregorian calendar used today.

For a personal disclaimer, please allow me come right out and say it: The enlightened segments of the Ancient Mayan population were clearly a knowledgeable bunch of folks, and I will never completely understand their calendar. I dare you to try. But I think I've got the general gist of it.

It isn't so much of a calendar as it is a highly confusing, intertwined system of seasonally cyclical directories and prognosticating almanacs, woven together in a way as to make it impossible to comprehend (unless you're a thousand years old and Mayan). In layman's terms, there are three main calendars working together, each with a separate number of days:

The first is a zodiacal-type clock of 260 days, called the Tzolk'in, delineating specific days for spiritual and cultural events. The second is called Haab' (the Maya clearly liked apostrophes), which more closely resembles our current 365-day system. However, the Mayans got it wrong - their "year" only lasted 360 days. Oops! Dumbasses.

That left five days at the end of each year, a period known as Wayeb' (These people! Again with the apostrophes!). This appendix of a work week was thought to be a dicey time when evil spirits roamed the land. During Wayeb', the Maya would not leave their houses or wash their hair, in hopes that their actions would ward off the villainous specters. Apparently, the Mayan evil spirits were not a terribly hearty bunch. "Well, I would haunt their very souls, but I can't seem to penetrate that mud hut with the thatched roof! And besides, they haven't bathed in days! Ever try to put a wicked hex on a stinky Mayan? Hoo-wee! No thank you."

Typical backwards-ass, population-controlling, superstitious nonsense. Ooooooh, there are five unaccounted-for days! Evil! You must live in fear! Harumph. Either admit the calendar is screwed up and give people a five day vacation, or fix the fricken thing and hand out some bottles of Aussie Mega shampoo for normal-to-oily hair. Problem solved.

The third calendar - which is the one that all the spacey people are focused on, though most of them are completely ignorant about it - is called the "long count." I was hoping for a cool name like "Gilla'nib'russssss," but no such luck. Just long count. This third calendar is the only linear device of the bunch, starting at the mythical inception of the Mayan world (August 11th, 3114 BC). By combining the other two calendars and inventing some creative new calendar math, the long count runs out at the aforementioned date in 2012.

All this, according to a Minnesota native named José Argüelles, will be the end of the world as we know it. Now, if you're wondering, "Who the hell is José Argüelles, and why should I pay attention to him?" then congratulations, your bullshit detector is operational. It was Argüelles' book, The Mayan Factor:Path Beyond Technology, (published in 1987), which created much the hubbub surrounding the supposed Mayan prophecy, allegedly pinpointing the end of the world.

Unfortunately for all those who were actually looking forward to doomsday, or the harmonic convergence, or Armageddon, whatever people are calling it these days, Mr. Argüelles is a charlatan.

He took major liberties with the Mayan calendar in his book. He instilled a bunch of new-age terminology that the Mayans never used, in order to make points that the Maya did not intend. He made predictions that were incongruous with the dates set out in the Mayan calendar. He assigned moon phases that were not as they appear in said calendar. In short, he simply made up a bunch of shit, and people swallowed it with unbridled enthusiasm.

There's a cautionary lesson here, which is: if a man claims to be the "heir of the legacy of Pacal Votan and the instrument of his prophecy, Telektonon" (Argüelles' own words, verbatim), you might want to at the very least do a little research before believing everything he says.

So let's see what we have here.

An ancient civilization made a calendar that was really comprised of three different calendars, created by different peoples at different points in history. While its creators demonstrated an advanced knowledge of solar, lunar and seasonal cycles, significant portions of their creation were either inaccurate or based solely on myth. It was used largely as a divination tool, yet for some reason, the civilization which created it was unable to abate the near total collapse of their society. More than a millennium after its creation, some nutjob near Lake Minnetonka bastardized the calendar to suit his own misguided, unsubstantiated belief system, and this is why the end of the world is coming on December 21st, 2012.

Dahhhh ... okay.

Isn't it possible that the Mayans just ran out of space on their calendar, and figured, "Well, by the time 2012 rolls around, we can just start over"?

But wait, sayeth you. Nostradamus predicted the same thing! I just saw all about it on the History Channel! And Nostradamus predicted Hitler, and Kennedy's assassination, and both world wars, and 9/11, and the Teletubbies, and ...

Hold the phone there, Tim Leary.

I'm not going to go into everything Nostradamus ever wrote, but suffice to say, the good French doctor had some misses, and his few hits are tenuous at best. His famous quatrains were written very cryptically with few specifics, penned mostly in French, but included bits of Italian and Latin. The end result is this: between translation and interpretation, any former D&D dungeon master can assign almost any meaning imaginable to Nostradamus' quatrains.

Here's one famous example which Many Nostradamians claim is a prophecy regarding the actions of Adolph Hitler:

Bêtes farouches de faim fleuves tranner;
Plus part du champ encore Hister sera,
En caige de fer le grand sera treisner,
Quand rien enfant de Germain observa.

People who want to believe that this predicts Hitler's Blitzkrieg in WWII naturally prefer this translation:

Beasts wild with hunger will cross the rivers,
The greater part of the battle will be against Hitler.
He will cause great men to be dragged in a cage of iron,
When the son of Germany obeys no law.

Sounds chillingly accurate ... right? Um, nope. Guess what the actual translation is:

Beasts mad with hunger will swim across rivers,
Most of the army will be against the Lower Danube.
The great one shall be dragged in an iron cage
When the child brother will observe nothing.

Yup. Damn thing isn't about Hitler at all! The fanciful alarmists try so hard to assert that Nostradamus just barely missed Hitler's name, but the truth is, Hister is the name for a region in the Lower Danube River. Then what is this quatrain about? I have no idea, and no one else really does either, because it makes no sense and relates to no known historical event.

This just highlights the fervor and desperation surrounding Nostradamus and doomsday predictions in general. They're exciting. They make the hair stand up on the back of your neck if you believe them. They suggest an otherworldly reality of which we can only guess, and these things appeal to us, like hoping that ghosts are real. And while there may very well be much more to this world that we humans can sense, 99 percent of all the "end of the world" stuff is complete horse hockey. That's right, I said horse hockey.

So if you've recently seen the History Channel special on Nostradamus' newly discovered manuscripts (just in time for the apocalypse!) and are buying into it, then I've got some lovely bridge property for you.

Here's the quatrain that supposedly predicts 9/11:

In the City of God there will be a great thunder,
Two brothers torn apart by Chaos,
While the fortress endures, the great leader will succumb,
The third big war will begin when the big city is burning.

And here lies the problem. If you want to believe this is about the Twin Towers being attacked, then that's what you'll see. But this could be about anything, and it all depends on who's selling and who's buying.

Speaking of buying, The Nostradamus Collection DVD is available now on the History Channel's website for the low, low price of only $69.95. For your added convenience, a link to the recently published The Nostradamus Code: World War III is located along the left hand margin, yours for only $19.95.

By the time December 25th, 2012 rolls around, the world will still be turning, and you'll be able to download the Nostradamus box set directly into your occipital lobe for Christmas. Oddly enough, Nostradamus predicted this in his recently discovered quatrain X.98:

In the new land across the pond, the masses will be deceived by a great sale
Blithering gibberish available for transmission directly into the mind
The cost will be nearly one hundred gold
Then the whole world blows into itty bitty teeny tiny pieces, because I said so.

Evan Redmon is a manager of a public golf course in Washington, D.C. and writes a few things about stuff sometimes. Contact him at evanredmon@yahoo.com if you really want.