Mayan endings

If you've been paying attention, you realize that at approximately 6 p.m. tonight, Pacific Daylight Time, those chosen by God will disappear from the face of the earth, having been assumed body and soul into heaven. I hope this warning reaches you in time.
--Northwest Corner blog (May 21,2011)

If you've been paying attention, you realize that at 3:12 a.m. tomorrow morning, Pacific Standard Time, the entire Earth (together, perhaps, with the Universe that surrounds it) will vanish.  A new world will replace it, but we won't be part of it.  I hope this warning reaches you in time.

Yes, these apocalypses seem to be coming around more and more frequently.

Excitement about the end of the current, 5,125-year Mayan calendar cycle has been growing now for some time.  Some experts have tried to tell us that the end of the cycle meant no more to the Mayans than the flipping of the calendar from 1999 to 2000 did for us.  But we will have none of it.  The world must end.  It'll turn itself off, as when a light switch is flipped.  Or end in a crunch when we collide with the mythical (and oddly-reclusive) planet Nibiru. 

If not the literal end of the physical world, at least our old corrupt world must end, to be replaced by a new world order of spiritual enlightenment, telepathic communication, and perhaps levitation and teleportation.  Crystals, certainly.  Vortexes.  Bright shiny beads.  Magic mushrooms.  Pyramid power.  Maybe even bell bottoms and giant afro hairstyles?  Without a doubt..

I know.  It all seems déjà vu-esque.

Even as I write, the Yucatan is packed with spiritual pilgrims -- looking forward to joining the vanguard of this renewed universe, hanging around Mayaland in the off chance that tomorrow morning doesn't bring literal obliteration.  China and Russia are reporting panic buying of candles and "essentials."  (I'm not sure what's essential if the world is to vanish.)  Famous scientist and intellectual Ron Hubbard is going underground, not to emerge until the 23rd -- just as a precaution.

A college-aged friend writes -- with controlled but perceptible rolling of his eyes -- that he is going out into the desert with his mother to bang drums, dance around a campfire, and otherwise signal to aliens that they seek sanctuary in their spaceships before the world terminates.

There was a terrible ghastly silence.
There was a terrible ghastly noise.
There was a terrible ghastly silence.
--Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Yeah, terminating kind of like that, I guess.

Saturday morning the sun will come up.  The Yucatan tourists will put away their scented oils and joss sticks.  The Chinese and Russians will put their candles and essentials to some other good use.  Ron Hubbard will emerge from his hobbit hole, grinning (?) sheepishly and reminding us that he never said he really believed anything was going to happen.

And someone will discover that a numerological interpretation of a certain phrase in the Talmud reveals that the world will end on April 1, 2013.  As Huck so wisely expressed my own feelings, "I can't stand it.  I been there before."

But then, they laughed at Noah, too, didn't they? As he was sawing and pounding away on his ark? And look where it got them.