Thoughts at the End of the World

As I write this, it is now officially December 22nd... at least by my watch.  It's been a quiet night here in Northeast Ohio.  We had a bit of a snow storm roll through earlier, but it was fairly mild even by non-apocalyptic standards.  The weatherman predicted six to ten inches, but it looks to me like there's barely two out there, just enough to give it a nice fine coat of white, enough to soften the ground and give the lights a crisp halo where they shine.  You can hardly fault the weatherman, though.  It's been a bad day all around for predictions.  In fact, now that it's all said and done, I think it's safe to say that December 21, 2012 will go down in history as the day when absolutely nothing happened.

Not that I was all that worried.  Even if I had tried, I couldn't quite work myself up into a fine lather of portends and doom.  I take my apocalypses where I find there, even if that leaves me as the last man standing without a bomb shelter and a stockpile of canned goods.  On the other hand, I suppose it also means that I'm not putting all my chips on the world ending as my big chance to be the smart guy who came prepared.  There are a couple different strategies for playing the game of life, and I'd just as soon not opt for the one that doesn't pay off until everything turns to absolute liquid shit.  At that point, I'd rather just die and let all those redneck, camouflage-wearing Noahs reclaim the Earth with my blessing.

Besides, considering the magnitude of what some of these nuts were predicting, there wasn't much sense in trying to prepare for it anyway.  A bomb shelter and a first aid kit don't do a whole lot against the Earth's poles completely shifting off their axis, or all life on the planet being purged by fire as we intersect with some astral plane and come into alignment with the core of the galaxy or whatever cosmic bullshit and gobbledygook they were going on about.  You can't exactly throw half a dozen cans of Spaghetti-O's at a problem like that.  So why get all stressed out and worked up?

But now that it's all over, now that the storm of hysteria and paranoia has passed over us all relatively unscathed, I have a little request I'd like to make.  To everyone who bought into the predictions of the Mayan calendar, to everyone who thinks that ancient civilizations such as the Mayans possess some secret insight, some noble virtue, simply because they didn't have running water and the burdens of modern technology which supposedly makes us all such shallow and ignorant people, to everyone who thinks that they are deep and "spiritual" because they believe in mystical garbage, to everyone who has ever scoffed and wiped their feet on the good name of science... to all of you, please, shut the hell up!

Yesterday was your big moment to shine.  It was your big chance to stick it to the doubters and disbelievers.  It was the moment when the impossible was suppose to blossom in an awesome spectacle of terrifying wonder.  Sure it might have killed us all in the process, but not before gloriously demonstrating that the ancients were clued into truths about the universe far beyond out feeble, modern, comprehension.  It was the super lotto jackpot for every believer in astrology, numerology, tarot-cardiology, whatever.  And... nothing... happened... at all.  You were totally, completely, spectacularly, one hundred percent, dead wrong.  I think that should be worth something.  I think that should buy us all an ounce or two of silence from you, at least until the end of the year, and maybe part of next year, and maybe on until the end of time.  But I'm not going to press my luck.