Setting Up Your Own Non-Prophet

Saturday, 21 May 2011. A beautiful, late-Spring day in America. All was well with the world.

Right up to the point where the world ended.

I'm sure you saw the guy on the news. In California (not Florida, for a change), some tin-foil-hat hop-head (not Governor Terminator, for a change) claimed that the world was definitely going to end on 21 May 2011. Definitely. No, really. This time, definitely.

True, the same Skull-With-A-Screen-Door character had made the same lame claim back in 1994, when he predicted that the world was definitely going to end that year, on 21 September. Without fail. Definitely. Of course, when he said it, he was prognosticating from a Napa Valley vat, hopping on a pogo stick and wearing a Ninja Turtle push-up bra.

Author's Note: for those of you who attended public school, or are members of the Wisconsin legislature, the world did not, in fact, end in 1994.

Meanwhile, all the way up to 21 May 2011, life in America trundled along as usual. I, personally, was getting used to having been thrust back into corporate life, I'd survived another weekly gauntlet of commutes, and I was on track to actually finish a carton of milk before the expiration date. Sixteen more Presidential hopefuls announced that they were announcing a plan to consider announcing a plan to form an exploratory committee to look into planning an exploratory committee. Gasoline had gotten so expensive that pumps had been modified to directly accept gold ingots. And yet another entirely-married Governor (yeah, him) got caught participating in extra-marital shenanigans or, as it's known in the South Carolina Governor's mansion, "hiking."

And then, suddenly, a clever Californian TV evangelist claimed that he had figured out a secret code in the Bible that clued him in to some breaking news, eschatologically speaking - the end of life as we know it, Saturday, 6pm, Eastern Standard Time.

Author's Note: I love Captain Bran-Brain's "Eastern time zone" bit. Such attention to detail! Leave it to a TV evangelist to schedule the apocalypse during prime time.

Actually, Mr. Dances With Imaginary Wolves says that the end only begins on 21 May. According to him, the real end officially ends on 21 October. (No word on the exact time, Eastern, Greenwich or otherwise.) As a sidebar, Mr. Chock-Full-O-Nuts warned that, between the beginning of the end in May and the big null in October, things are going to get ugly round these parts. The entire planet will pretty much turn into a great big Roland Emmerich disaster movie, starring Bruce Willis as President Hillary Clinton and Ben Affleck as a large meteor.

As you might imagine, some people heeded the dire predictions of Blunt Force Trauma Boy, and duly ran about, "yea, in exceeding silliness," emptying their bank accounts and stocking up on such canned goods as would survive the destruction of the entire physical Universe. Sales of beef jerky spiked. If you tried to point out to these people that Sergeant Musty Mounds Bar had been dead wrong once before, back in 1994, they'd hit you with their beef jerky.

Many similarly impressionable people turned to the internet for guidance which, if you think about it, is as good a sign as any that Gabriel's "Farewell Tour" horn section is warming up in some galactic green room. According to one internet site, "Doomsday will be unlike anything that anyone here on Earth has ever experienced before."

Stop it. Really? D'ya think? Worse than the last several Doomsdays?

And yes, citizens, you can buy an "I SURVIVED JUDGEMENT DAY 2011" t-shirt on the internet. And yes, "judgment" is misspelled, but since the world's nearly over for non-t-shirt owners, let's not niggle.

Author's Note: For some reason, the Total Destruction T-shirt website includes another ad alerting visitors to the five foods you should never eat if you don't want to get fat. I can't tell you what the five foods are, because to find out you have to order a free video for eleven bucks. I half-expected to see apocalyptic shipping options: "Order by 5:30pm Eastern to guarantee delivery before the extinction of all life on your planet! (some restrictions apply, offer not valid in Utah)"

Other, less gullible (and less likable) people took advantage of the situation (again, as you might imagine), and did their best to capitalize on the planetary paranoia, hoping to log some last-minute disgustingly selfish behavior before the cosmic curtain dropped. Suddenly, every product imaginable was offering a "lifetime warranty" and a "money-back guarantee," including day-old milk, and caskets, and vasectomies.

Weather personalities did away with the ten-day forecast, and predicted a very severe (but short) hurricane season. Garden centers reported a drastic drop in sales of perennials. Commodities traders sold short, or went long, or held, or clipped, or angled into the near flat for a buttonhook when the defense was showing blitz, or whatever it is they do in-between apparent ends of universes in which commodities traders don't have a vested fiduciary interest, if that's actually possible.

At hot-dish suppers across the American South, Baptists were observed eating their desserts first. Catholic charities didn't slow down a bit, and are still mailing me for donations. Oddly, though, I stopped getting mail from the Presbyterians and the Buddhists. Hmmm. Wonder what they know?

Things got so weird that ex-Presidential hopeful Donald Trump, America's favorite Follicle Monster, developed an honest-to-goodness sense of humor which, if you think about it, is as good a sign as any that the Four Horsemen are barreling down the home stretch. On his hit TV show, "Dancing With The Glee Club Survivor Stars Who Dissed The Celebrity Sorcerer's Apprentice," His Trumpness looked an eager contestant in the eye and, what with the end of the world and everything, made the ultimate tease: "You're tenured."

Car dealers were the worst. After noting the "6pm Eastern" pronouncement by Admiral Aberration, some car dealers on the East Coast ran commercials in the Central Time Zone, just to get in that one extra hour's sales commission.

You may be wondering: how did the Cable Kook-Blanket Prophet-For-Profit come up with 21 May 2011? Easy. A simple combination of studied deduction, mathematical acumen and, I'm guessing, intravenous mescaline. Witness:

· The number 5 equals "atonement," the number 10 equals "completeness," and the number 17 equals "heaven." (source: Helen Thomas)

· Calculations begin on April 1, 33 AD. (source: eyewitness Strom Thurmond)

· The time between April 1, 33 AD and April 1, 2011 is 1,978 years.

· If 1,978 is multiplied by 365.2422 days (the number of days in a solar year), the result is 722,449. (source: one extremely bored grad student)

· The time between April 1 and May 21 is 51 days. (source: Sesame Street, Episode 208)

· 51 + 722,449 = 722,500. (source: my iPhone)

· 5 - 10 - 17, squared ... aka, atonement - completeness - heaven, squared ... also equals 722,500.

· Therefore, the world is ending Saturday at 6pm. Eastern. (source: mescaline)

See? Any questions? It's blisteringly simple.

Unless his calculations didn't compensate for Daylight Savings Time.

Hmmm. Wonder if I should go get milk?