So, It Has Come To This. Game Seven As the End of the World...

From the Revelation of Buck O'Neill 8:1-6

1 And when Shoeless Joe had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in that cornfield in Iowa for about the space of half an hour.
2 And I saw the seven Fielders which stood before the Manager; and to them were given seven gloves.
3 And another player this one the Catcher came and stood at the plate, having a golden mask; and there was given unto him much body powder, that he should use the deodorant with the prayers of all saints upon the home plate which was before the Pitcher's mound.
4 And the chalky dust of the deodorant, which came with the prayers of the game attendees, ascended up before the Manager out of the Catcher's hand.
5 And the Catcher took the home plate, and covered it with dirt of the Wrigley Field, and cast it into the earth of Cleveland: and there were Voices on the PA, and Thunderings in the stands, and Lightnings in the upper decks, and an Earthquake felt all the way to San Antonio.
6 And the seven Fielders which had the seven gloves prepared themselves to ground out.

IT'S THE END TIMES PEOPLE.

I woke up this morning to radio chatterers talking about how rigged it all was, but I found out they weren't shilling Trump's latest campaign points about losing this election, they were talking about a rigged Game Six in the World Series so that the Chicago Cubs play the Cleveland Indians in a Game Seven.

See, Game Sevens are like GOLD in the pro leagues. Hockey, Basketball, Baseball... Anything that goes to the FINAL GAME and the FINAL OUT, where EVERYONE knows EVERYTHING is on the line... The TV and radio ratings for such a game are through the roof.

And the word is, the Cubs/Indians Series has been great for ratings.

That's because we're honest-to-God watching history. Of all the teams in pro baseball, these are some of the teams with the longest histories and the darkest, most painful jinxes.

It used to be the Boston Red Sox were the most jinxed team in sports - the infamous Curse of the Bambino - but after winning a Series in 2004 they're no longer the team to feel pity for.

No, that's been the Chicago Cubs - haven't been to a Series since 1945, haven't WON since 1908 (?) - and then the Cleveland Indians - haven't been since 1997, haven't won since 1948.

Cleveland's bad luck has been the source of one of the better baseball movies out there, Major League (avoid the sequels, the original was best).

Chicago Cubs' bad luck is so ingrained into the American culture nobody even remembers thinking of them as winners, despite all the fan love the Cubbies (and beloved park Wrigley Field) get.

Other baseball cities don't have this as bad, save for Washington DC home of the maligned (and long-gone) Senators (thrice!) and always-second-best Nationals (who used to be the sad-sack Expos).

So here we are for Game Seven. Between two jinxed teams, looking to break those jinxes. And only one of them can.

So here we are for the End Times.

Because this is how God rolls, son.

Did you think the Good Lord is gonna let Chicago Cubs or Cleveland Indians off the hook? End all that heartache? Granted, one of these teams' fanbase will carry on the Great Sorrow, but the energy and happiness released by the victors will drown out any Sorrow across the nation.

And God can be both merciful and cruel.

Look at the rest of the world. Wars and rumors of war. Plagues. Mayans refusing to build a new calendar to replace the one that ended back in 2012. Celebrities dying at an alarming rate. An American Presidential election that defies, no worse denies all sane reason.

This is it, people. THIS IS IT.

The Yellowstone Caldera is raring to go, I can feel it. I CAN FEEL IT.

Also, I think the Cubs are gonna win this in the 10th Inning, 4-3.

How Went the Year 2012?

Well:

1) I'm still looking for full-time employment.  I have a contractual will-call job at least, which keeps me active and up-to-speed with the technological needs of my information-based profession.  I did get about six different libraries interviewing me - two of them with follow-up interviews! - which is a vast improvement to the number of interviews I had in 2011 (one) and 2010 (one).  And I still have an interview scheduled for this Friday, with one of the libraries that interviewed me with a follow-up, so I'm hopefully in good standing with them (fingers crossed for luck).

2) My guy got elected to President.  The Far Right's attempts to paint Obama as a "failure" and a "disaster" went nowhere.  And the one place at the federal level where the Far Right still holds any power - an unbalanced U.S. House - is one vote away from falling into chaos.

3) A lot of great genre movies - The Avengers, Dark Knight Rises, Wreck-It Ralph, Brave, Skyfall - this season.  I'd love to see all of them nominated like crazy for the Oscars this year... but noooooooo, it's all gonna be Lincoln and Zero Dark Thirty instead.  Sigh.

4) Too many shootings.  And even now, there's reports that someone shot at firefighters responding to a New York state neighborhood fire with two firemen dead and two others wounded.

5) The Mayans did not doom us.  Which is kinda okay, because the real Mayans never wanted the apocalypse anyway: it was some crank Eurowhite guy trying to sell his books.

6) Breitbart's legacy - a website smear machine - is going through some rather public splits right about now.  Schadenfreude, thou art pretty tasty during the holidays...

How was the year for you?

Apocalypse Why

It's just to note that today is WELL PLAYED MAYANS DAY we've been worried about since, oh, the Mayans forgot to make a follow-up long form calendar for the one expiring today.

Personally, I only found out about today back when I was a huge fan of The X-Files (aka a Philer, and a 'Shipper to boot), when the Mayan Calendar date was a plot point to the series finale.  But before that I've borne witness to such end-times embarrassments as Y2K, Harmonic Convergence, the Jupiter Effect, and the Tampa Bay Bucs winning a Super Bowl.  Not to mention a constant stream of predicted Raptures and Armageddons by various religious leaders screeching about War, Plague, Anti-Christs and hangers-on.

Just to note, before I go any further, I do not blame Mayans (and yes, they are still around) for the hype and hoopla.  This is all from some New-Age crank selling books.  But that comes later...

Look at that end-time embarrassments list regarding Dates Predicted for Apocalyptic Events on Wiki, this is something stretching back to even before Christianity was a gleam in Mother Mary's eye.  And it's not even including the mythology of various pantheons - such as the Norse and their Ragnarok - spelling massive catastrophe for not only humanity but the Gods as well.  This seems to be a hard-wired element of the human psyche: the expectation that at any moment, especially a moment that higher powers decided to create clues for announcing such doom, the world will end.

So, the eternal question: Why?

This is an even bigger question considering the age we live in.  We have enough human history now, enough recorded moments and documented failures of apocalypse - I've lived through (from 1970 to now) what I count to be more than 40 (I gave up around 2006)! - that I'm just sitting here asking "Why are people still buying this sh-t?"

Making it worse is noticing how the SAME NAMES keep cropping up on the list of predictors: David Berg, Harold Camping, Pat Robertson, Ronald Weinland, even a psychic debunker like The Amazing Criswell made an End-Times prediction for FSM's sake.  You would think after getting the FIRST and what was supposed to be ONLY prediction of THE END wrong, nobody would let them come back and make even MORE predictions ("Okay, so last Friday didn't work out, but I guarantee JEBUS is gonna show up at Mardi Gras like three years from now and order some Hurricanes!").

Insert head-desking here.

Why?  Why are these guys still out there?  Why are they still allowed to spew predictions they've already proven they're not good at making?

It's not that I blame the First Amendment, the right they have to say whatever they believe as long as it doesn't incite to riot.  After all, these End-Time predictors are global (Japan, China, Uganda, etc) in places that don't have as much free-speech rights.  And there are a ton of First Amendment users who abide by the common-sense principles of not saying anything stupid that can come back to haunt them later.

What I blame are the con artists who found in religion a near-perfect scam.  Look at how nearly all of these seers of prophecy are religious leaders or spiritualists of some form.  All they gotta do is whip up some frenzy, get the True Believers thinking they and only they are special enough to survive the Wrath of God, and get them involved with money work and more money to get a cozy little life-style going (NOTE: I am not a huge fan of wealthy priests claiming to serve God while owning four-car-garage mansions.  Living the good life while supposedly helping the impoverished reeks of hypocrisy).

Thing is, these "religious leaders" have to give these Believers something to fear: the expiration date.  You gotta give 'em an End Time to actually be worried.  And so they offer up a date, something that fits well into the numerology of faith (the number of years since the birth of the Messiah, the numbers of the Beast, the anniversary of a significant event).  And now, you've got the attention of the faithful who'll make sure to advertise everyone's doom, safe and satisfied that the Good Lord spares the True Believers (SEE Rapture, The; something that caught on in American Christian theology in the 1830s).

And then the day comes and goes, and for some Godforsaken reason none of the True Believers seem to get really p-ssed off.  Oh sure, the "outsiders" aka the People Who Didn't Buy It For One Second may laugh their asses off, but they're not in much of a position to sue for emotional damages or anything.  If anyone's got to be angry at the likes of Ronald Weinland - a "pastor" who predicted TWO different End-Times in 2011 AND 2012, and is still ballsy enough to "amend" his deadline to 2013 now that we're 10 days away from that year - it ought to be the people who bought his Rapture story and got suckered.

Could it be the embarrassment of admitting you got suckered?  Could it be the Belief is strong enough to ignore the doubt of the failed seer?  In a sane world, anyone having predicted an End-Time that does not come about ought to be removed from the stage, mocked for all time, made to refund any moneys made from selling doomsday materials - Books!  Recordings!  Beach towels! - and forced to repair broken-down casino slot machines on Indian reservations as a reminder that the odds are not ever in their favor.

For myself, I've seen enough, read enough to know that the End of the World on a global scale is more in the realm of science, not Faith.  End Times on a personal matter such as a death in the family or that of a friend, that IS Faith, and one that ought to be a guiding point in each of our lives but in our own ways.  My End of the World isn't going to match yours, I know that.

And the question of why that is doesn't bother me at all.  Because in my worldview, God is not going to end the likes of us.  We're too good an audience to God's everyday delights.

And thus endth the sermon.

Top Ten Reasons Why The Mayans Are Not Dooming Us Friday 12/21/12

Here, straight from Xunantunich Belize near the center of all things Mayan, is your list of Top Ten Reasons the Mayans Are Not Dooming Us this Friday Dec. 21st, 2012!

10) The Mayans care not about ending the suffering of Detroit Lions/Cleveland Browns/L.A. Clippers/Toronto Maple Leafs/Houston Astros fans any time soon.

9) Mayans had nothing to do with Twinkies (tm) being no more.  Blame that on the corrupt CEOs at Hostess Inc who mismanaged the company into bankruptcy.

from memegenerator.net

8) Mayans are still around.  If they had any sense regarding any prediction of apocalypse, they'd have fled the planet long ago in their ancient rocket ships. 

7) Misinterpretation of the Mayan calendar.  It's really a recipe sheet for the MOST INCREDIBLE BANANA NUT MUFFINS YOU WILL EVER HAVE IN YOUR LIFE!  ...what?

6) The Mayan calendar's power source has run down, that's all.  We need to replace it with a Baghdad battery.

5) Didn't anyone read the Terms and Conditions agreement in the bottom left-hand corner?  This thing hasn't been valid since Cortes voided the warranty.

4) Planet-destroying Aliens do not go by the Mayan calendar, they go by Stardate.  Duh.

3) The so-called Calendar is really a promotional poster for an ancient Mayan drama about a weather priest forced to live the same sacrificial day over and over and over again.  It was called "Lowland Paca Day"

2) It's just a BLEEPING calendar!  We can get some astronomers and chronal measurement professionals together and make a BLEEPING PC/Mac app for a new Mayan calendar starting on this Saturday!  C'mon people get working on that app!

And the Number One Reason The Mayans Are Not Dooming Us this Friday Dec. 21st, 2012:

1) Disney is making a new Star Wars movie.  Disney will not allow some f-cking catastrophe to end the world before even pre-production is finished.  Even the Mayans know not to f-ck with Disney.  They go after day care centers for God's sake.

(had to write this, because the madness of the other major news story right now is too rage-fueling for me to cope)

The Saturnalia Wish List of 2012 That Even Mayans Would Like

Heya!  Once again, every reader from Japan, Russia and elsewhere linking to this site for the "funny Iran military" pictures on that Iran Day Six article, as part of our effort in the WAR ON BILL O'REILLY'S CHRISTMAS we here at this blog celebrate the life-affirming pagan holiday known as Saturnalia! The day where fully expect the Mayans to show up even though their calendar ends on 12/21.  Okay Mayans, you're bringing the homemade brew and you know it!

Anywho. As part of tradition, I'm posting my wishlist to The Roman Lord of Time (hi there!) in the mad hopes that the pagan gods will once again after thousands of years notice us tiny insignificant lifeforms, and smite our enemies and grant us boons.

So here's the wish list!

1) A freaking full-time job.

2) No, seriously, a full-time job.  It's been 4 years since I lost my job as a librarian, I've been looking for anything related to my skill sets, only just recently getting a part-time on-call job working desktop support, but it's been hard as hell to find anything thanks to a Congress that refuses to do any kind of Jobs Stimulus package to encourage more hiring and boosting of the economy.  It's not the deficits or the debt that's the problem, you Beltway morans, it's the LACK OF JOBS!  THE LACK OF WAGES TO PAY FOR SH-T LIKE COLLEGE LOANS AND MORTGAGES AND KIDS' SCHOOLING AND HEALTH CARE!  /rage

3) 50,000 people buying my ebooks!  If I can't have a job, at least a boost of income from ebook sales...

4) Grover Norquist forced to watch as dreaded TAXES GO UP, and the universe failing to implode, demonstrating once and for all THAT HE'S AN IDIOT.

5) A nice stocking stuffer would be this GravityLight thingee someone's trying to market.  For $5 a pop, you get a light source off of an LED light (the wave of the future) by using simple mechanics (pulley/gears) to charge up the light.  No batteries, no outlets, no burning of carbon fuels like oil or coal, just human energy lifting the weight up and viola!  We live in amazing times.

6) Yo, Obama!  If you need a reference librarian to shelve books in the West Wing, CALL ME...

7) That the civil war ends in Syria as soon as possible with as little loss of life than has already been lost; that Egyptian democracy endures on the streets as peaceful protests end the threat of dictatorship and Islamist extremism; that Iranian politics give way to moderate leadership more keen on economic and social well-being for their citizenry than on aggressive nuclear baiting against the U.S.,

8) That the traffic I got on this blog during October and November (2000 to 3000 views!) keeps up and I get some honest-to-Mithras comments for a change...

9) That voter suppression efforts that the GOP tried to inflict on people this election cycle get blocked, banned, and richly denied in order to ensure ALL voters have their rights protected for all time,

10) That the upcoming series of movies in 2013 - Star Trek Into Darkness, Man of Steel, Iron Man 3 - not suck.  Please o PLEASE SATURN LORD OF TIME, LET THESE MOVIES ROCK N ROLL...

There.  Oh, and again, make sure you forward any bills for your annual sacrificial bull get sent to Mr. O'Reilly care of Fox Not-News.  BWHAHAHAHAHA.

Enjoy the season!  ...and the countdown to the Mayan calendar continues...