Some of you may have read last week’s In My Humble Opinion column regarding the “End of Times”, or “Doomsday”, or “the Apocalypse” which is apparently looming in our planet’s very near future. Like, in fact, this year to be precise. Further to that theme, there have been many signs pointing to this inevitable outcome.
Some years ago the American sports magazine, “Sports Illustrated”, began their version of the “sign of the apocalypse” in every issue of the magazine as they would site a recent sports related event that could be described as a sign that the apocalypse is upon us. Events like: “A 102 year-old woman from Lincolnshire, England, posed nude for a calendar to raise money for a local soccer team.” Really? Yikes! Or more accurately …ewww. That’s just wrong. Or how about: “An eight-year-old girl was kicked out of a tennis tournament in New Zealand when she was discovered wearing a hidden earpiece to receive coaching from her father.” Again…eight years old! Stage Dads (and Moms)! Tsk, tsk, tsk, it’d be funny if it wasn’t so sad…and then there’s this one: “A Manitoba man was arrested for allegedly calling 911 and demanding that the police return the Jets to Winnipeg.” He did that in 2010…doesn’t seem so weird now does it? Maybe it worked. Or at least he probably thinks it did.
I am only attempting to throw a little humour onto what may be a very serious subject to many people, but as Erica Jong stated, “Humour is one of the most serious tools we have for dealing with impossible situations." So in that vain I will give you some of my versions of the “Signs that the Apocalypse is Upon Us”:
· Many other Canadians are beginning to realize that Saskatchewan is a province of Canada. Go figure!
· My Toronto Maple Loafs are this close to a playoff spot and have, not one, but two, players in the top ten in the NHL’s scoring race. And this is half-way through the NHL’s season not half-way through the first week of the season!!
· The Jersey Shore is the top-rated “Reality TV” show. Seriously, people, c’mon!
· Someone, somewhere…an actual executive at a TV studio no less… approved the airing of “Celebrity Wife Swap” as a series for network television.
· There is a website that you can go to so you can catch up on “Celebrity Wife Swap” if you missed it and forgot to record it.
· “Celebrity” is an adjective used to define “Celebrity Wife Swap” cast members-Rob Bonfiglio, Dee Snider, Tina Yothers, Niecy Nice and Flavour Flav?? Who are these people?
· “Mother gives 8-year-old daughter Botox treatments in effort to help in “Beauty Contest” success!” Stage Moms and Dads again! Mom must be thirsting for her child to become a “celebrity” so the child can have a more unusual upbringing while Mom lives off of her “investment”, then, said “investment” will become a child star who, then, years later, will turn up on “Celebrities Who Have Gone Wild and Swap Wives to Keep Themselves On Television So They Can Still Be Categorized As Celebrities and Show How Becoming A Celebrity Has Ruined Their Lives.” ‘Nuff said.
If there had been a Saskatchewan at the time Mark Twain made this statement he might have used Saskatchewan (according to the rest of Canada) instead of Cincinnati- “If the world comes to an end, I want to be in Cincinnati. Everything comes there ten years later.” Mark Twain (1835-1910).
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
DOOMSDAY'S COMING!!
Well here we are half-way through January 2012 already. Time’s a tickin’, eh? So what are your plans for the last eleven months on Earth? You do know that this is the last year in the life of the planet we call Earth, don’t you? Can Nostradamus, the Mayans and Harold Camping (remember him?) and others all be wrong?
There is a lot of debate out there regarding the accuracy of Nostradamus’ predictions, one of which is the destruction of Earth in December of 2012. Many claim he was dead-on in many of his predictions and still others hail him as a charlatan. Either his predictions are eerily coincidental to many of history’s big events i.e. The Great Fire of London, the arrival of Adolf Hitler and the outbreak of World War II, JFK’s assassination etc. or if he was a cheat, he was a truly gifted and talented one. Imagine creating prophetic quatrains with no more knowledge about the future than just the fact that “history repeats itself” and the desire of people to believe in true prophecy. By writing the way he did, believers can interpret the quatrains he wrote in many ways, allowing them to see whatever they look for. See-World Trade Centre Attacks-9/11/2001.
Then there are the Mayan’s. The Mayans were able to accurately predict every solar eclipse for the last thousand years to the second! Their astronomy and mathematics were unsurpassed in the world during their time and some say that their Long Count Calendar really is the most advanced ever created and the fact that the calendar ends on the 21st of December, 2012, is evidence enough to predict that the world will end when the Mayan calendar does. What it doesn’t account for is that if the Mayan’s could predict the “End of the World” why couldn’t they predict the end of them? Somewhere around 900AD they mysteriously disappeared. Hmmmm?
I’m throwing 90 year-old Harold Camping in there, too, but he isn’t predicting the end of the world on December 21st 2012 like everyone else. You see, Camping is notable for applying numerology to his interpretations of Bible passages in an attempt to predict dates for “The End of Times”. He has previously predicted “Judgment Days” of May 21st 1988, September 6th 1994, May 21st 2011 and finally it was October 21st, 2011. I can imagine what it was like in his study while he was doing his calculating… “Oh, see here, I forgot to carry the two…tsk, tsk, tsk…stupid me (thunks forehead)…it’s not 1988 it’s 1994…What?...Oh my, I don’t understand that…let’s have another look…okay, whoops, sorry, no…wait…yup, it’s definitely May 21st 2011…yes…that’s it…Whadyamean?...oh, okay, hold it…hold it…(eraser noise-scritcha-scritcha)…goes into six…NOW carry the two…of course…THAT’s IT!-October 21st, 2011. Yup, for sure, I’d put money on it!” My, my, my…happy retirement Harold!
I don’t do numerology and I don’t have a crystal ball or a bowl of water ala Nostradamus, as it were…well, I do, have a bowl of water, that is, but all I see in it is…well…water… oh, nevermind…my view is that we should all be living everyday like it’s our last day on Earth anyway. Smell the roses, breath in the air, admire that sunrise, love your fellow man, live, laugh, love…embrace your life on good old Mother Earth for as Joe Cocker famously stated, “Who can say what tomorrow will bring, we’ll see.”
There is a lot of debate out there regarding the accuracy of Nostradamus’ predictions, one of which is the destruction of Earth in December of 2012. Many claim he was dead-on in many of his predictions and still others hail him as a charlatan. Either his predictions are eerily coincidental to many of history’s big events i.e. The Great Fire of London, the arrival of Adolf Hitler and the outbreak of World War II, JFK’s assassination etc. or if he was a cheat, he was a truly gifted and talented one. Imagine creating prophetic quatrains with no more knowledge about the future than just the fact that “history repeats itself” and the desire of people to believe in true prophecy. By writing the way he did, believers can interpret the quatrains he wrote in many ways, allowing them to see whatever they look for. See-World Trade Centre Attacks-9/11/2001.
Then there are the Mayan’s. The Mayans were able to accurately predict every solar eclipse for the last thousand years to the second! Their astronomy and mathematics were unsurpassed in the world during their time and some say that their Long Count Calendar really is the most advanced ever created and the fact that the calendar ends on the 21st of December, 2012, is evidence enough to predict that the world will end when the Mayan calendar does. What it doesn’t account for is that if the Mayan’s could predict the “End of the World” why couldn’t they predict the end of them? Somewhere around 900AD they mysteriously disappeared. Hmmmm?
I’m throwing 90 year-old Harold Camping in there, too, but he isn’t predicting the end of the world on December 21st 2012 like everyone else. You see, Camping is notable for applying numerology to his interpretations of Bible passages in an attempt to predict dates for “The End of Times”. He has previously predicted “Judgment Days” of May 21st 1988, September 6th 1994, May 21st 2011 and finally it was October 21st, 2011. I can imagine what it was like in his study while he was doing his calculating… “Oh, see here, I forgot to carry the two…tsk, tsk, tsk…stupid me (thunks forehead)…it’s not 1988 it’s 1994…What?...Oh my, I don’t understand that…let’s have another look…okay, whoops, sorry, no…wait…yup, it’s definitely May 21st 2011…yes…that’s it…Whadyamean?...oh, okay, hold it…hold it…(eraser noise-scritcha-scritcha)…goes into six…NOW carry the two…of course…THAT’s IT!-October 21st, 2011. Yup, for sure, I’d put money on it!” My, my, my…happy retirement Harold!
I don’t do numerology and I don’t have a crystal ball or a bowl of water ala Nostradamus, as it were…well, I do, have a bowl of water, that is, but all I see in it is…well…water… oh, nevermind…my view is that we should all be living everyday like it’s our last day on Earth anyway. Smell the roses, breath in the air, admire that sunrise, love your fellow man, live, laugh, love…embrace your life on good old Mother Earth for as Joe Cocker famously stated, “Who can say what tomorrow will bring, we’ll see.”
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