You Got Three Years, Bub

Do you know what today is? It's the twentieth anniversary of the day Communism fell in Romania. One of my good friends from high school, who is now a professor at Princeton, was in Bucharest when all the proverbial shit hit the fan.

You know what else today is? It's the three year pre-anniversary of the day the Aztecs say the world, she goes kaput. That's their official term for it.

I wouldn't normally mention either one of these grand and monumental events, except that they have something in common. Er, well, aside from one being the end of Nicolae Ceausescu's world and the other being the end of, well, all of our world. Worlds? Whatever.

Oh, and today is Scope's birthday. Which also means that it's my birthday, too. (And Chrissy Moran's. If you don't know who she is, don't look her up while you're at work, otherwise you might offend someone with her "body of work").

More importantly, you've got thirty-six months to get done pretty much everything you've ever wanted to get done.

The first I heard about the great cataclysmic end of all existence was in college while I was taking one of those cultural sensitivity courses foreign culture classes required to graduate. I opted for the Latin American course over the African course because I thought, given the ever-increasing Hispanic population in these United States, it would behoove me to learn a little something about their culture and lifestyle. Granted, now, given my line of work, maybe the African classes would have been better, but hindsight is 20/20, they say.

Plus, I wouldn't have gotten to read 100 Years of Solitude had I taken the African class. Jose Arcadio Buendia was well-equipped for life.

Anyway, I naturally perked up when I heard the date of December 22, 2012 being thrown around for the end of the world because I thought, "Hey, no better way to celebrate my 37th birthday than by burning this joint to the ground..." Naturally, someone looked at the date and thought that it was messy, so it has mysteriously morphed into December 21st, 2012 in the past 12 years or so. In case you can't see it, here's the new numerology: 12-21-12. Neat, huh? And, in case you don't believe me as to how this is all hooey and hoaxy, the end of the world is supposed to arrive at 11:11 am GMT. Convenient, huh?

I mean, it does make perfect sense that the Aztecs would predict the end of the world to fall at a specific hour based on a timeline centered around London, England--a place they had no idea even existed. But, who am I to judge the countless hours charlatans and con artists have poured into this?

The whole idea about the end of the world coming on December 22 21, 2012 is because the Aztec calendar (or is the Mayan calendar...hmmm...wait, those are interchangeable, right?) runs out on that date. The Aztec calendar was based on the 260-day calendar which coincides with human gestation. They also employ a solar calendar, which is 360 days long, consisting of 18 twenty day months, and each year is called a "tun". If you take twenty tuns and you get another day older and deepr in debt. Er, um, you take twenty tuns and you get a katun. Take twenty of these katuns and you have what is called a Baktun, and 13 Baktuns equal a Great Cycle. A Great Cycle translates into 1,872,000 days, or roughly 5125 years.

So, what does all this mean? Well, aside from the fact that the Aztecs missed the actual length of a year by five days--which is pretty goddamned spectacular, since they had no computers, telescopes or the ability to measure the length of the year from multiple latitudes--it doesn't mean much. What it does mean is that, based on some guess work which puts the beginning of the current Great Cycle at August 11, 3114 BC, this particular cycle of the calendar runs out in 2012.

And...what? Well, it depends on whom you believe. The aforementioned charlatans and con artists would have you believe that, when the Aztec calendar runs out, so does time itself. If you ask the Aztecs, it means that on December 22nd or 23rd, the new cycle starts anew.

And what does that mean? Well, it means that in 7137 AD, we get to go through this whole pile of bullshit once more.

So...you've got three years, my friends. And then you can join me on my 37th birthday, and we can party like there's no tomorrow (heh) and we'll celebrate the turning of a new Great Cycle. Hey, I'll drink to that!