The end is near

OK, y'all best get prayed up, because they have pinpointed the exact date when the world will end.

And it's not just from some wacko street wanderer with a felt marker and a cardboard sign. No sir, this is

the real deal. It's a collective agreement between a number of reputable parties. This time, we know for sure when it's all going to be over.

The "they" who have determined this include our old French friend Nostradamus. But this time, he's not alone. This time he has the corroborated conclusions of such masterminds of fortune-telling as the Mayans and a bunch of scientists who study such things.

Thanks to their extensive research, we now know when we will all sell the collective farm.

Now go get yourself a pen and something to write on so you can put this down on paper and transfer it to your calendars and electronic organizers later.

Go ahead. I'll wait. Waiting. Waiting. Humming Final Jeopardy theme. Waiting. Waiting. Oh good, you're back. You ready? Here's the date: Dec. 21, 2012. Yep. That's what they said.

And who am I to argue with this kind of mind power.

Wouldn't you know it. That's one year before I had planned to retire.

Bummer, huh?

Seems they found some lost Nostradamus writings somewhere, I don't know, in a wine cellar or something (which, by the way, is where I think ole Nostradamus might have gotten the "inspiration" for many of his "prophecies") and have deciphered them and come up with this particular day when we will all be wiped off the face of the earth.

This is in conjunction with some other studies that have determined the Mayans — who were obviously obsessed with time and calendars and what not and spent many hours, days, months and years keeping track of time and celestial body movements — devised a universal calendar that ends on this exact date.

Does that stink or what? Time just runs out. The calendar dead-ends. Who'd have thunk it? Imagine yourself keeping track of time with the Mayan calendar and you wake up Dec. 21, 2012, and check your to-do list and it says TODAY'S THE DAY YOU GET ANNIHILATED!

How weird is that?

Now I don't know much about the Mayans (didn't they become extinct or get eaten by dinosaurs or something?) but as for Nostradamus, I've never held much stock in this poor old guy's writings. First of all, he writes in something called "quatrains," which are simply four-line poems which may or may not rhyme. Second of all, they were written in code because ole Nostra was afraid the queen would lop off his head if she found him predicting doom and destruction, which is not the kind of thing a ruler wants to hear because it could upset the peasants and lead to a revolt.

And the quatrains could be interpreted to mean, well, pretty much ANYTHING you wanted them to mean.

The guy just babbles on and on and on and nobody really knows what he's talking about.

And none of the Dec. 21, 2012 predictions say HOW the end will come. Oh, they hinted that it might be a giant fireball from the sky, or it might be a worldwide flood.

They said it had something to do with when the earth will be exactly at the center of the universe and is aligned with the sun and moon and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

So you've been warned.

So don't wait until the last minute to get ready. I mean if Dec. 22, 2012, comes and we all get vaporized by a giant fireball and you weren't ready, well, don't come crying to me.

Klonie Jordan (editor@gaffneyledger.com) is executive editor of The Gaffney Ledger.