2012: Fact Or Farce?

2012 has become the nation’s favourite number and for a while it has all been thanks to the London Olympics. Winter Olympics in 2010? Too early! No one cares anyway. Global warming crisis by 2050? Too late! Gosh, why couldn’t somebody predict hotness for the world in three years time? How can we compete with Athens & Sydney?

Over the last four years, (yes, it has been four since the UK’s most fateful day following the announcement of sliced bread), council officials, politicians and other men in expensive suits have been falling over themselves to get everything done by that year. It’s only the Olympics, for goodness’ sake, not the end of the world.

Or is it?

Stepping in to justify such hasty pledges by the government and big business for better transport, more estates but less crack and, of course, Travelodge hotels, comes a new film – the imaginatively titled ‘2012’. It suggests the idea that the world shall indeed end in, no prizes readers, that year.

Remember 1999? People were losing their heads saying that the Millennium was the end, as if there had never been a Millennium before. Even the most sceptical worrier would at least claim that the world’s computers would be attacked by some virus or other.

Here follows an excerpt from my diary:

January 1^st, 2000

1.01pm: Woke up. Still very much alive.

1.15pm: Had a wash. Water still running. Heating still working.

1.36pm: Prepared & ate lunch. Food still edible. Body still very much able to digest things.

2.11pm: Switched on computer. Logged onto www.millenniumapocalypse.com. Site had crashed.

2.17pm: Went to www.yahoo.com or www.askjeeves.com. (Remember them? Remember when you actually had to type ‘www.’?) Read a few articles about how the world was still very much in existence.

4.08pm: Went for a walk. Sang ‘What A Wonderful World’ by Louis Armstrong. Actually I didn’t because it is January after all & I didn’t see any bloody red roses or trees of green at all.

4.50pm: Etc.

The film ‘2012’ has what’s called in movie review circles a “stellar cast” with “blockbuster effects” but it seems to be entirely based on a factually-raped Wikipedia page. Apparently, the Mayans wrote calendars back in the olden days, but their calendar ends on either the 21^st or 23^rd (the Mayans must have had pretty horrendous writing skills or just simply couldn’t decide).

Are you believing this yet, readers?

One upshot of this load of tosh is that it gives you a good excuse to buy your relatives shitter Christmas gifts than usual, just in case the Mayans were wrong and we will actually still be living by the 25^th December of that year. So, forget a pair of socks for your beloved – why not bring two members of the family together by giving them one each? It might help them put aside a long-standing argument. Who knows – families might actually bond that Christmas. Try not to mention the whole “end of the world” business, though. It’s not very festive now, is it?