As you may be aware, the end is nigh. When? May 21, 2011. Why? Something to do with Jesus explained here.
A colleague takes her kids to an elementary school where one mom has told her son the world will end a week on Saturday. My friend is dying to ask if she’s enrolled him in summer camp, just in case.
So, if we have 8 days to go…what should we do?
Washington, D.C. is enjoying the most delightful spring. This would be an excellent time to skip work and school and laze around in Rock Creek Park day after day. Or have a full on Bacchanalian party till you die kind of event.
I’d like to finish loading my CDs on to my laptop, just so it’s done. And tackle that ironing basket. And clean out the storage cupboard. Would hate to leave things in disarray.
Perhaps I should buy a dozen bottles of Dom Perignon, sit out on my roofdeck and read all TGW posts I skipped when I was busy. I’d hate for you all to look at me reproachfully in the after life. And I only just started reading Game of Thrones and there are several books in the series, with the finale coming out in July. Should George R.R. Martin publish a synopsis?
This could be a great moment to have sex with people you haven’t felt brave enough to ask. Or a time to say what you really think. Or the moment to buy five pairs of Camper shoes.
What would you do?
My instinct this moment would be to take a nap but I suppose that will be an inevitable activity post end of the world. So I would make a few calls . . . put my favorite journals in fireproof boxes for the mutant cockroaches and eat. All sorts of lovely things: cheese, crusty bread, wine, spreads of all fattening kinds, pasta with more cheese . . .
PS – I am facinated by math as religion. Oid timey debate – numerology vs. narrative as the language of God.
If I knew the world w**/*(*) going to end next week, I’d just keep doing the same stuff I’m doing now, because otherwise why am I doing those things now?
Just kidding! Empty bank account, eat and drink without ceasing, buy diamond tiaras for the cat (what, I think it’d be funny and THE WORLD IS ENDING SO WHO CARES), definitely tell a few people off–I can’t even think of anyone who need an off-telling but I’m sure they’re out there, definitely have the sex with people I haven’t been brave enough to ask, have a lot more sex with the people I have been brave enough to ask…
“Drink and dance and laugh and lie,
Love, the reeling midnight through,
For tomorrow we shall die!
(But, alas, we never do.) ”
–Dorothy Parker, “The Flaw in Paganism.” All that, except the dancing. I don’t care if the world is ending, I still am not dancing.
*I feel itchy about the nearly-dead subjunctive/conditional especially as relates to awkward stuff like sequence of tenses so I bailed on was/were.
Come on, F.P.: fight the good fight! If you knew the world were going to end next week, wouldn’t it simply dismay you to here all those wasses messing up your orgy?
I’ve been really interested in the May 21 movement for a little bit now. It seems that the advertising campaign was started by one group who “guarantees” that the 21st is judgement day.
Since I have a hard time believing that leaders ever truly believe the wares they are peddling, I’m really looking forward to the campaign that’s going to follow.
DAVE !!!!!! I”m home GODDAMN IT! I”M HOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
stella, we Crazy Americans! “You people and your RELIGION!… and all your MONEY! … my god, your are a terrifying lot!”
Museums. Lots and lots of museums. A whirlwind of food and drink and museums, ending up in Florence. I’ve never been, but it seems like a good place to end up at the end of the world.
FYI: This same religious figure predicted the end of it all back in 1995. After it didn’t happen, he re-ran the numbers. I’m curious to hear him interviewed next Sunday. I think he’ll be back at the abacus.
Oh, I was very tired last night and couldn’t spell! Yikes! Let’s hope the internet also ends on May 21.
Fixed it, couldn’t help it, and anyways…the world is ending!
I was in downtown NYC yesterday and walked past a bunch of blond people standing across from the WTC site with placards and pamphlets about this. If the kind of people get raptured who think they’re getting raptured, the rest of us will be so much better off. Universal health care, confiscatory tax rates on the rich, equal rights for all. I say go ahead and float up to Jesus, people.
The last few weeks, there has been a guy standing in front of Penn Station wearing a sandwich board about the May 21st Revelation — also Family Radio is advertising heavily on the cars of NJ Transit. Not sure what they are going for; the Apocalypse seems like a strange time to build your brand. The guy at Penn Station is hilarious; I gawk at him every time I walk by there.
Yeah, I don’t think they promise the end of the world, do they? Just the rapture, right? So we’ll get to stay here and enjoy seven years of tribulations.
A friend is writing a dissertation about apocalypse fantasies and why we seem to want the world to end. Her point is that devastating things are happening all around us, and we have to deal with the consequences every time. World-ending fantasies are about not wanting to pick up our trash, basically.
So the “what would you do if the world was ending” question is a great one for (and right now I realize this is the point, so forgive me for being dull) finding out what you would do if you didn’t have to deal with consequences. What are the consequences you most fear, that keep you from enjoying your life? Do you fear financial problems? Sexual/interpersonal problems? Guilt? Gaining weight? The judgment of others?
Spending money, eating and drinking what I want, and committing sins have not been difficult for me in themselves, but preventing myself from doing what I want because of not being able to deal with emotional fallout has been a problem. And I don’t think it can be fixed by living each day as my last. The apocalypse fantasy doesn’t reveal anything like a good life plan. It just shows you what your deepest anxieties about consequences are.
If there were a real coming end of the world, I think it would be a lot like the Tarkovsky movie “The Sacrifice,” in which everyone knows they’re all going to die and so they lie around the house in a catatonic state of terror and emotional paralysis.
Well, the best thing would be if only you knew the world was ending, because once everyone knows, they all start going crazy and money is worth nothing and all the things you’d like to do – skydiving and traveling and going to museums and all that jazz – will be nearly impossible to accomplish because the people who run them will be off getting high or having giant orgies.
Anyway. If the world wasn’t falling to pieces in anticipation of the event, I would probably try some scary, death-defying things, like donning a squirrel suit and flying through the mountains, which I’m too scared to try now for fear I’d injure or kill myself. See here for an example.
And: lest anyone think Stella is kidding about the ironing basket, I believe she means it. I never saw anyone derive so much pleasure from ironing (while listening to British radio soap operas) in my life!
OK, here’s what I’d do if I knew for sure the world was ending: I would tell people how they’ve hurt me. I have a really active dream life in which I discover a lot of things about what’s happening in my brain, and I have dreams for years and years about telling people off. I dream about screaming at a girl I went to church with who humiliated me for years because I admitted I liked a boy at school. (My interest in him led her to find out more about him so she could make more fun of me; they started dating in 7th grade and are now married.) I used to dream about screaming at my ex-boyfriend’s ex-wife for having emotionally abused him so miserably that he was terrifically shitty to me. These dreams have been replaced by dreams about screaming at him for breaking up with me by email (after 2.5 years!) without letting me say goodbye to his children. I have dreams in which I scream at my dad for not talking to me anymore after I started dating. Awake, it never really occurs to me that I could still be upset about anything, not beyond the thought that something happened and it sucked.
Generally, it seems like my angry-rant dreams are about people who tell me I don’t have the freedom to have any feelings because they are the ones who get to have all the feelings. They get to love, hate, want, fear, etc., and my job is to disappear without saying a word when it’s convenient for them. If the world were ending, I’d want a chance to say some shit to people’s faces that I either should have said a long time ago or learned to deal with by now.
That’s not as fun as an orgy I guess.
We can have a TGW bacchanal where everyone eats spaghetti alla carbonara, drinks the best wine, listens to amazing music (dancing or not), and fools around while wearing nothing but Camper shoes (barring the inevitable squirrel suit or purple wig).
Wait, how is this different from our regular New Year’s Eve?
Maybe Scotty Gee can combine his camper shoes with that tentacle scarf from LP the other day. That’s a true apocalyptic party!
“let’s hope the internet ends too”
THAT is funny!
GOOD NIGHT!
Some grey bloke has helpful advice for the faithful.
Well, apparently this particular apocalypse is starting with earthquakes in NZ (That old chestnut! How will we even notice?) so I’ll let you know. Bear in mind we are a day ahead down here (Yes, I am in Tuesday!) so there will be plenty of time for hysterics. Pah!
i picked up a brochure in the subway yesterday… do these people still really think that photocopying on floursecent paper is a slam-dunk selling device? Blessed are the poor indded!
ah!
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/05/14/new-york-man-spends-life-savings-ahead-21-doomsday/
Now this guy should be in the next whitney biennial, THIS is COMMITMENT! $140,000!
Ivy, what is the report from NZ…? And everyone else, are you still out there…..? Why is there an echo-o-o-o-o-o-o????
ah, interestingly, even Christchurch didn’t get a rumble. and the poor buggers have had thousands of them since last September.
we kept waiting for it, but no.