Happy Mayan Apocalypse!

SLIGHTLY OFF THE MARK

 

            Maybe an apocalypse on December 21^st wouldn’t be such a bad thing, if it meant I wouldn’t have to go through another Indiana winter.

            There’s a much simpler explanation as to why the Mayan calendar screeches to a halt. Some people think the world is going to end because that very accurate calendar stops on December 21^st of this year; others think the date ushers in a New Age where we’ll beat our swords into ploughshares, dogs and cats will lie down together, and the government will give us all new cell phones. I’d like an iPhone, please. The ways things are going, that last is the most believable part of all of this.

            But what if the Mayans just ran out of paper? Or, in their case, stone?

            “Um … excuse me, Mr. B’ak’tun, but there’s a problem … I reached the end of the stone.”

            “So what? You’ve gone hundreds of years into the future with it, K’iche’. By then we’ll all be dead and your stone will be buried in the jungle somewhere. Let’s break for lunch and a bracing game of Bul.”

            Two thousand years later, the Bul is as thick as ever.

            (Bul was a real Mayan game, by the way: It was played with corn. Do with that as you will.)           

( The main proof that the Mayans weren’t predicting the world’s end is the fact that January didn’t bother them. I mean, they were in the tropics, January was probably nice. Wouldn’t they have preferred to end the world in May, before it got too hot? )