Judgment Day plays havoc with long weekend

If you’re reading this, congratulations — you’ve survived Rapture 2011. If not, well, easy come, easy go.

 Yes, friends, this is May 21, Judgment Day, the end of the world, or, at least, the beginning of the end. A fellow from California named Harold Camping has calculated that today marks 7,000 years since Noah’s flood.

 If he’s correct, we’re in for some serious earthquakes to start things off. As best as I can figure, Christ will reappear and take three million people to heaven.

 The rest of us will spend the next five months putting up with quakes, floods, famine and pestilence until the Earth blows up.

 There’s been plenty of warning — billboards, newspaper ads, and signs on vans and campers. And if you can’t believe a sign on a moving vehicle, what can you believe? Just ask the Centre for Rational Thought.

 As I write this, I realize I’m totally unprepared. Others have been busily planning Judgment Day conferences, spending extra time with family and friends, giving away money, or running around telling everyone to repent.

 There are some fuzzy areas, such as what happens to pets and astronauts. An atheist group in the U.S. has offered to look after pets, for a nominal charge. The astronauts are stuck.

 One Facebook page welcomes the event, the writer announcing intentions to “pick up some sweet stereo equipment” after everyone is gone.

 There are some great T-shirts selling on the Internet, like Rapture Ready, and the less confident I Survived Judgment Day 2011.

 I see some definite advantages to the situation. The parkade issue becomes moot, for example, since there’s no way it will be built before October. And, really, how much damage can Stephen Harper do before then?

 Mind you, it has the potential to play hell with the long weekend, not to mention the HST referendum, but I’m confident Canada Post will deliver our mail-in ballots come rain, sleet, snow or great chunks of the Earth breaking off. Assuming, of course, that the posties aren’t on strike at the time.

 Most Christians, it should be pointed out, aren’t on side with Camping. Even if they believe in the Rapture, they don’t believe a date can be put to it.

 “At the end of the day, Christianity looks like an idiotic faith system,” one pastor said of the publicity around Camping’s prediction.

 This is Camping’s second try at crunching the numbers. He admits he miscalculated when he predicted the end was coming in 1994. He’s not the only one who got it wrong the first time — I find at least 11 other predictions of the end going back to 1844.

 And, we’re not finished yet.. Sir Isaac Newton predicted it will come in 2060, so a lot of us will miss that one.

 Then there’s Dec. 21, 2012, calculated using numerology and who knows what else.

 A disaster movie called 2012 came out last year, shot partly in the Kamloops region. If you want to get a look at some local scenery, and, while you’re at it, also get a picture of what the end of the world might look like, I recommend renting it from your local video store.

 If it’s still standing.