Ring out the old, ring in the new — 2011 is about to be officially over, which means that 2012 officially begins, and we all know that on Dec. 21, 2012 or thereabouts, according to Mayan glyphs, life as we know it will end.
Of course the geeks that deciphered the glyphs could be wrong; or the missing tablet with cycle 14 hasn’t been found. Who really knows what the heck was going on back then.
We take this myth stuff so seriously. Maybe it was just a case of procrastination and the guy who was in charge of writing the tablets, said, “Hey I’m tired, the mud hut is getting renovated, my kids are off to school; my wife has those crazy hot flashes, and I’m just not in the mood to start tablet 14 right now. I’ll take a nap and start on it later.”
You all know how these things work out; later becomes tomorrow, tomorrow becomes next week, next week is next year and the next thing you know, centuries have passed and the only thing left is that damn 13th tablet.
Basically the doomsday predictions stem from two tablets found in Tortuguero and the Gulf of Mexico state of Tabasco, isn’t that where we get hot sauce from? Sorry, I digress. Anyway, back to the tablets, they were discovered in the 1960s by archeologists who then translated the symbols and pictures revealing that the Mayan god will return at the end of the 13th cycle, which they worked out to be Dec. 21, 2012 — the end of days. How they got from the return of the Mayan God to the end of days, is a mystery in itself. Go figure.
I read an article that said there will be a tourism boom in Mexico in December. It seems people want to go out of the world in the same place that predicted the demise in the first place. Apparently, the whole Mayan region is booked solid with end-of-days revelers. Good luck getting a room. Believers will have better luck booking the calendar maker’s renovated, abandoned mud hut, if they can find it.
The item also added that this past December marked the beginning of a year-long celebration with countdown parties, Maya priests and Indian dancers performing rituals, burning incense and even putting messages and photos into time capsules to be opened in 50 years. In the Yucatan state, the government has plans to complete the Maya Museum by this coming summer. Let me ask you, why bother? If the world is ending, do we really need a museum? Do me a favor, take the money and invest it in a really big party — that’s what I’m planning on doing.
Until then, wishing all my readers a happy, healthy New Year and keep on reading Not for Nuthin’ — it keeps me employed.
Joanna DelBuono's column appears every Wednesday on BrooklynDaily.com. She can be reached at jdelbuono@cnglocal.com.
