Well, I hope everybody had a nice break. With the economy and everything, I suppose lots of folks had to scale things back a bit, but I hope you at least made it to Kalahari for an afternoon. My break was OK. I mean, it was going really well, with loads of hot chicks and tons of fun in the sun and shots all around. But then one day mid-break I made the mistake of turning on the TV. Dazed from hours in the mid-March sun, I mindlessly surfed my way up into the 40s, which never ends well, as the Great Cable Channel Desert begins with Lifetime at 29. Anyway, not thinking properly, I paused for just a moment on the History Channel and got a big dose of Debbie Downer when I found out the world's going to end in 2012.
The History Channel usually does a good job of crafting intruiging programs that take exactly one half hour to tell you next to nothing. It used to be alright, and I suppose that's why I still flip to it now and then, but now the shows it airs would literally be the dumbest shit on television if the rest of cable programming wasn't right there with them. ‘Unwatchable' is a word that often comes to mind. But this special on Year 2012 was different. Plus, afterward I checked Wikipedia. Turns out it's true: the world as we know it is going to end in three short years and then we are all going to die vague, freakish deaths.
No one is exactly sure how it's going to happen. But between the Mayan calendar ending, the galaxy aligning, Mars attacking and everyone having AIDS, I don't see how we are going to get out of it. Apparently, Nostradamus predicted some crazy shit too, like Sadaam and Hitler returning riding an army of dinosaurs that shoot flaming asteroids out their mouths. So that's going to suck. What can you do though? Stop saving money, I guess. Not that I was. Now that I know the world is ending, I can also finally stop giving any thought at all to the future. I can start banging heaters and auctioning off my kidneys and stop worrying about a modeling career or my credit score. I'm going to keep hitting the gym hard, though, 'cause when the war of the apocalypse begins I still want to be able to kick some ass, just in case we'll be able to watch replays of that in Heaven. But apart from all that, I'm really bummed about the world ending. I'm 22 and just found out the autumn of my life is already past. I had been banking on that autumn to finish my novel. And if my job search hadn't already taught me that going to college was a complete waste of time, this news sure has. I could have taken all that money and time I spent learning and put it toward knocking off items on my Bucket List, like playing capture the flag on golf carts with paintball guns or finally visiting that great metropolis, Milwaukee.
On the bright side, I guess we can stop worrying about all that global warming mumbo jumbo. And, it'll be kind of cool to watch all of human history finally come to an end. I mean, how many people actually get to see something as important as the world ending? Well, I suppose in 2012 about 7 billion of them will. Still, millions of those will probably be blind people, so they don't count. Plus, I'll be able to tell my grandkids that it took the world ending to finally kill a guy like me. Well, on second thought I probably won't be able to tell any grandkids that. I'm sure there's a silver lining somewhere. But boy, did it put a damper on my spring break. I was like, holy shit, if I wasn't a senior right now, I'd only have like 3 spring breaks left before I died! It was pretty sobering. We'll probably be able to think up a lot of hilarious jokes now, though. Like if someone's arm gets torn off in a freak farm accident, he can go, ""Well, it only had a few good years left in it anyway!"" It would really lighten the mood. Or if you're getting married to a girl you don't really like, you can be like, ""Babe, I want to be with you until the end of the world."" She'd be all flattered, but inside you'd be like ""Joke's on you, ho, that's just in three years!"" I'm sure I could think of more if I had time.
It's not clear if David will reply to emails anymore, with the world ending. dhottinger@wisc.edu though.
