This end up

Each of us must face the apocalypse on our own terms. Personally, I’m heading for the hills, to the heavily fortified Scheide Family Compound, but if last week’s box-office numbers are any indication, this holiday season, millions of Americans will usher in the end of days at the movies.

I haven’t seen 2012 yet and I won’t have to. Programs dedicated to apocalyptic fantasies based on the Mayan calendar, along with scathing critiques of Going Rogue, Sarah Palin’s ghostwritten book, dominated the mainstream media last week. It was like two visions of the same dismal future at the same time.

As for the film, I suggest the paranoia surrounding the date 2012 is based on a gross cultural misinterpretation. The Nostradami insist the fact that the Mayan calendar comes to end in 2012 indicates our time is running out. Problem is, not only did the Mayans not have the wheel, they didn’t have pages either. Otherwise, when they reached the end of the calendar, they would have simply turned it over. I rest my case.

As for Sarah Palin, I think I’ve finally figured it out: It’s the ass. It is apparently her only redeemable asset. I’ll admit, it’s a nice ass. I’ll take Sarah in blue jeans any day over a similarly attired John McCain. I’ve been looking at Sarah’s ass a lot lately; it takes my mind off the fact that her No. 1 best-selling nonfiction book is almost entirely fabricated.

It goes without saying that Sarah and her twisted creed fully embrace Armageddon and expect to spend the end of days in Israel where, after killing all the Jews who refuse to convert to Christianity, they’ll be sucked up to paradise. I’ve never understood the alliance between Zionists and Evangelicals. Here me once again, O children of Israel! These people are not your friends!

Of course, scientifically speaking, if you were to be sucked up into the heavens, you’d quickly succumb to the vacuum of space. (Contrary to countless sci-fi films, you don’t explode or crystallize, you just run out of oxygen and die.) Despite their diminished mental capacity, Sarah’s legions understand this on at least a rudimentary level, which is why when the end comes, I won’t be surprised to find them skulking around in the hills outside the Scheide Family Compound. Warning, teabaggers: We won’t be waiting to see the whites of your eyes. We’ve got scopes.

Previously, I’ve defended the rebellious spirit of the ’baggers, and refused to use the pejorative label liberals have tagged them with, if only because associating a base political movement with what should be a pleasurable sexual act sort of ruins it for me. I’ve since revised my opinion. Metaphorically speaking, Sacramento-based Sal Russo, vial promoter of crazy right-wing ideas and concocter of the Tea Party Express, is clearly dangling his balls in former KFBK talk-radio host Mark Williams’ mouth.

Sorry, Mark. Given your populist rhetoric (at least when you’re not on Fox or CNN), I figured you would’ve gagged by now. The same goes for your racist, ragtag band of paid picketers. I’d hoped that once Americans began taking to the streets—even Americans scraped from the very bottom of the food chain—other, more rational folk would soon follow. That didn’t happen. You and your Obama-in-whiteface placards were simply too … repulsive.

Certainly, there’s good reason for ordinary, normal Americans to take to the streets. The so-called jobless recovery is an oxymoron, which will become immediately apparent when the holiday-shopping figures are released early next year. Consumers are hunkering down, myself included. The real reason I’m not going to see 2012 is that I don’t have the scratch. I might need it for, you know, canned goods and bottled water and stuff.

Besides, if I’m going catch the end of the world at the movies, my money’s on The Road, coming to a theater near you on November 25, just in time for Thanksgiving. In this version of the apocalypse, based on Cormac McCarthy’s best seller of the same name, the bombs have gone off, nuclear winter has permanently set in and human beings are on the menu. If the film, starring Viggo Mortensen and directed by John Hillcoat, comes even close to the book, it might turn out to be one of the most horrifically beautiful movies of all time, and perhaps even a box-office smash, if audiences can get past the cannibalism.

At any rate, lately I’ve been trying to take a more realistic approach toward the end. I’m staying in the here and now, trying not to project a future in which the world has been laid to waste, be it via climate change, nuclear war, fossil-fuel depletion, natural disaster or a second Great Depression. Instead of worrying about the economy, I buy local whenever possible. My carbon footprint is small, so I’m doing my bit to cut down on greenhouse gases. I’m trying to stay positive. After all, pragmatically speaking, the whole point of the apocalypse is not to bring it on, but to prevent it from happening in the first place.