End of the World? Let it burn!

I have been putting off creating this blog since June. But the world is supposedly going to end tomorrow, so...what the hell! If the world doesn't end, I'll work on the blog - including explaining what it's all about. (Digest version: huzzah for pessimism, sarcasm, and cynicism!) If it does, I didn't waste a lot of time. Win-win.

Anyway, a lot of people are excited about the impending apocalypse supposedly predicted by the Maya thousands of years ago. The media's all over it: 

• NPR's On Point with Tom Ashbrook did an hour about how it's not really the end of days. Yeah, right, like we're going to believe the liberal media. Pfft.
• On cable TV, the H2 channel (a History Channel spin-off) is presently airing a marathon of a series called Countdown to Apocalypse. The primary History Channel has set aside three hours this evening alone, including a two-hour-long program called simply 2012 the End is Now. Yes, that's the title - verbatim. I guess they decided not to waste the second of the precious time we have left that it would take to put some form of punctuation in the show's title. And yet they're repeating the program tomorrow...but if the world ends tomorrow, who's going to catch the repeat?
• CNBC is re-airing a program called Apocalypse 2012. And for those of you who don't really think the end is nigh, CNBC's website also has lots of tips on how to profit from the hysteria! Woohoo! Oh, and there's a handy FAQ that's a fun read.
• A nightclub in Atlanta didn't need CNBC to tell them how to exploit the silliness: they're throwing a big party starting at 10pm tomorrow. Sorry, kids, you can't experience the end of days at this nightclub - it's only for people age 21 and up. As if it matters if someone underage has a beer before their imminent death in a fiery inferno. Who's going to suspend their liquor license after the world ends, I wonder?

So that's all fine, well, and good. The world probably isn't going to end tomorrow. But here's my question: do we want the world to end? I think that many of us have a secret - even subconscious - desire for all this nonsense to be done and over with. Pain, suffering, loneliness, anxiety, fear, doubt, tragedy, struggle...haven't we had enough? Haven't we had enough wars, natural disasters, and human-caused catastrophes (like school shootings)?

What's the point, anyway? The Earth will eventually be destroyed. "We'll pack up and leave," you say? Well, let's assume that we will somehow manage to marshall the labor and resources that would be needed for an interplanetary exodus. (That's a big assumption. We can't even decide how much to tax and spend without setting up artificial "cliffs" to scare ourselves into making hard decisions!) What's the point of going on? Unless our scientists are somehow mistaken, the universe itself will eventually end in a rather horrifying state called "heat death." So - again - what's the point?

So I say - bring on the end! We've been watching this movie long enough to know that it's not going to end well. It's rather painful to watch, actually. So let the credits roll and let's leave the theater. 

Maybe we can tell the theater management how much we hated the movie and get a refund.