End of the Long Count, baby. Waste some time as the world comes crashing down with linky distractions!
It ain’t the Mayan apocalypse that’s destroying the world, anyway. George Monbiot reckons the real culprit is those rubbish Christmas presents you buy when you’ve run out of ideas.
William S. Burroughs reads his short story, The Junky’s Christmas. Plus claymation.
Captain America’s diary comic (by Robyn E. Kennealy)
This Homeland Security video is kind of amazing
A very short interactive text story about a round-headed kid who really wants to kick a football (by Tof Eklund)
These pics of the Syrian civil war are gloomy, as you’d expect, but you have to see the home-made warfare device in pics 14-16… (via Kathleen)
Star Wars sequel debacle simulatron
NASA Gangnam Style riff is great fun
How many people are in space right now?
Check out also this tour of the International Space Station by its departing commander (via Nate)
Also from nate – an elegy for the web we lost. It really is a different online world out there compared to a decade ago.
What to do when the bus refuses to show up
Is evolutionary psychology worthless?
On the occasion of his 80th birthday, NZ’s official national wizard speaks vividly about what he’s been doing these past few decades. I find it weird that Gandalf is now more famous in NZ than our real-life official wizard.
Movie posters recreated at home
And finally, Christopher Lee’s Heavy Metal Christmas Songs
(Merry christmas & happy new year folks. I’m off on holiday for a bit so no bloggery for a little while.)
The Mayans did not predict the End of the World. They predicted that the world would enter a period of change.
“Anthropologists visit the temple sites and read the inscriptions and make up stories about the Maya, but they do not read the signs correctly. It’s just their imagination. Other people write about prophecy in the name of the Maya. They say that the world will end in December 2012. The Mayan elders are angry with this. The world will not end. It will be transformed.
“We are no longer in the World of the Fourth Sun, but we are not yet in the World of the Fifth Sun. This is the time in-between, the time of transition. As we pass through transition there is a colossal, global convergence of environmental destruction, social chaos, war, and ongoing Earth Changes.
“Humanity will continue, but in a different way. Material structures will change. From this we will have the opportunity to be more human. We are living in the most important era of the Mayan calendars and prophecies. All the prophecies of the world, all the traditions are converging now. There is no time for games. The spiritual ideal of this era is action.
“The indigenous have the calendars and know how to accurately interpret it — not others. The Mayan Calendars comprehension of time, seasons, and cycles has proven itself to be vast and sophisticated. The Maya understand 17 different calendars such as the Tzolk’in or Cholq’ij, some of them charting time accurately over a span of more than ten million years.
“All was predicted by the mathematical cycles of the Mayan calendars. — It will change –everything will change. Mayan Day-keepers view the Dec. 21, 2012 date as a rebirth, the start of the World of the Fifth Sun. It will be the start of a new era resulting from and signified by the solar meridian crossing the galactic equator and the Earth aligning itself with the center of the galaxy.”
– Carlos Barrios, Mayan elder and Ajq’ij of the Eagle clan
http://www.seri-worldwide.org/id435.html
😛
My intention with using the words “the world comes crashing down” was to represent exactly that – great change, not blowing everything up.
“Do you need a refill, sir? I think I heard you just say that your glass is half empty.” 😉
I think this goes well with that story about the round headed kid: http://youtu.be/R6pC03WRcE0
Well, so much for ‘Star Wars: Those Fabulous Trade Embargoes’. But even it outbanked Dredd 3D!
I think the Mayans were wrong about a lot of things, including whatever the hell they prohesied. The world has already ended. Look deep within yourself and you will find a void and know this to be true. Or I just played that existential anguish game for too long.
That Star Wars thing is a bit broken. I put in 0% romance, and the movie that resulted apparently “spends a disappointing about of time propping up a romantic B-plot that goes nowhere.”
The only way to read that coherently is that they are disappointed that it spends no time at all on a romantic B-plot, which goes nowhere because it doesn’t start.
It’s funny that it features at least two directors (Davids Lynch & Cronenberg) who turned down Return of the Jedi, though. Both of whom accepted movie proposals from Mel Brooks!