Bear Flag Blog

Forget all this claptrap about the world ending in 2012; the world is actually going to end in 2013. That 2012 date is stupid, anyway - so the Mayan calendar is coming to an end. Oh no! It's December! The calendar is ending! Midnight on December 31 is clearly the end of the world.

Note for pedants: I am aware that even the characterization "the Mayan calendar is coming to an end" is erroneous. Rule 9 applies all over the place here, so stitch a button in it.

I'm not talking about Christian Apocalyptic stuff, either - it's equally farcical. As a nine year-old I was transfixed by Orson Welles sonorously informing me that we lived in the end times, that a man in a blue turban would start the final battle in the valley of Armageddon, having somehow gained approval from Ronald Wilson Reagan. Well, that sure as hell didn't pan out.

Read a little history (okay, a lot of history, this stuff is pretty obscure by now) and you'll see that in early 19th century America you couldn't go ten feet without being harangued about how the End of Days was coming, next week or at the very latest at the end of the planting season. William Miller revealed that the Second Coming was scheduled to happen - no question, Biblically guaranteed - on or before March 21, 1844. When March 22 rolled around, the calculations were checked, an error was found, and the day of the second coming was found to actually - seriously this time - be April 18, 1844.

In May, they found that pesky additional miscalculation, and the date was revealed to be October 22, 1844. All around the country people peered in windows to reassure themselves that they were more worthy of salvation than their neighbors.

Yeah, October 23 clocked in as normal.

By the way, these people are still around. They're called Seventh-day Adventists. Yes, them. There are some 16 million of them. And if you ask them they are all quite certain that the Second Coming will arrive in their lifetimes, probably any day now.

Well... they're right, but not for any Biblical reason. No, the book that will usher in the End of Days will in fact be published in 2013, and it's called The Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic.

All I really need to say about The Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic is that it's by Alan Moore. Moore knows a thing or two, or nine, or two hundred and seventy, about magic. And he can write like kerosene burns in Hell. And he's crazier than any fifty bedbugs. (Have you read Dodgem Logic? Or the appendices to the Black Dossier? I have...) You pour those three things into a jar, mature them properly, and garnish with lavish illustration, and you get a book which will inspire pimply would-be Aleister Crowleys in the thousands and the tens of thousands.

And, provided with a Comprehensive and Illustrated Tome which Succinctly yet Accurately Presents All Known Efficacious and Puissant Conjurations, well... you will get eldritch Thiago Olsens on a scale that will make the stuff in 'Ghostbusters' seem like a pleasant daydream of normalcy.

Build those thaumaturgic shelters now, people.