Common Jerk, Entry 4:

1/10/2012

From grocery stores to facebook, I collide with the same unbearable conversation: The End of the World in 2012.

I'm not here to debunk all the Armageddon myths; rather to point out the most commonly misconstrued concepts of the end and how they are perpetuated in their full faulty form, day in and day out through the loudest of mouths:

3. The Heat Haters
2.The Galactic Geniuses
1.The Mayan Racists

3. The Heat Haters

One often repeated concept of the end involves super solar flares reaching Earth, destroying human communications, and then ultimately compromising any life on the planet.

Believe it or not, the Sun has already shot out massive loads of its warm goey heat - every 11 years or so.

But the idea is the Sun will eat our tiny little planet. It's highly unlikely even at the simpliest of levels. For example, the Sun is never on a true cycle - that is, it's not going to release said flares on any specific date or year.

In short, this ain't likely to happen, but there are those who believe there should be concern. One of those people is Michio Kaku.

2. The Galactic Geniuses

Any pseudo-genius you meet in the local diner, laundromat, bar, or store is gonna blab about this idea. It's sounds pretty fancy-smancy and it has a lot of misunderstood science behind it.

Some people believe if the planets align for the first time in approximately 26,000 years, there will be polar shifts, climate changes, failures in communications, or the revealing of some massive black hole that could devours us all, so says the Mayans or Romans,unknown physicists, aliens, Greeks, Nostradomus, or some chubster on YouTube.

I don't have to tell you it sounds like a lot of B.S. NASA already did that for me.

Yet there are millions of morons flapping their gums about some science no university will teach you, using misnomers and misplaced sesquipedalians (get it?) to explain it all. And as for the mystery planet theory, forget about it.

Now on to my favorite:

1. The Mayan Racists

In junior high we all learned little to nothing about the Mayan culture. There was something about their Long Count Calendar and some kind of food. Because of all this, people recognize the word "Mayan" and think they know what they are talking about.

What baffles me is, how can people remain so wrong after so much information has been placed on the web, shown on television, and taught in classes?

In fact, I've started unsubscribing to anyone on facebook boasting some sort of Mayan-based humor. It doesn't make people think any more of you when you can insult the Mayans for "being dumbasses who believe the world ends in 2012" or for "being to stupid to finish a calendar."

Look, the Long Count Calendar hasn't predicted as many events as people think. Why people confuse the Mayans for Nostradamus is far beyond my comprehension.

Here's one I hate:

Actually, there are still Mayans alive. And they sort of did finish their calendar.

Time starts anew with Mayan beliefs. Oh, but this too difficult of a concept for many to grasp. Inside, we have some weird, aimless racism when it comes to Mayans. We are making fun of the Mayans simply because they are Mayans.

So please, get the gist and leave the Mayans the hell alone. They're pretty annoyed with all this.

And as for the rest of you, you're pissing a lot of us off too (the other "us"; not Mayans). Quit being a jerk, learn the facts, and go back to misquoting the bible. The best way to be a Common Jerk, is to be under the radar.

Oh, and there's this theory: