Greetings heathens, zealots, web denizens and the rest of you!

So I was on St. Paul Street west heading downtown today when I passed by this near the train station:

That’s right folks, the world has less than a month before the whole kit and kaboodle comes to an end. How do we know? Well the “Bible Guarantees it!” It says so in a yellow stamp with spiky edges. That means it’s true!  You cannot argue with the mighty yellow stamp of guarantee!

What does this mean? Well, something like this:

Ok so seriously, what is this all about? Well, there is a quack in the United States – 89-year-old evangelical, radio show host and general odd ball Harold Camping – who has convinced the credulous that May 21 is indeed the day god is going to come back. If you ever read your Bible, you know this is not exactly happy fun times. Lots of warfare and bloodshed and suffering…like watching a Glee marathon basically.

There is an entire, and expansive, evangelical Christian sub culture that obsesses over the end of the world. They are rather like the nit-wits who think the Mayan calendar predicts the end of the world in 2012. It doesn’t, the calendar just comes to an end, just like our annual one does on Dec. 31. A new cycle starts the next day. This fact doesn’t stop those who apparently wish for the world to end to invent whole scenarios, some of which often include a non-existent planet (kept secret by NASA of course) slamming into the earth.

The Christian doomsdayers, on the other hand, spend a great deal of time reading the rather gruesome and slightly trippy Book of Revelation. The book, purportedly written by a guy sentenced to live alone on a barren island where he existed as a cave dweller (which might go a long way to explain the completely bizarre contents of the book) lays out the fairly bloody return of Jesus  who starts  a huge dust up with the Glee the forces of evil before a heavenly dictatorship is established. Fun times.

So these end-of-the-worlders comb through the texts – which they take to be literally true instead of being metaphorical or the rantings of a man suffering from isolation madness – looking for clues that will allow them to figure out the exact day the world will end and how it will end. Any unfortunate event from wars to earthquakes to Rock N’ Music, is taken as proof the end times are upon us. The fact that wars and quakes have been part of human life from the start, and that Rock N’ Roll is just awesome, is no never mind to them.

The most popular version of this macabre fantasy are the nearly unreadable Left Behind series of books and equally horrible film of the same title. On the day in question, called the Rapture, god is going to suck believers up into heaven right in the middle of whatever they doing. Like the transporter beam from Star Trek, I suppose, but it’s oddly going to leave everyone’s clothes behind. Not sure why. The rest of us slobs are left here to fight it out until Jesus comes back to open up the can on non-believers, believers in other religions, and everyone responsible for making the film The Last Airbender.

Anyway, how does Mr. Camping and his legion of lemmings know the world is going to come to an end on May 21? Well, aside from having a direct hotline to the sky god, Camping claims to have figured out the clues in the Bible that determine the date in question. And now there is a small army of loony tunes driving around North America and putting up billboards like the one on St. Paul Street, claiming the end is nigh!

Of course, what they fail to tell you is that Camping has done this before. In 1994 he and a bunch of his lemmings stood outside one day holding open bibles up to the sky waiting for Jesus to beam them up. Nothing happened. (I know, shocking.) That did not phase Camping though, who merely said his calculation was off a bit, but this time he has it right! It’s the one thing about these guys – getting everything completely wrong never ever causes them to question their beliefs or their sanity.

The whole thing would be hilarious if it were not for the real death fixation these people have. They yearn for a day when everything humanity has achieved and has yet to achieve is reduced to cinders; when democracy, science, art and everything of merit we have created is wiped from existence. And in its place they yearn for a cosmic dictator who will strip them of all strife and responsibility and just tell them what to do forever. Which mostly amounts to tell the boss how awesome he is. Tell me that wouldn’t get dreadfully boring in a hurry.

It’s a profoundly disturbing and depressing view of life. Imagine going through you days desperately wanting civilization to go out in an orgy of blood and suffering, only to be disappointed again and again when the day never comes. It’s a waste of life if you ask me.

So the best we can do for them is to treat them gently and make sure on May 22, we have some “Sorry it wasn’t the Rapture” cards ready for them. They are going to need some support.