End Times: Elenin and Jesus

Another wet, soggy walk. Since it has been raining for forty days and nights, it kind of makes me think of the end times. Driving across California with radio choices of Rush Limbaugh or Christian Family Radio, I sometimes listen to both of them. Rush is predictable entertainment. The Family Radio throws me for a loop.

You see, Harold Camping has been the creator and broadcaster of this program for fifty years. He has a deep voice, a slow cadence, filled with sounds of him drooling on the microphone. He is 89 years old and as big of a crackpot as you can possibly find (and there are lots of them in Christian Radio). He has created a complex mathematical formula where by, a year ago or so, I heard him predict that the "Rapture" will be this year on May 21.

On May 21, 2011 we shall see an exodus of many Evangelical Christians who will be taken up into the sky and then they fly off with Jesus to heaven. The rest of us (the Heathens) will be left to wash the dishes and take out the garbage. Might make the world a better place, in my view. But it won't last long, as the final "END OF THE WORLD" is scheduled for October 21, 2011. Damn! (literally, in this case).

I think I'll go ahead and make reservations on October 22 for (what Anthony Bourdain calls) the best restaurant in the world: The French Laundry. It'll be a good day to celebrate.

Assuming we do survive until October 22, 2011--there is another brush with extinction coming: A comet called Elenin.

This comet was discovered in December of 2010 by a Russian astronomer--and tracing its path, some have said it will come within 40,000 kilometers of the Earth on November 6, 2011. Of course the Doomsday people are having a field day with this. Some have theorized it will come close enough to shift the Earth on its axis. Others have said it will have a direct impact with the Earth, and since Elenin is a few kilometers in diameter, well, that can't be good.

The scientific community says that Elenin will miss the Earth. The only problem is that the thing might get wobbled a bit when it passes through the asteroid belt. A slight wobble could signal the end of the human epoch.

Pick your own Doomsday scenario. Jesus versus Comets. Or both?

I'm gonna hedge my bet and plan on doing something special November 7. It'd be good to celebrate again, since we will have missed another brush with extinction.

In the meantime, the more certain path to trouble is to keep spewing all that carbon into the atmosphere.