I sometimes wonder if the Mayans didn’t predict that the world would end in 2012 because they knew what the invention of calendars would mean. Now, do I actually think the world will end on December 21, 2012? (or is it December 23, 2012 and does that mean if the 21st comes and goes we still have to be worried all over again?) Short answer: no. Not on the 21st, the 23rd or even (odd?) the 25th. (And, parenthetically, wouldn’t that just suck. Merry Christmas! Oops Doomsday!) (Oh, and if the rapture comes on Christmas, will it be singing the Hallelujah Chorus, Silent Night or Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer?) Anyway, the Mayans. The 2012 date derives, I am told by that immaculate source of information Wikipedia, from the end of the 5,125 year Long Count Calendar. What? Did they give up counting after 5,125? Was the concept 5,126 too big a leap to take? Or did they just get bored of counting? Or did they just ingest one too many South American “substances” and one calendar guy looked at the other and said, “Duuuude! What number were we up to?” and none of them could remember. No. I suspect none of the above is the case. I suspect that some Mayan Einstein intuited that one day calendars would be paper and cardboard things adorned with all sorts of pictures, poems and assorted words of wisdom.
In much the same way that the Christmas “buying season” seems to begin about the same time that stores have out the Halloween candy and costumes (in other words right after the kiddies head back to school), calendars for the following year begin to appear in July. Isn’t everyone thinking about what calendar they want for the year beginning five months hence around the same time they’re worrying whether the National League will beat the American League in the All-Star Game? Talk about Anticipation (which, by the way, was a great song by Carly Simon that got turned into a catsup commercial)! So by High Summer, the stores (bookstores in particular) have rearranged their displays to give room to the thousands of calendars that everyone seems to be publishing now.
In my youth (not nearly as misspent as I could have hoped), picture calendars were not nearly as common. There were the bank or insurance calendars with Currier & Ives prints, the ones from the Chinese restaurants with a tasteful picture of either Chinese food or an attractive Asian woman and, best of all for a pre-pubescent male, the ones with the babes that could occasionally be glanced in service station (those are now called gas stations and they offer no services other than taking your money and selling coffee and junk food) offices where, if you were really lucky, a nipple might even be observed.
Back in college days there were the obligatory Playboy and Penthouse calendars for my room in my fraternity. Later on I developed a rather more sophisticated taste in babe calendars: Sports Illustrated Swimsuit. Yep. That’s right from “bare it all to just how skimpy can we make a bikini and get away with it.” Now that’s what I call developing a sophisticated taste. And I will admit to having over my desk for 2009 a Danica Patrick calendar but almost all the pictures are in her driving suit.
My adult experience with this devil’s brew of days adorned with pictures is, of course, colored by the OC/PR (that’s obsessive-compulsive/pack rat) mentality I have mentioned before. (Now, come on, folks. At some point I’m going to stop explaining OC/PR so pay attention. OK? OK.) The worst example of this insanity comes from the Star Trek obsession.* For a while, I was very involved with all things Star Trek but particularly the published book-type thingies. It was only a teensy-weensy baby-step from books and magazines to include (Wait for it!), yes…calendars. Simon and Schuster who publish the “official” Star Trek publications released something on the order of five ST (Star Trek, let’s keep up, here) calendars a year. There was ST, ST: The Next Generation, ST: Deep Space 9, ST: Voyager, ST: Enterprise, to say nothing of the movie calendars and the Ships of the Fleet calendar. And of course OC/PR little ol’ me just HAD to have each one. And throw them away when the year ended? Oh, perish the thought! These were ST collectibles now! I even kept the individual freakin’ pages of the page-a-day ST calendars. Hey! They were great pictures! (And then there were The X-Files calendars which were also collectible once the year ended. Somehow I managed to avoid Babylon 5 calendars. Not sure how, but wall space may have had something to do with it.)
But remember now, we’re dealing with an OC/PR here. Of course there were the sports calendars…The Yankees, the Raiders, the Rangers (New York (NHL), not Texas (MLB), perish that thought), Formula 1, IndyCar, NASCAR. And that was in addition to the ones the Yankees gave out on Calendar Day. And, of course, once the year ended? Right. Collectibles.
And then there are calendars as gifts. This seems to have become one of the gifts of last resort. Can’t think of something nice to get someone? Do they like puppies? Perfect. Kittens? Sensational. Sailing ships? Terrific. Lighthouses? Outstanding. Old movies? Great. Ireland/England/Scotland/Germany/Italy/Any where else in the world? Marvelous. Planets and galaxies? Groovy. Rock groups? Dude! And if you are a good shopper or simply go to places like Odd Lots or Ocean State Job Lot or Christmas Tree Shops (a fate I try to avoid, not always successfully), you can often find these things for a dollar or two. And this is to say nothing of waiting until January of the year when they start marking down the calendars to 75-90% off! Oh, baby! For a few bucks you can paper your walls!
But then, I stop and think about it. What is the calendar I most use? It’s the one on my computer at work that is part of Microsoft Outlook. The book of my life is told by the dates recorded in electrons and 0s and 1s. And no pictures, no cutesie sayings, no pithy words of advice; just a calendar in which to record stuff. So to return to the where I started, I believe that late in December 2012, if the Mayans are correct, there will come the great calendar disaster. Will it mean the end of the world? Probably not. But it may mean the end of the world as we know it.
*Before any of you make the mistake of calling me a Trekkie, let me say that I never lived in my mother’s basement and I have had carnal knowledge of women. I was a fan of Star Trek. Got that straight, now? OK
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another thing about this Mayan theory... why should they predict according to the christian calendar which they weren't even introducet to at the time? if there is a Mayan calendar, that should be it... or maybe it was yet to be invented and we interfered, or maybe these numbers have some significant other meaning which is most likely.
ReplyDeleteDóri.