The End of the World

So over the weekend, we go and visit Bratworse's Mom, Sugarmeesweettt. Sometimes, things that come from Sugarmeesweettt's mouth really amuses me.

One of the things she declared to us was that the world was going to end on December 12th, 2010. As we're rolling on the ground laughing, she claimed that she saw an old china-woman on TV say that the Chinese calendar ends abruptly on December 12th, 2010 and that indicates that the world is going to end.

"But," I said weakly as tears roll down my face, "how can that be when the Chinese calendar ends and begins usually in January/February? It makes no sense that they would stop it before the year ends."

She rolled her eyes at me as if I was naive. "The world ends of course. Why would they continue it when the world ends."

Of course. What WAS I thinking?

Anyway, I think this is what she was referring to: (courtesy of Wikipedia)

December 21 — The Mesoamerican Long Count calendar, notably used by the Maya civilization among others of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, completes its thirteenth b'ak'tun cycle since the calendar's mythical starting point (equivalent to 3114 BC August 11 in the proleptic Gregorian calendar, according to the "GMT-correlation" JDN= 584283).[1] The Long Count b'ak'tun date of this starting point (13.0.0.0.0) is repeated, for the first time in a span of approximately 5,125 solar years. The significance of this period-ending to the pre-Columbian Maya themselves is unclear, and there is an incomplete inscription (Tortuguero Stela 6) which records this date. It is also to be found carved on the walls of the Temple of Inscriptions in Palenque, where it functions as a base date from which other dates are computed.[2] However, it is conjectured that this may represent in the Maya belief system a transition from the current Creation world into the next. The December solstice for 2012 also occurs on this day.

Sugarmeesweettt, it's the Mayan calendar, not Chinese and it's December 21st, not December 12th. Whew. We'll have an extra 9 days to have fun and enjoy ourselves before the world comes to a screeching halt.