That being said, you’re all fucking nuts.

You see, almost every religion/ cult/ sect/ ‘Glee’ fan club has a prophesied armageddon penciled into their social calendar. You know, where the all loving Deity X comes down from Afterlife Destination Y and for some reason burns mankind in a fiery shit storm of love, forgiveness or cuddles or some other soft emotion which has no business being the motivation for melting off everyone’s face.

Pictured: Divine snuggles.

From a distance, the whole thing sounds a lot like some kind of metaphysical battered wife syndrome.

Which bring us to the latest scheduled contenders for a global cataclysm. Most notably of these, is the foretold destruction of Earth on the 21st of December 2012. If you didn’t see 2012, and who did, then allow me to fill you in. On the 21.12.12, the Mesoamerican (or Mayan) Long Count calendar runs out, and that’s about it. Short on detail and John Cusack.

There is some truth to this, in that, around that date the Mayan calendar will end. The doomsday set, however, filled in the blanks and assumed that this signalled the end of humanity, as opposed to just signalling the need for a new calendar. The calendar in question has a 5125 year cycle and is carved into solid stone. The only significance I can take from that is the chump stuck with carving it got fed up with it and went to get mashed on paote.

‘But Jimmy!’ you may protest ‘The Mayans were predicting the end of the world! I saw it on the 7PM Project (or some other bollocks)’. Onions! The Mayans were unable to foresee boatloads of syphilitic conquistadors coming over the horizon to steal their mythological gold and/ or fountains of youth let alone the destruction of the entire planet, so you could say I’m a tad sceptical of their precognitive abilities.

This brings us to the next (or rather, first) date, May 21 2011. Yep. This year. I may not even be finished writing this when May 21 rolls around. That is how close it is/ lazy I am. The drive behind this one seems to be coming from a pastor in the US, and apart from pissing off 2012 conspiracists (seriously, I am not even joking) not much is known about it. Though I am willing to bet that the loving fire face raping scenario will factor into it somewhere.

So where does this leave us? Well, all the cosmic activity cited as being the tool of our destruction has been deigned by the scientific community as ‘batshit insanery’. And not to get all pissy about it, but this kind of thing has come up once or twice before.

Still, a man can dream..

Any excuse to wear leather pants…

UPDATE: So. May 21 passed and we’re all obviously still here. Or maybe it isn’t obvious. I don’t want to make sweeping assumptions about everybody’s intelligence. You could be a gibbering moron for all I know. Staring blankly at the pretty colours on the screen as warm drool pools onto your keyboard whilst a hideously under qualified carer pokes you with a stick to make sure you’re not dead.

But I digress.

After incorrectly predicting the end of world for the second time, you’d think Family Radio’s Harold Camping would skulk back to his lair to sit down to a big heaping bowl of shut the fuck up and wash it down with a nice cold glass of what the hell was I thinking. Right?

If you answered yes, then you lose at crazy:

Denial. Go big or go home.

See you all in Hell,

Jimmy Heck

For those of you who died in the early 80′s or are still gestating in the womb, Ms Winfrey is an American TV shaman who wobbles about hypnotising rudderless housewives who would otherwise be off somewhere chugging Kool Aid trying to hitch a ride to whichever mothership happened to be passing that week. Though, in fairness, that may be over simplifying it a bit.

But not by much.

And so it came to be that Oprah and her minions came to our humble country out of an intrepid spirit and a desire to see the world. What’s that? Oh, yes. And we paid her. A fucking wad.

Which is the thing that seems to be the most troubling. Whilst various Australian tourism boards are busy popping the champagne, I can’t help but notice that the overall message of the whole menopausal fiasco was that we had to pay Oprah $5 million quid to even set a smegging foot in this country. Can’t you just see the slogan?

Australia: Where the bloody hell are you? We sent the cheque last week.

Now Oprah is quite the savvy business woman, in fact, she’s pretty fucking shrewd. In fact she’s downright ruthless. Russian crime families have adopted her business model with quite some success – particularly her habit of hiding things under chairs. And when quizzed about the whole deal, she point blank told assembled media that the exposure her ‘four-hour love-fest’ would bring is invaluable. And once I finally extracted Oprah from the mental portrait of a four-hour love-fest, I figured she had a point.

Still, and this may be the pessimist in me, but is anyone else concerned that Australia is now being shilled by a woman who spent months flogging The Secret?

See you all in Hell,

Jimmy Heck