The end of the world? Bring it on! - Sydney Morning Herald

Illustration: michaelmucci.com

My entire life, financial and superannuation plans are based on the veracity of the Long Count Mayan calendar that, hopefully, predicts the world will end on December 21.

I have lived through many doomsday scenarios - including the great November 1958 prediction that the world would end at 3pm on a Thursday afternoon, when at that exact time Steven Wheeler fainted on the top tier of choir practise of fourth grade at St Patrick's school.

But this one is different. Sales of 2013 diaries are down, huge waves caused by climate change are crashing on to fiscal cliffs caused by incredible spending. In the solar systems there is a galactic alignment. This year at the December solstice, the sun's position is in the constellation of Sagittarius, one of the two constellations in which the zodiac intersects in the Milky Way. Now, according to Wikipedia, which does not lie, ''every year, at the December solstice, the sun and the Milky Way, from the surface of the Earth, appear to come into alignment and precession causes a slight shift in the sun's alignment in the Milky Way''. Precession is due to a slight wobble in the Earth's axis as it spins, like a spinning top as it slows down.

It is all too coincidental for me. Even the I Ching - which was never wrong in the 1970s or early '80s when I used it to guide me, with The Dice Man by Luke Rhinehart - has predicted through Terence McKenna in his latest version of his famous book, The Invisible Landscape, that on December 21 time waves zero will occur. The universe has a teleological tractor at the end of time - it increases interconnectedness, eventually reaching a singularity of infinite complexity at which point everything and anything imaginable will occur simultaneously.

That is a powerful argument, though conceived on magic mushrooms. Suffice to say, the stars are all aligned, be it, I Ching, Mayan, intergalactic collisions, Earth wobbles. Look out your window … people look and move differently, they are nervous, looking skywards.

This is no Heaven's Gate, the UFO religion that began when the great white-haired Marshall Applewhite suffered and his nurse, Bonnie Nettles, revealed they were ''The Two'' witnesses from the Book of Revelations. Many patients have felt that way about nurses. Applewhite and 38 of his followers were found dead on March 27, 1997, each one in their own bunk beds, faces and torsos covered with a purple cloth. Each had $5.75 in their pockets, all were dressed in identical black shirts and sweatpants, brand new black-and-white Nike Decade athletic shoes and armbands reading ''Heaven's Gate Away Team''. It was the greatest PR blow to Nike before Lance Armstrong.

There is no use tidying up my affairs, because after D-Day there will be no world affairs, no knock on the door, window-faced bills, payment demands or threats to cut electricity or Foxtel. There will be no payback.

My plan does not involve Nike or the colour purple. I have booked a flight to New York, leaving Sydney late on December 20, so I will be in the air for December 21, way above the mass crisis that will undoubtedly break out below. My plane will land me in Los Angeles on the same day, and much of the damage will have occurred in the southern hemisphere. I have then booked a later flight to New York that will land there late that day, avoiding December 21 altogether. I will wake up in New York the next morning for our new lives. Hang on, it will be December 21 that day in New York. Back to the drawing board.