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Despite the vivid imaginings of thousands, the Mayan calendar failed to predict the end of the world on December 21st. Hopefully, I can now safely wish all friends and readers of Sparrow Chat a very merry Christmas.

Whether Muslim or Jew, Christian or Atheist, Hindu or Buddhist, or none of those things, may you revel in the sentiments of the season, even as we languish in the vain hope that all may be more tolerant of each other in 2013, than they were in 2012.

And, let’s not forget, though the world failed to extinguish itself on the 21st, it could still happen sometime in the (not too distant?) future…

T’was the night before Christmas, and all round the earth
Terrorists plotted for all they were worth.
Obama sat musing which drone strike to pick,
A wedding? A market? Whose ass should he kick?

Muslims seethed hatred for all that was Christian,
Jews in Israel eyed Hamas with suspicion.
Syrian rebels joined force ‘gainst Assad,
They’ll soon fight each other – the whole world’s gone mad.

The Arctic was melting, the earth growing warm,
Droughts, floods, tornadoes, becoming the norm.
Nobody took notice, “It’s not us!” they cried
As New York washed away on a rather high tide.

High in the Heavens Mohammed and Jesus
Mithras, Athena, and Zeus with his aegis,
Looked down on the world they had brought into being
And couldn’t believe what the hell they were seeing.

They spoke not a word, but went straight to their work,
Called all the angels, then turned with a jerk,
And blasting the earth with a fire from their noses
Consumed it all up, despite firemen’s hoses.

Then summoning chariots of fire with a whistle
They flew off to heaven like the down of a thistle.
Only one of them spoke – the one they called Mithras,
Muttered, “Bloody little shits! They just don’t deserve Christmas.”

(With apologies to Clement Clarke Moore)

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

I’ve deliberately neglected to join the debate over the massacre at Sandy Hook Grade School, partly because I imagined others more competent than I (like the US President) would make the obvious case for gun control (which he hasn’t), but mainly because I’m tired of telling Americans what utter prats they are for indulging in childish games, with deadly weapons that regularly result in just the sort of carnage we’ve seen this week in Connecticut.

(A true political leader would have signed a presidential order banning automatic weapons, before shedding a tear onstage).

The post-massacre indulgence of emotional outburst and pseudo-religious fervor, professionally roused by a media intent on milking every ounce of anguish, is so well stage-managed one could be forgiven for thinking the whole thing was a fiction constructed entirely for our dubious entertainment.

CBS actually sent a reporter to the Scottish town of Dunblane, scene of a 1996 school massacre, to broadcast advice from parents of children murdered in that attack for the supposed benefit of bereaved parents in Newtown, Connecticut. Personally, if I were a parent whose kid had been slaughtered that day, I doubt I’d be settled in front of the TV watching the evening news.

CBS did mention that the British government imposed a ban on all handguns following the Dunblane shootings, but failed to acknowledge it was the only school massacre in British history and there hasn’t been another in the sixteen years since the ban was imposed. Maybe, just maybe, gun control works, after all?

Prat of the Week award must surely go to NRA vice president, Wayne LaPierre…

…for his inane statement:

The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”

He obviously lives in a fantasy land where everyone is either a John Wayne ‘good guy’…

…or a John Wesley Hardin.

(If you don’t know who John Wesley Hardin was, look him up).

Apparently, LaPierre wants us all to walk around sporting the latest fashion in lethal hardware, ready – though, possibly not able – to take down the next killer of innocent kids before he has a chance to fire his weapon.

I use the masculine third person deliberately. Ever heard of a woman shooting up a school, or anywhere else, for that matter? No, testosterone is the real problem here. It’s male hormones that drives the gun rights lobby.

(And, please, don’t write and tell me how many women are gun freaks. Women have been mimicking men since time immemorial. Women don’t keep guns to protect themselves from other women, now, do they?)

Frankly, don’t you think it’s slightly sad when grown men believe we should all return to the days of Hollywood’s highly romanticized ‘Wild West’? Particularly, when it’s more important to them than the safety of their own children?

There’s much rubbish spouted by gun rights activists on the internet – everything from protecting themselves from their government (fat chance!) to the UN wanting to take over the world and gun control being responsible for World War II, but the plain fact is that civilized societies don’t need guns, don’t have guns, and most importantly, don’t WANT guns.

It’s a simple choice, admirably demonstrated by the UK: if you control firearms you’ll limit the number of tragedies like the one at Sandy Hook.

If you don’t, you won’t.

The world is going to end in seven days. How do we know? Because, in 1966, a rather dubious American anthropologist, Michael Coe, stated in one of his sensationalist publications:

“…there is a suggestion … that Armageddon would overtake the degenerate peoples of the world and all creation on the final day of the 13th [b’ak’tun]. Thus … our present universe [would] be annihilated [in December 2012]…”

In fact, Coe’s date was December 24th, though he later revised it to January 11th 2013. December 21st wasn’t settled on until the 1980s, by another rather dubious ‘Mayan expert’.

No-one, apparently, stops to consider that the writers of the Mayan calendar had to end it somewhere. It couldn’t go on forever. They’d already been working on it for centuries. They were tired, and wanted to go home to their wives and children. Presumably, 2012 was so far in the future there seemed little point in continuing further. After all, they’d all be dead, their children would all be dead, and their children’s children’s children’s children would all be dead, long before 2012.

“I say we end it at the 13th b’ak’tun, Itzananohk’u. What do you say?”

I’m with you, Kukulcan. I’m pissed off with it all anyway. Fuck it, let’s go home.”

The Mayans had some sense. Which is more than can be said for ten percent of the planet’s population today who firmly believe the world will end in one week’s time. (Twelve percent in the United States, but that’s to be expected).

Of course, the same thing happened as the millennium approached. Half the earth’s populace climbed up mountains waiting for Jesus, or Mohammed, or any one of the three hundred and thirty million Hindu gods, to come abseiling down from the heavens while the rest of us just got quietly drunk and thanked all the deities for arranging Armageddon at a weekend, so we didn’t have to go back to work the next day with hangovers.

According to the US media the economy’s doing really well at the moment, with retail sales setting records in the lead up to Christmas. It rather begs the question, if Americans believe the world will end on December 21st, why are they buying all this stuff?

Do they really believe they can take it with them?

See you all on December 22nd.