Prophet margin

It's 2011. Happy New Year and so on. This week, a bunch of dead blackbirds fell out of the Arkansas sky and a tide of dead crabs washed up on Kent beaches. Portentous events? Spine-chilling omens? Apparently some sect or other expects the world to end in May this year. It's reckoned the crabs were killed by the cold. Sounds feasible to me - it's been freezing. It was also horribly cold last year, and last year - guess what - thousands of crabs washed up on beaches. The blackbirds? As well as in Arkansas, a bunch of birds met the ground with a fluffy thump in Sweden a couple of days later. Oh no! But have a quick look on the net and there are dead-birds-falling stories from 11th March 2010, 28th January 2009, and 23rd July 2008. On the first page of results. And the world keeps turning.

Far more people are fully expecting the apocalypse to come along in 2012. Only a year away! Quick - blow all your savings on cakes, fine wines and electronic goods! Well, actually, nearly two years as it's supposedly December 12th 2012. 12/12/12. Why? Because of The Mayan Prophesy. Except, it's not really a prophesy at all. All that happens is a calendar runs out then - a new one starts. The Maya are still around and are keen to point that out. They aren't smashing their piggy banks.

There have been loads of doomsday predictions throughout history. So far, obviously, none of them has been correct. This must have left scores of sects, cults and prophetophiles trying to bury their disappointment in a nice steak pie and convince themselves they're not secretly a little relieved. There was even a fair amount of nervous tension in what considers itself the civilized world as the year 2000 approached. Quite what was expected, I don't know. The Four Horsemen?  Because it was a nice round number. Something significant ought to happen, because it's a round number. Why are people so keen for the world to end? Some bits of it are really good. I've never been to Tanzania, Japan or Peru and I want to. I think probably what makes people so excitable about the idea of Armageddon is that they have become convinced that they are among a chosen few that are going to do pretty well out of it. Everyone else will die, sure, but they are going to go somewhere really nice. The Rapture, or whatever version of it suits the theory.

Big business, prophesies of doom. All so negative, though. I will attempt to redress the balance a tiny bit. Prophesies of Alrightness. I hereby predict that the world will not end in May. It will not end in 2012. Everything is going to be relatively okay. Remember - you heard it here first.