ONLY FIVE DAYS LEFT! NOT!

Okay, this is December 17. Only five days until the vague, unknown something or other will destroy the world...not! I’m betting a lot of the True Believers – idiots and morons – are blaming Obama. You know, “Hey, the world is ending and it’s the black guy’s fault!”

Anyway, if you have a hankerin’ to go some place cool for Armageddon/End of Days/the Apocalypse forget about anywhere near Mount Rtanj (I know! I never heard of it, either!) in the Carpathian Mountains. It’s pyramid-shaped and hence has attracted a lot of True Believers – repeat after me, idiots and morons – who are certain that Rtanj’s “mysterious powers will save them from the apocalypse.” Apparently, science fiction writer Arthur C Clarke once called the pointy peak “the naval of the world” and has a “special energy.” The I & T crowd think the peak is pyramidal ‘cause there’s a pyramid-shaped building inside.

Apparently, with all of that going for it, the hotels surrounding Mount Rtanj are booked solid with panicky True Believers and their equally panicky families. Hotel manager Obrad Blecic – I’m not making up these names, I hope you know – told a London newspaper that “in one day we had 500 people trying to book rooms. People want to bring their whole families.”

And just for a giggle, there’s this: The Canadian Medical Association’s Journal published a “study” in the Christmas issue by a group of oncologists mulling over the impact of the end of the world on medical clinical trials. They concluded that the “Mayan Doomsday ‘is bad.’” And that the “obliteration of the human race is going to make it very tough to see a difference in survival in people receiving experimental treatments versus those who aren't.”

The researchers added: "Oddly, despite censoring for major known sources of bias (e.g., astronauts currently aboard the International Space Station, as well as zombies, the undead, the Grateful Dead, Dungeons and Dragons players, men who have read Fifty Shades of Grey and other similar beings likely to be unaffected by the apocalypse), the obliteration group does not fall to 0. We have dubbed this slow rise in the obliteration curve the 'zombie repopulation.'"

Okay, the countdown is on!