This is probably the most serious thing posted here today. It's actually a pretty decent little documentary put together by Paul Murton for the National Geographic Channel (which re-airs tonight @ 10 PM EST). He examines all sorts of phenomena related to human reactions to the date. In all seriousness, I would personally love a good documentary the focuses on modern Maya Calendar Keepers--one that shows the Mayan understanding of the year/the date; which differs quite a bit from the commercial side of it that has been splashed all over the Internet of late. But this will do nicely. A couple of the topics that he hits on include so-called "prepers," religious takes on it as separating of good from evil, or as one guy calls it "the separation of the righteous and unrighteous" (which is bunk!), etc. Murton's response to this is to actually seek answers among the modern Maya. There he finds that Maya who are aware of what is happening in places like the US are commercial exploitation of this calendrical concepts. It is this commercialism that I am really trying to make light of here today...since this is not supposed to be a serious blog in the first place. What is scary about this documentary (since that is the basic criterion of the blog in the first place) is the appropriation of one groups important sacredness and turn it into something rather monstrous and yes, scary. I do recommend giving this one a look. For the Maya, this is really a date of celebration. So my attempt in being silly about this date is to encourage a little light celebration of the day, since we have had a week of horror from last Friday! BTW the Mayan date on their Calendar Wheel today is 4 Ahaw, 3 K'ank'in.
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