You’ve probably heard how the world will end after the winter solstice next month, because something something the Mayan calendar. And, despite the protests of so-called “scientists” who dub this theory so-called “bullshit,” there’s fresh evidence to cite in favor of the world-ending theory: the Pope has signed up for his own Twitter account, to dispense papal wisdom in 140-character doses.
Pope Benedict (or, rather, his spokesmen and staff writers) has tweeted messages before; last year he made the first official papal tweet in history, using an iPad to post the message “Praised be our Lord Jesus Christ! With my prayers and blessings, Benedictus XVI” from a Vatican account.
But now the Pope will have his own account, though Vatican officials say he won’t be replying to tweets or discussing frivolous topics. No word yet on what his Twitter handle will be, since fans of the Dalai Lama have already taken @HisHoliness.
Still, the pope isn’t the only one who needs a Twitter account we can point to as proof the Last Days are here. So, as a public service (read: last-ditch effort to score good karma before the end), we urge the following people to please, sign up and get Twitter accounts while they still can:
1) Alec Baldwin
Twice in the past year, Baldwin has left Twitter in a huff, only to return a short time later. His current Twitter incarnation has over 9,000 followers but only 10 tweets since July 28, with his most recent update – “What’s up?” – over a week old.
That’s pathetic. Our grandmothers tweet better than that.
2) Harold Camping
Camping made headlines last year after predicting the Rapture would fall on the twenty-first of either May or October 2011. His detractors say he got it wrong.
But did he? Consider: scholars don’t know exactly when the Mayans created their end-of-the-world calendar, but it was certainly before the eighth or ninth century, when Mayan civilization collapsed.
At that time, Europeans still measured dates by the Roman-era Julian calendar, which had been introduced by Julius Caesar. But the Julian calendar was a little shorter than the time it takes Earth to complete a full orbit around the sun, so over the years the dates actually “fell backwards” by almost one day per century. By the early 18th century, much of Europe had switched over to the modern Gregorian calendar we use today, but England and its American colonies didn’t make the switch until 1752, when the old Julian calendar was 11 days out of sync with the Gregorian one.
And—stay with us, here—if you take one of Camping’s Gregorian-calendar Rapture predictions and plug it into the old Julian calendar from the Mayan days, you probably get … December 2012, the same date as the Mayans! This is an airtight theory which cannot possibly be disproven, so long as nobody bothers checking the math.
Point being, there may yet be time for Camping to post triumphant “I told you so” tweets, but only if he signs up for a Twitter account first.
3) Tom Hardy and Robert Downey Jr.
To quote our esteemed colleague Aja Romano, “TOM HARDY. TOM HARDY NEEDS TO JOIN TWITTER BEFORE THE WORLD ENDS. #truth also Robert Downey. They are both kings of the random, self-deprecating, hilariously metaphorical horse_ebooks-level stream-of-consciousness celebrity interview.”
And yes, now that we think about it, we bet those guys would give good tweet. Mm-hmm. Also, just because the world is dying in a preordained apocalypse doesn’t mean our favorite celebrities can’t entertain us with realtime updates offering their unique perspective on end-time details.
Since Downey is Iron Man, he could maybe just stop the apocalypse altogether, though there’s no telling how likely he is to make such an effort, if he can’t even bother opening a Twitter account.
4) Courtney Stodden
Yes, we know about the Twitter account allegedly maintained by the young lady who married grandfatherly old actor Doug Hutchison when she was 16. We just don’t want to believe it’s real.
5) Barack Obama
The president has a very active Twitter account but, like the Pope’s, most of the tweets are actually posted by staff members. Even those few tweets personally posted by the president himself, the ones identifiable by the possibly unfortunate initials BO, are pretty weak sauce, like this one from election night: “We’re all in this together. That’s how we campaigned, and that’s who we are. Thank you. –bo”
Zzz. Every politician in American history says something like that on election day. It’s what candidates do.
Obama needs to face facts: the world is ending next month. And even if it isn’t, he’ll never run for public office again, because he’s constitutionally forbidden from a third presidential term and anything else would be a step down for him.
Now is the time for him abandon polite, uncontroversial, mealy-mouthed politician-speak and say what (we’re pretty sure) he’s wanted to say since at least 2008: “My fellow Americans: Yep. You got me, insightful geniuses that you are. All the conspiracies are true: I HAVE been a secret Manchurian-candidate illegal immigrant all along and now, with Supreme Court backing, I’ll force every one of you to obey Sharia law and get gay-married. Simultaneously. Bwa ha ha ha.”
This wouldn’t fit into a 140-character tweet, of course, but that’s why the president has a staff.
Photo via Bernt Rostad/Flickr