On Saturday, May 21 at 5:37pm MT I was eagerly anticipating the upcoming Rapture predicted by Harold Camping. Sure, nothing had happened in the other time zones at 6:00pm when this was all supposed to go down, but there was no way in Hell I was going to be unprepared.
As I sat in my boarded-up basement naked, gripping my trusty shotgun eating a bag of Chili Cheese Fritos I began mentally preparing myself for the “end of the world”. No way was I going to be one of the special few who got called up to Heaven, so I was prepared for the worst – having followed nearly all my own advice on preparing for the Rapture. Sure, my friends and family thought I was crazy. Not to mention super-pissed that I had stolen a bunch of their food and booze and stock-piled it in the basement with me along with various blunt zombie-smashing objects. As the day went on I was actually looking forward to the Rapture because I didn’t feel like going to work on Monday and frankly it had been a stressful week and I was looking forward to releasing that on some zombies with my trusty softball bat.
But alas, 6:00 pm came and went, and at 6:23 pm (I gave God a grace period, just in case some things came up and he was running late) I emerged from my basement wearing a pair of shorts I had fashioned from empty Oreo bags and sick to my stomach because as it turns out I’m a nervous eater. To give you an idea of what waiting for the end of the world was like, here are some excerpts from my pre-apocolypse diary I was keeping that evening:
4:32pm: Beginning to move rations to the basement along with 185 boxes of shotgun shells. This should be enough potato chips and ammo to last me at least a few months.
5:05pm: Boarded up windows and doors with wood I stole from a construction site. No way am I buying something from Home Depot that I could go out into the forrest and cut down myself. Unfortunately no forrests within a 2 mile radius of where I live. Also, cutting down trees is hard.
5:17pm: Watching TiVo’d season finale of Saturday Night Live with Justin Timberlake and Lady Gaga. Hit and miss as always. Lady Gaga surprisingly funny. Her music still blows. Getting hungry, dipping into rations already. Chili Cheese Fritos and a can of Mountain Dew with Sailor Jerry rum. It’s starting to get hot down here, eating Fritos is exhausting.
5:19pm: Checked Google for any signs of the Rapture in other Time Zones. Took pants off.
5:30pm: Received text from Mexicus Prime wanting to go to the comic shop. Replied, “cant, prep 4 rapture. u should 2. God is goin 2 b pisssssssed when he sees wats been goin on down here! LOL!”
5:31pm – 5:45pm: Sat staring at a wall with blank expression pondering my own existence until Lady Gaga cleavage snapped me out of it. Not great, but I imagine I’ll be doing a lot of “taking what I can get” when the end of the world comes.
5:50pm: Dropped Chili Cheese Frito between legs. Still ate it. Can’t waste rations.
5:55pm: Rapture is almost here! The anticipation is palpable. This is going to be epic.
5:59pm: One minute to go. Used spit to fix hair just in case in the off-chance I do ascend to Heaven. Want to look good for the Big Man Upstairs.
6:01pm: Nothing yet. Watch could be wrong.
6:07pm: Thought I felt the starting of an earthquake. Just a big truck driving by. What the hell is taking so long? My trigger finger is itchy, I want to kill some zombies.
6:15pm: Looking more and more like there is going to be no Rapture. There’s no possible way Harold Camping could have been wrong, is there?!
6:20pm: Reviewed Harold Camping’s calculations used to figure out that May 21 is the date of the Rapture. Upon my further review it appears that his calculations are wrong. Not just wrong, but wrong wrong! In fact, it looks like he just made this all up! The only conclusion I can draw from running these numbers are, “These are the ramblings of a crazy person.”
6:23pm: After extensive review of Harold Camping’s prediction came to this conclusion: “This is little more than the overly-religious ramblings of a crazy man and con-artist looking to do little more than garner attention to his radio show and sucker people out of ridiculous amounts of money, splitting apart families in the process.” Put on Oreo Shorts. Went to Five Guys Burgers and Fries – which is way better than In N’ Out.
So as it turns out, all of this Rapture business turned out be be wrong. Again. On the plus side, since the world didn’t end that means we will still get to see Captain America: The First Avenger! It also looks like Mr. Camping was able to take all of those donations from his followers that money he stole and invest it into updating his website! Which now looks like it was made in 1998 as opposed to 1996! See? He does have a plan!