Hurling your bodies out into the void, without the slightest inkling of who or what is out here. If you had known anything about the true nature of the universe, anything at all, you would've hidden from it in terror.

Once again I woke up this morning facing a blank page when I fully expected to be dead, wrenched apart by the literally earth shattering cataclysm that is Nibiru (or Planet X if you prefer).

Feel free to sing along if you know the words.

The concept is that this rogue and undetectable (or perfectly detectable except there is a universal global conspiracy of Deep State actors flying around in Black Helicopters suppressing the evidence to prevent wide spread panic) has been floating around on the other side of the Sun or in the Öpik–Oort Cloud or the Kuiper Belt beyond Neptune or something, but is now approaching us with great rapidity to suck away our atmosphere and oceans and large chunks of crust leaving just a boiling surface of magma that will also succumb to its vast and malevolent gravitational pull.

If only.

Just kill us already, Planet X
by Avi Selk, Washington Post
April 13

Look, it’s Planet X, again.

No, not the mythical dead star that’s supposed to appear in the sky in 2003 in 2012 on Sept. 23, 2017 last October in November on April 23 and herald the end of the world.

We mean Planet X, the headline that reappeared yet again this week on apocalyptic news stories, with a fresh 2018 doomsdate, despite the failure of every previous prophecy to come true.

Planet X’s imminent arrival has been predicted so many times before, in so many newspapers, and its existence has been debunked so thoroughly by NASA, that we are struggling to find anything interesting to say about the latest round of panic and hyperbole.

So we will resort to a gimmick instead and present this month’s edition of Planet X nonsense as a choose-your-own-adventure.

How would you like your apocalypse told?

That is in fact the Washington Post and it's kind of cute because it really does use <a href> tricks to implement the choose-your-own-adventure format.

Even David Meade, the Biblical Numerologist (both of which are pretty fictional) who makes Alex Jones look like Walter Cronkite, has kinda, sorta backed away from his latest prediction-

No, the world will not end on Monday, says conspiracy theorist cited in reports
by Adam Gabbatt, The Guardian
Thu 19 Apr 2018

Numerous news organizations reported this week that the world would be destroyed on 23 April, citing David Meade, a Christian conspiracy theorist who has made a number of incorrect predictions about the end of the world.

But in an interview with the Guardian, Meade described these reports as “fake news”.

Meade, who has written 14 books – mostly focused on the end of the world or the mysterious planet Nibiru, thought by some to be on a collision course with Earth –said he does not in fact believe the world will end on 23 April.

Instead Meade believes that the rapture – when Jesus will appear and save his followers but reject the rest – will occur at some point between May and December of this year. He would not be drawn on a specific date.

But even the rapture will not signify the end of the world, Meade said.

Meade said the rapture will merely bring in seven years of “tribulation”, followed by 1,000 years of “peace and prosperity”, before the world is destroyed.

“So the world isn’t ending anytime soon – in our lifetimes, anyway!” Meade said.

The British newspaper the Daily Express, which regularly cites Meade in news stories about the end of the world, appears to have been the source for the 23 April date. The Express has written more than a dozen stories about the world’s demise in the past week.

In case you are unfamiliar with the Revelation of St. John allow me to encapsulate (though there are a wide variety of interpretations)-

There are a variety of weird events, some of which are metaphorical in that sense you get after mixing 'Shrooms, LSD, and Peyote without nearly enough Weed to mellow you out. The Throne of Yahweh appears and a scroll sealed with 7 seals (7 turns up a lot, just saying) is given to "The Lion of Judah from the Root of David" who also turns out to be a Lamb with 7 Horns and 7 Eyes (see?) and we can tell he's a good guy and not some kind of mutant monster because "the creatures of heaven fell down before the Lamb to give him praise, joined by myriads of angels and the creatures of the earth."

Well, if you have not just seen the Golden Plates of Nephi but "hefted them" that's good enough for me I guess.

Anyway the Lamb/Lion starts opening the seals which is about as wise as opening Pandora's Box (eyes up here perverts) and the first 4 cause a big, endless (but successful?) War along with rampant inflation. About a quarter of the useless "takers" die. After the 5th one the righteous take a break and go golfing or play tennis (also it's between Memorial Day and Labor Day otherwise they wouldn't be wearing white). You can see why these are conservative favorites. The 6th one causes a tremendous earthquake though it could also be Nibiru hitting the Earth (interpretations vary).

Then 144,000 Jews are let in the Club. Twelve Tribes of Israel is very specific. These last 2 are what is commonly called "The Rapture", though I think it's kind of racist to make the Jews go through an extra disaster.

The 7th Seal introduces 7 Trumpet Tooting Angels (did I mention 7 shows up a lot?) only it's really 8 because the last one has a "Golden Censer (Incense Pot, Patchouli anyone?)" which causes more earthquakes though it could be Nibiru again or an entirely different Planet X (interpretations vary).

Oh, Trumpets. Well the first one is your garden variety hail and fire and the second one is a big burning mountain and the third one is a Star named Wormwood and the fourth one causes the sky to go dark (more arguments for Nibiru).

Then we get into the Woes.

The 5th and 6th Trumpet are about another War or two (or maybe the same one, interpretations vary). Those are the first 2 Woes. The 7th Trumpet is just more flaming hail but it leads to the 3rd Woe.

There's a break that goes on for a while (interpretations vary) where a woman gives birth to a child and a Dragon (with seven heads, ten horns, and seven crowns on his heads, told you about 7s) who wants to eat it. For some unfathomable reason Yahweh invites the Dragon to visit him in heaven but he's a poor guest, the kind that hogs the bathroom and monopolizes the remote and farts at the dinner table and blames the dog, so Michael and the "good" Angels have a big fight with him and throw him and his buddies who never use coasters and leave rings on the furniture out. Suddenly the Dragon remembers- "Hey, I was going to eat that baby" and goes looking but evidently the woman's been sleeping around and there are a lot of cousins or half siblings, that begat stuff always confuses me.

About this time a Beast from the Sea shows up with seven heads, ten horns, and ten crowns on his horns (7s again) only he suffered some drain bammage surfing shopping carts in the parking lot and the Dragon patches him up. Everyone (well, lots of them) are more impressed by the cart surfing than the Doctoring and the Dragon says-"You know, there's this baby I've been wanting to eat", and the Beast is like "Dude, let me get right on that. After I build a new Babylon." "Well, hurry up. You've only got 3 and a half years."

Then another Beast shows up (you can tell he's different because he only has 2 horns and a speech impediment) and he starts giving away bitchin' tats. It's like Burning Man.

The "Third Woe" is Armageddon which starts on Mount Zion with 144,001 righteous and 3 Angels one of whom doesn't do much except talk while the others "reap the earth" and press out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored and, because he happens to have them left over from Egypt and he's frugal, Yahweh unleashes the 7 last plagues (if I don't use them now they'll be past the expiration date!). So everyone except the righteous gets Herpes and the Seas, Rivers, and Lakes turn to blood (I have one thousand six hundred stadia of it! Do you think I'm just going to let it go to waste?). Those are the first 3 bowls. The next 2 are your usual Nibiru crashing into Earth again, I'd hire new writer to punch that up a bit. Then the Euphrates dries up leaving a great big scab (you paid attention to that Rivers of Blood part didn't you?) and the battle between "Good" and "Evil"- that's the 6th bowl, finished with more Planet X (bowl 7).

You remember about 7, don't you?

But wait, there's more!

In the battle the Sea Beast (you can tell it's the same one even though it's painted red because it has seven heads and ten horns, must have hocked the crowns) is ridden by a Harlot who could be any random Sex Worker but is generally considered by Protestants to represent the Pope (yeah, I'll be ecumenical right until I shiv you in the back). Both are cast into a pit of fire along with the Dragon and all the people who actually made a good living working in the thriving commercial metropolis of New Babylon which is destroyed. Forever. Because Yahweh likes his humans to be simple shepherds and carpenters, people of the land, the common clay of the new West. You know... morons.

A great multitude of those who survive praise Yahweh because, well, the pit is right there and everything is fine and dandy for a thousand years...

Until we do it all again, but this time as a Musical!

But that's it, I promise. New Jerusalem, New Heaven and Earth, River and Tree of Life restored, no more suffering and death, curse of sin ended...

The downside is Yahweh moves in, gentrifies the neighborhood, and rents go through the roof.

If you like this stuff the study of it is called Eschatology and while I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, they've always worked for me. A basic shopping list-

Two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls.

That ought to get you though your first lecture.

But back to Nibiru. The reason I'm personally attracted to the concept is I'm fundamentally lazy. It's a nice day and I could easily be at the beach sucking down some rays.

Or perishing in a world wide holocaust, it's the same thing right?

I'll note Cassian went for the blindfold and Jyn didn't flinch.

I think that some people are simply jealous of the idea that the world will proceed in its courses without them. They seek an end beyond which there is no more because of the centrality of their existence. It's incredibly infantile, object permanence is something you usually develop as a toddler about the time peek-a-boo stops being a game.

It's also very selfish.

(Of course it's cross published from DocuDharma and The Stars Hollow Gazette)