Uncle Elvin's Epiphany

This week has me hanging out at home. I’m waiting on healing and being force-fed, like a pate-bred Christmas goose, the news about a ‘fiscal cliff.’ After my femur has just given birth to a new titanium hip, a fiscal cliff would rate only a mild inconvenience.

I’m thinking about December 21, 2012. Doesn’t resonate with you? Then check the Mayan Stone Calendar. That’s when doomsday dawns, the climax of civilization. Apocalypse Now! Whatever.

Last year, Climax, Georgia got on the map when Uncle Elvin predicted a world holocaust would occur on May 21, 2011. He’s really nobody’s uncle. People in the South assume identities. He didn’t devise this date of doom. He’s a political opportunist, a shady sort who lives in the shadows, digging up dirt and details for dinero. He had done research on a California nutcase, the Reverend Harold Camping.

Remember Rev. Camping? He spent millions on billboards predicting The Rapture with money gleaned from carcasses of his cult’s groupies. His prediction failed, at least in this hemisphere, anyway. He recanted after experiencing visions of the afterlife from inhaling hallucinogenic herbs. Expositors of such hoo-hah often receive recompense commensurate with the prognostications of this rubbish.

Millions have been manipulated with this same scenario…doomsday’s coming, get ready. Just guessing, but I’d say ‘getting ready’ means cashing in and buying a ticket out of the coming conflagration. Money is the motivation for most scams.

Mt. Vesuvius in year 79 was a biggie. Pompeii was enveloped in ash, whole bodies engulfed and mummified, lying spread-eagle in the streets like cast-off stone cadavers. So sudden was it that no one cashed out, but the Italians are now cashing in with tours of the devastation. There are perils of staying anywhere too long. They say it inspired the prototype for the popular Pompeii Pizza Ovens. ‘They’ say a lot of things.

Halley’s Comet came close in 1910. It incited a short-lived panic. The sale of indulgences in the Catholic Church hit a record high following the speculation that the comet’s tail contained a gas that would ignite the atmosphere and snuff out all life. Well, it didn’t happen. But the frenzy did open a door for disciples of the Green Movement to successfully plunder the national treasury by preaching carbon emissions. Hysteria is a terrible thing to waste.

A prominent TV evangelist envisioned a Freaky Friday scenario of his own, prophesying utter destruction in 1982. He went live on his $7000 Money Club to tuned-in nitwits that Armageddon was imminent. Nothing happened, except the usual worldwide violence, a stock market crash and several tsunamis. He’s now dean of intergalactic studies at Oral Roberts University.

The True Way, a Taiwanese cult established by Hon-Ming Chen, predicted God would appear on American cable television on March 31, 1998. God didn’t oblige. He was being entertained by the Clinton impeachment proceedings on C-Span. Chen dodged crucifixion because his follower’s visas expired before they could accommodate him. Be careful with predictions.

The list is long. Remember the Y2K hoax? That swindle emptied the vaults of entire nations with more efficiency than a snow storm will empty Budweiser from the shelves of stores. People are very predictable! But back to Uncle Elvin.

He looted the locals on Camping’s soothsaying. His high-tech billboards belched smoke, predicting The End with thunder and flashing lightning bolts. His junk yard became a shrine. His pond burned mysteriously, like Vesuvius. Visions appeared in the smoky heavens. Caravans of pilgrims clogged the compound, like Nevada’s Burning Man Fest. Brinks set up a bank. Hollywood showed, Disney offered cash. May 21, 2011 drew nearer. Panic ensued.

But Uncle Elvin cashed out early, which, coincidentally, coincided with the last day of his probation. He ceased imitating Jackson Pollack’s drip art of punching pin-holes in eggs and blowing out the contents on canvases in shapes of Mother Mary. He sold out to Disney and left town like he arrived…late at night on Trailways. After May 21, 2011, Climax attempted to change its name to Toad Suck. But Arkansas beat them to it.

Uncle Elvin? Well, in typical American tradition he was reincarnated as Mo Elvinsky, and joined the Washington PAC firm of Deadlock, Leech and Filch. He’s now Counsel Emeritus in the West Wing.

Stone carvings or fiscal cliffs notwithstanding, as for the future I will augur this with certitude: Taxes will thrive, my dog will still beg food and on December 21, 2012, the winter solstice will return. How’s that for accuracy?

What’s yours?

Bud Hearn
December 13, 2012