To Do List For The Impending Armageddon on May 21, 2011

St. Louis’ Riverfront Times is reporting that a religious outfit from South Carolina has definitively determined that the end of the world will arrive with Christ on May 21, 2011. Most people, I must say, don’t have the luxury of knowing the exact date of their expiration or extinction. A lot of people wouldn’t want to know, but I think those people are the type of people who look around at their family dinners and go “Omigah, my family is the coolest and we’re all gonna be together FOREVER!!!”

I know. Lame.

We’re all due at some point or another to die, tremendous advances in modern medicine and armageddon-proof technologies notwithstanding. I don’t know about you, but those scenes in movies where everyone’s huddled around the dying old guy, gripping his hand as he’s trying to crap out his dying “I love you’s” gives me the willies. I’d rather go out guns blazing, shouting, with everyone going “LOOK OUT!” followed by “WOW!” and probably some raucous applause. I’d want to be that old man who everyone talks about. “Yeah, Old Man Stovall?…He passed…He was 87…Flipped his Harley into a Firework Factory…yeah, THAT firework factory.”

But it looks like my tiny, humble dream will die with me in five months or so, along with every other cell of humanity on this great celestial bulb of ours. Which isn’t all bad. Patton Oswalt says that if you’re going to go to an afterlife, you’re going to want to go during the apocalypse. Kind of ruins my plans for a Viking funeral (in which the corpse is put on a sail boat, they have the memorial service, push the boat out to sea or lake or whatever, then when it’s far enough away, shoot a flaming arrow through the mast, sinking the vessel and creating a watery grave [I ABSOLUTELY WANT TO DO THIS AND HAVE EARNESTLY REQUESTED IT FROM MY GIRLFRIEND IN CASE OF MY DEMISE {Now in case it happens prior to May 21, 2011}]), but whatevs.

The plan now must be to get a to-do list together for the next five plus months or so. A couple of things to keep in mind are that threats against people’s lives are relatively void since we’ll all be dead within a year anyway and that money, for the most part, is abstract and useless. So it’s not like a bucket list, per se, but it’s a list compiled to kick a bucket before God smites everything, you and the bucket included.

• Base jumping off a building. I’ve got the Arch pretty near me, so I think that’d be my first summit, if it’s not already too crowded.
• Make sure Hootie and the Blowfish get their comeback tour rolling. THE CLOCK IS OFFICIALLY TICKING, GUYS. GET ON THAT.
• Bring back the catapult. I don’t know WHY it ever fell out of wartime fashion, because while the cannon shot straighter and with more force, was it NEVER considered you could load an explosive instead of a boulder into the spoon? Also, perhaps a new conveyance? THE CATAPULT WAS IS AWESOME.
• I’d read the cliffnotes of every famous work of literature and then make everyone else feel like they hadn’t lead fulfilling lives by not reading those books too. SUCKERS!
• I’d go for a hot air balloon ride. Those look fun.
• Learn to fly a plane. Getting around is going to be tough, so I’m just going to have to commandeer a vessel or two in the meantime. I could just get parachutes, set the plane to ascend til it can’t ascend any more, and bail above my respective vista. That’d have “James Bond” written all over it.
• Wear only the finest clothes. I’m going to loot about every Brooks Bros. store I can find, not because I’m envious now or pretentious or anything, but if I’m going to go out, I’m going to look dapper doing it.
• I’d punch someone right in the face. Then I’d give them a hug, and NEVER SEE THEM AGAIN.
• If pro sports were to continue, I’d just go out and play with whoever. It’d be like the world’s biggest pick up game of everything. “Yo, Pujols! You care if I take second? Awesome! Thanks.” If it were football, I’d play QB because despite being about 5’2″, I’ve got a great arm. ASK ANYONE.
• Get a spaceship. Because screw you if you I’m going down taking it. I’m picking up enough Subway sandwiches and steaks to last a good long while, finding some nerd who knows science and can make water and stuff, grabbing my girlfriend, and taking off this rock. That’d be May 20, 2011, of course, and it might not even work, because if God’s really ending the world, he’d just unravel all of existence, not just Earth. DUH.

But that’s only a handful of things. Go ahead and list your own in the comment section. In fact, LET’S MAKE IT A COMMENT CONTEST. I’ll get the winner a holiday gift certificate somewhere NICE, if we get 15 or more individual commentors, and the suggestions don’t suck.