In case you’ve been living under a rock and haven’t heard, the end of the world begins this Saturday, May 21 at or about 6:00 PM. According to Harold Camping, the resident genius cum prophet at WeCanKnow.com, May 21 is exactly 7,000 years after “Noah’s flood,” and is therefore the day that Christ will return.

According to this news report about a bunch of religious nutbags getting together to wear tacky t-shirts and wail and gnash their teeth about the end of the world, only 200 million Christians will be saved. The other nearly-7-billion people in the world will perish, with wailing and gnashing of teeth. Well, not immediately. The day will begin with “a worldwide earthquake, such as man has never seen,” with death and destruction the order of the day. Then those lucky 200 million will be rescued. The rest will suffer and die until October 21, when a “fireball” will destroy the Earth entirely, putting an end to all that annoying wailing and gnashing of teeth.

So, if you’d like to know what our days will be like after Saturday, be sure to pick up a copy of the pretty-much-unreadable Left Behind series which, I’m told, paints a detailed picture of post-rapture living. (Seriously, I tried to read Left Behind several years ago, because I had several friends say to me, “O! You must read it!” and “O! It’s so detailed!” and “O! It’s so horrifying!” I tried. Really, I did. I made it almost 100 pages into it before I was on the brink of spilling state secrets to the Communists. It was that bad. The characters were 1-dimensional, and I just didn’t give a damn what happened to any of them.)

So, mark your calendars for this Saturday. If you’re still around on Sunday, you’ll know you weren’t one of those who were really “saved.”