First we did the Death Clock thing at work, and then we started talking about 2012. I've been convinced for a while now that world as we know it will come to an end on Dec. 21, 2012, but I usually manage to keep my views about this out of ordinary, everyday conversations. Today, though, it was all we could talk about for the last half hour of the work day. This led to a lot of internet surfing, and I found this handy list of what might happen when the Mayan calendar finally comes to an end:

Human

• Flu Pandemic
• Nuclear War / WW3 / Biological War
• Large Hadron Collider
• Nanotechnology
• Religious Apocalypse
• Nuclear Accident
• Rise of the Machines
• Genetic Modification
• Time Travel Error

From Space

• Nearby Supernova
• Explosion from the black hole at the center of our galaxy - read about how something similar could have caused the recent tsunami
• Gamma Ray Burst (GRB)
• Asteroid/Meteor/Comet
• Coronal Mass Ejection (CRE) from our Sun
• Cosmic Rays
• Solar System Falls Apart (butterfly effect)
• Alien Invasion

From Earth

• Magnetic Pole Shift
• Crustal Pole Shift
• Supervolcano - ie Yellowstone
• Ice Age
• Global Warming

First, let me just note that this list is in Comic Sans on this guy's website, which basically wipes out any credibility he may have had on this subject, or any other subject. Now, let's look at the list.

Some of these items, I could actually look forward to with a good deal of excitement, such as time travel error and alien invasion.

Some of these items just seem ridiculous, such as rise of the machines (really?) and ice age (Al Gore, anybody?).

Other ideas, they seem completely plausible: flu pandemic, global warming, asteroid, and nuclear war.

Other ideas, they don't seem as plausible, but I can still imagine a scenario in which they occur. I'm talking magnetic pole shift, religious apocalypse (Apocalypse? Now?!?), that collider thing, and genetic modification.

And that brings me to my favorite one, the one in which the universe simply falls apart (butterfly effect). This one is just plain fascinating, and not because I kinda liked that Ashton Kutcher movie. Oh no, that "Butterfly Effect" will have nothing on this one. I'd actually be interested in seeing the graph of this, how a series of incidents originating from maybe you, maybe me, dropping a doughnut on the sidewalk on a Tuesday could ultimately result in the universe collapsing. I love that butterfly effect bullshit, and I'm almost completely willing to sacrifice the world and life as we know it just to see how it might go down. The only problem with that, though, is that I wouldn't see how it would go down- I'd just wake up one morning, get in my car, turn on the radio, start making a mental grocery list, and then- OH SHIT WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ONNNNNNNNN??????? Poof.

Anyway, maybe 2012 will come and go, and we'll all be left here feeling slightly jilted. But maybe not. The clock- the real death clock- is ticking down. Where will you be on 12/21/12? Taking a vacation day from work, I hope. Because there's no way I personally am going in that day- at the very least, I'm sleeping in.