My Mayan Education

So for the first day off after arriving here in Edmonton, I decided to indulge in a little trip to the local science museum here. I attended the one in Ottawa and experienced my first earthquake, so I was anxious to see what Edmonton had to offer me.

I did the rounds of learning a thing or two about the human body, little science displays that would let you create lightning and tornados, buttons that you’d push to blow a puff of some foul smell you’d have to identify, and interactive visual tricks that make you dizzy or see colors that aren’t really there. But the added bonus here was a chance to sit in on a planetarium-like display documenting the mythology of the ancient Mayan civilization. I thought, “Cool! I never got around to watching that shit ass movie ‘2012’ about their idea of the end of the world synching with the end of the Mayan calendar…now I won’t have to. I’ll get the facts!’

Oh good God people. We have nothing to worry about come 2012.

First of all, has anyone stopped to consider that a lot of people are freaking out over the fact that the Mayan calendar comes to an end in 2012, (Oh God, it’s the end of the World!), but never stop to think that maybe the reason it stopped was due to, oh I don’t know, their civilization being wiped out? If the Mayans could predict the end of existence, could they not find the foresight to predict their own fate?

Just sayin’.

So, onto the movie. First of all, our planetarium in Winnipeg is balls compared to this one in Edmonton. I’ll tell you, James Cameron can stroke everyone off with his new 3D hype, but THIS is the way movies should be made in the future. I have never felt so immersed and enveloped in a film like I was watching this documentary. It was crazy cool. Until I started listening to what was being said.

So to start off my little lesson in the ancient Mayans, it stated that this was all based on what is the ancient myth of the Mayans. “Myth”… meaning, “Not real”. So this is all about as real as “Lord of the Rings” or “Harry Potter”. It starts off by saying that the earth was one great big ball of water and that it wasn’t until a giant turtle rose up out of the deep with what is now the earth we walk upon resting on its giant back. Oh yeah, and during this little time in history, the sun and moon don’t exist yet. I’ll come back to that but for now, let’s move on.

So yeah, giant turtle…didn’t see that coming did ya!? Now the Mayans were not born out of clay, wood, ribs or whatever is the traditional bible idea these days, but in fact were created out of corn. Mmm Hmm…corn. The cob variety I believe. Now there were two boys, (whose names escape me) that lived upon this new found earth on the back of a mother-fuckin’ turtle that were a couple of rascally little buggers. They would play a game of soccer in the corn fields at all hours of the night. Course that could read, “All day” too, but again, there is no sun or moon yet. I’m getting there.

One day, the lords of the underworld, (i.e. Hell) looked upon these two boys enjoying themselves playing soccer in the friggin’ dark, and grew jealous of their fun. So they challenged them to a ball game in hell. If you ain’t shaking your head yet, you will be soon.

Now then, the first World Cup goes down in hell! And due to the two boys cheating, (they pride themselves on cheating!) they not only beat the devil, but they also recover their dead fathers head, not his body, just his head, plant it in the ground, which of course turns into a big ol’ stock of corn, which grants them immortality by transforming them into the sun and moon respectively.

I wonder if the origin of pot was based in Mayan, “reality?”

It was on the very first day that the sun rose up in the sky that they began what is known as the “Mayan calendar”. So to clarify here, before anybody checked out to see what the entire world looked like in the light, before seeing what each other looked like in the harsh light of day, or what the land they lived on looked like, they came up with a very complex system of measuring the rise and fall of this new, scary-as-fuck, ball of fire in the sky to make a measurement of time?

I call bullshit! Well, I called bullshit when they said the turtle bit, but I’ll call double bullshit now!

Now I’m a man of facts when it comes to our history. I’m on the side of evolution if only because it’s been proven as hard cold fact. Call me crazy! So I have to wonder how far back in time the Mayans are figuring this all officially began. Because I’m fairly certain that the dinosaurs were here a hell of a long time before we ever started looking humanoid. And they sure as fuck weren’t stumbling around in the dark.

So ladies and gentlemen, those of you who are still fretting over some little superstition about the world coming to an end in 2012, think about it. This is a religion that even Scientologists are looking at and thinking, “Well that’s just fucking stupid!”

Make plans for 2013 and beyond people, we’ll be here for quite some time!