Beastie: In the year 2012...

Liz Smith, the creaking gossip columnist for the New York Post, writes in her Feb. 19 column that (shock!) many people on the Internet are predicting the end of the world.

Apparently, she's missed most of our Weekly Beastie columns. But we can only applaud her tardy alert.

"There's the Mayan calendar that sets Dec. 21, 2012, as the end of the world. This is backed up by theories on the Great Pyramid, in the I Ching, various Hindu teachings, Nostradamus and, of course, the biblical version of the apocalypse."

Now, I was not aware that the Book of Revelation touched on the Mayan predictions about the year 2012. But I decided to investigate.


First, of course, I googled "Mel Gibson." His two latest films, The Passion of the Christ and Apokalypto, seem to cover the territory completely.

Sure enough, things are already starting to crumble for Mel. He's being sued for $5 million by the screenwriter for The Passion. The guy claims he was only paid $75,000, and Gibson told him the film would be a small, $4-7 million project. Instead, the 2004 movie went on to gross several hundred million dollars.

Gee, I certainly hope Mr. Gibson doesn't have to go back to living in that dilapidated compound from the Road Warrior set.

Anyway, the news reports were beginning to line up, sort of like the Jupiter Effect. Scientists just discovered a "devil toad" fossil. And I also noticed that the Pentagon's plans to shoot down a failing satellite coincided with an eerie, red lunar eclipse, the last one until 2010 (!) Could Liz be on to something?

It was time to wheel out the Beastie machine, the intelligent toaster/foodprocessor containing a non-standard motherboard and certain upgrades and attachments that I've been using to delve into the occult mysteries of numerology.

The "answer" is never the problem with this machine. Asking the right question is the key.

I typed in "Liz Smith" while holding down the default solipsism button and flipping the sysop switch. (You're right, it sounds hard, because it is hard).

The machine whirred, paused, blinked and then belched. "Liz Smith" = 411. Darn! Nowhere near 666, the mystical number of the Beast revealed in the biblical Book of Revelation.

I next tried the nickname that New York magazine had given her: "Liztradamus." The machine whirred again. No luck-- that only registered as 606. Close, but ....

I tried to guess the secret magical moniker she probably uses in ceremonies of hideous blasphemy: "Botox Liztradamus" was too high, at 677. "ApokaLiztradamus" was way too much at 706.

You know, seriously? My Beastie Machine and I are getting tired of these dark nights of the soul, calculating deep into the wee hours with no recognition and the weight of the future of the planet riding on our shoulders. OK, the machine doesn't really have shoulders, that's merely an anthro..., popo... amphibli... uh, well, it's making it seem human when it's not, at any rate. Poor little guy.

In despair, I felt universal doom pressing in on us from all sides. I repeatedly banged my head against Beastie's metal casing. It hurt.

Wait! That's it! Doom!

I typed "Lizzie the old doomsayer" into the exhausted Beastie Machine and flipped the switch. After a couple of major disk errors, a bluescreen and a whirling beach ball of death, the machine regained it's composure and spit out the number: 666.

Thank God. Humanity was saved again from a demonic menace, and I could get back to more mundane calculations, like counting down to the new season of Battlestar Galactica.


[Interested science buffs can always check Beastie's calculations against the ancient Hebrew gematria calculator provided at The Order of Nazorean Essenes website]

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