A Pope Eclipse

You know what? I give up. Why? Because you people just can't stop! It's in your nature, it's in your blood! I knew this would happen, I called it! I said not long before the 2012 apocalypse, in my fifth ever blog post, Halfway Between Blog and Oblivion:
  "I believe, when the 21st of December comes, all that will happen is that all of those people who didn't change, will start dreaming up the next apocalypse."
Two whole months, well done. I thought we would have cracked before that, but you did well. Two whole months without the looming threat of oblivion and we somehow managed to get on with our lives.
How did we even manage?
If you don't know what I'm talking about. Allow me to enlighten you. It all started with the Pope . . .
The Word of the Day is: 'ABDICATE'.

Abdicate /'abdəkayt/ v. To give up or renounce (a claim, right or position, especially that of being king or queen) especially in a voluntary, public, or formal manner: She abdicated the throne; He abdicated in 1936.

I didn't just choose the word abdicate because the Pope quit. No, I chose it for those words. 'To Give up (or renounce)'. Because that's what I see here. People giving up on their lives because it's going to end. People renouncing any responsibility they have to their life, because it's going to end.
But I already did a blog post about that mentality, so go ahead and read the Halfway Between Blog and Oblivion post, if that's what you want to do. But I don't want to be bitter about it. Because I give up on trying to educate you people, and explain why apocalypses are stupid. But you know what they say:
If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.
So let me be the first to jump on the Doomsday Train. Because I want to have fun this time. I want to reinvigorate the apocalypse!
I want to bring back the life, joy and mischief that comes with looking over the precipice. Because we all know that this is bollocks, so why not have some fun with it!
So let's get cracking!

First off, we need to do this properly. Let me introduce you to our Doomsday Prediction: The Prophecy of the Popes
See, in 1595, some dude named Arnold de Wyon (a monk) published this prophecy, which he says was written by Saint Malachy, the Archbishop of Amargh, Ireland (of the 12th Century).
The prophecy was basically a list of 112 cryptic phrases. But it claimed that each was representative of the next one hundred and twelve popes! Now, it's difficult to see who exactly these phrases referred to, as they were quite cryptic. Here are some examples:
Pig in a sieve; Out of the Leonine Rose; Schismatic Crow, Trifling grain & (my favourite) Religious Man.
If you'll read the Wikipedia page, you'll see that through the late 1500's, people have been finding it harder and harder to relate popes to their prophetic phrases.
But never mind that! Because 111 popes later, (and apparently, just yesterday) Pope Benedict VXI quit his job. In the prophecy, he was called 'Glory of the Olive', but that's all very boring compared to the last pope of the prediction. Because the next pope 'Peter the Roman' is said to preempt doom:

  Peter the Roman, who will pasture his sheep in many tribulations, and when these things are finished, the city of seven hills will be destroyed, and the dreadful judge will judge his people. The End.

Now that's pretty cool. The City of Seven Hills is supposed to be Rome. But more than that, the 'dreadful Judge' is supposed to be God, and if he 'judges his people' well then obviously that's supposed to be Judgement Day.
Now we're getting somewhere!
But there's a problem with this prophecy. See, it doesn't actually have a date. Look at the other big ones:
- Y2K, the Millenium Bug: January 1st, 2001
- Black Holes by the LHC: September 10, 2008
- The Mayans End of Days: December 21st, 2012

There's a bunch of other end-of-times dates, but they're mostly small-time cults. But for something big like the end of Rome and all Catholicism, we need a date!
So I decided to find one.
Now the prophecy says the pope will help his people through some tribulations, then will be judged. Now I was looking up to see what could be a 'tribulation' for the Catholics. Unfortunately we've already disproven the Rhythmn Method, so it's not that; gays can already marry in many countries, so it's not that; the inquest into child molestation started last year, so it's not that . . . hell, I couldn't really find any more tribulations for the Catholics than they've already gone through!

But luckily, I have an out. See, 'technically' the prophecy says judgement occurs "when these things are finished", and of course one of the 'things' was "[Peter the Roman] will pasture his sheep". So basically, once the Pope stops leading his people, we all die.
Now, popes stop poping in one of two ways. Either they quit, like the last one. Or they die. Now, assuming the next Pope won't quit, because that's quite rare apparently, we have to assume that once he dies, the prophecy is fulfilled.

So, even though I suck at maths, I did a little bit to find the proper date of the next pope's death, and therefore the next date of the apocalypse.[Now I know this is probably wrong. But that doesn't matter. We need a date, no matter how accurate it is.]

Right, so I looked up the papabili of the 2013 Conclave, and I found the oldest and the youngest potential popes. Then I googled their images, to see their BMI and looked over their wikipedia pages to get some information on their mood, outlook and other information. Then I looked up www.death-clock.org and using the data I had accumulated, I got us their death:

Odilo Scherer (Youngest) Born: 21/12/1949 BMI: <25 View: Neutral Alcohol: Once a Month Country: Brazil Death: 27th May 2019

Francis Arinze (Oldest) Born: 01/11/1932 BMI: <25 View: Optimist Alcohol: Once a Month Country: Cameroon Death: 7th August 2020

[For the record, I assume they both drink alcohol "Once a Month" because of all the rituals with wine, consecration, etcetera. They are both healthy, so have healthy BMIs. I chose a 'Neutral' View (Outlook on Life) for Odilo because he opposes a lot of modern things. Also, I said Francis was in Cameroon because it's right next door to Nigeria, and Death-Clock.org doesn't have Nigeria as a country option.]

So yes, that's what I got. But we can't have two dates! So I did a little maths, to get the average. (I'm showing out my working, so you can see where I can get it wrong, if I do.)

There's a year and two months between May 2019 and August 2020 (and 2020 is a leap year so 365 + 1 = 366):
366 + 30 + 31 = 427

Then we get May's remaining days(31 - 27 = 4) and the first days of August (7), and we add them all to get the difference between the dates:
4 + 427 + 7 = 438

Then we divide it by two (438 ÷ 2 = 219), and just take away the months as we go:
(219 - 7 = 212) June; (212 - 30 = 182) July; (182 - 31 = 151) August; (151 - 31 = 120) September; (120 - 30 = 90) October; (90 - 31 = 59) November; (59 - 31 = 28) December.

Then you add the 28 to December, and there you go! The world will end Between the 28th & the 29th (because the average was an even number) So the Last Day on Earth will be:
28th of December 2019!

Sweet.

Okay, now we know when we're going to die, let's zhoozh it up a bit. I mean, there's already a lot of partying to be had during the apocalypse, because they describe it as 'Judgement'. So that means that we're talking about the Bible's 'Revelation':
Four Horsemen; Sun turning black, Moon turning red; Stars fall out of the sky; Global Earthquakes; Fire, Thunder & Lightning; Seas of Blood; Rivers of Poison . . .
Oh, it's gonna be a blast.

But in the meantime, we have our very short lives to live, so let's get existential, bitches!

Because if the world ends, then life has no meaning. That means we can give up on the betterment of Mankind!
Renounce all responsibility and live like horny monkeys: fucking, eating, partying and living like we don't care. We will dance the Harlem Shake; Plank until we get wood; Snort so many drugs that we could sneeze out a unicorn & run through an interection naked. Because that's the point of the apocalypse, right?

A chance to abdicate all responsibility from life. I mean, if we die tomorrow, then we have to live it up today. Right?
YOLO! lol, OMFG wat is UP with all thees trollz who are doin' thar taxs and carin about the envrionment an stuff?

Yeah, we're going to party like it's 1999. You know, the last time we all died. Yeah, let's do this thing. I mean, who CARES about spelling words accurately? Who cares about planning for the future and learning and doing things for other people. It's the apocalypse! Let's roll with it!
Come on guys! . . . Guys?

 . . .

Oh, to hell with this! I can't do it. I tried, but this whole apocalypse thing is an excuse to stop living life properly, and I can't do that.
I'm not the only one either. The Pope quitting is big news, but so far I haven't heard too much about this latest Apocalypse. I did so, for a bit of fun trying to find the exact date, and for those of you that want to waste your life, feel free to use the 28th of December 2009 prediction as your final date (look, it even has maths, Doomsday maths!).
But just know that the rest of the world doesn't seem to be buying it this time. Most people didn't believe it last time either, but now even the idiots that did are starting to wise up.
Because we're sick of it, okay?
I'm sick of it.

You know why? Because after this, in 2045, they are predicting the "Technological Singularity" thing, which is when computers are supposed to surpass human control, and rise against their human oppressors.

It's turned into a joke, now. I mean, Y2K had some (faulty) logic to it, and Mayans were exotic enough that we could fall for the hocus pocus. But Catholicism? Really? I know Catholicism, and it's full of shit. And then the next one is robots? It's official, our next apocalypse will be directed by James Cameron.

If this apocalypse does become big news, during the next lapse in cultural concentration, turn off your television. Because it's just getting sad now.
Also, I don't care about Catholicism. You may have noticed that when I said it's full of shit, but my point is that the Pope doesn't matter. The Pope is also full of shit. and I'm sick of it.

So in that line of thought, I'm going to let Tim Minchin play us out with an appropriate song:
  "Alright, this is the last thing you're going to hear tonight. It's a Happy Song, but it's got . . . complicated words. So just listen really hard . . ."