Thank Q’uq’umatz!

Nasa officials recently offered up the cheerful news that the world really isn’t going to end on December 21st, 2012, as supposedly predicted by the Mayans and their impressive stone calendars. Someone once told me that the fact that the Mayan calendars ended on the day we describe as December 21, 2012 was of no significance; it just meant that by the time the Spanish arrived and started killing them, that was as far in the future as the Mayans had bothered to calculate time… although part of me likes the idea of some ancient Mayan calendar carver, dying of whooping cough, thinking to himself, “The joke’s on you, Spaniards — according to this calendar I just finished, in about four hundred and twelve years from now you guys are FUCKED!”

Of course, the skeptic in me thinks that if the Mayans had the power to predict the end of the world more than 400 years in the future, they also would have had the power to prevent a bunch of unwashed Spaniards with fancy hats to destroy their civilization. 

Q’uq’umatz is apparently the Mayan feathered serpent god whom some claim is much like the Aztec god, Quezcoatl (and others say that Q’uq’umatz is nothing like Quezcoatl — me, I don’t have an opinion because I don’t know). Quezcoatl is cool because they also call him, “The Smoking Mirror” which is an excellent name. I chose Q’uq’umatz’s name from a list because I was wondering how you pronounce it. “Kwu-kwu mats? Ku-uk-oo-matz? Kwuck-oo-matz?”

Note to self: Never agree to join any Mayan sport team. If I understand it correctly, the winners usually eat the losers and my softball skills are so woefully poor that I am more likely to find myself among the eaten rather than the eaters.