This arrived in my mailbox today on the backpage of the Fountain Pen Hospital catalogue.
I know people are capitalizing on the Mayan 2012 prophecy, have been for the past few years, and I expect more will follow but for some reason this really amused me. Here’s the marketing copy (bolding and italics are mine):
The 2012 Collection will stand as a tribute to the enduring wisdom of the Mayan culture as well as the precision and accuracy with which they predicted the conditions of the world and events in the heavens in our day.
It happens only every 26,000 years; the Galactic Alignment, where the Earth’s Winter Solstice Sun passes through the Dark Rift of the Milky Way, marking the end of the 13-Baktun Cycle in the Mayan Long-Count Calendar. In astronomical terms, the Sun conjuncts the intersection of the Milky Way and the plane of the ecliptic. The Milky Way extends in a general north-south direction in the night sky. The plane of the ecliptic is the track the Sun, Moon, planets and stars appear to travel in the sky, from east to west. It intersects the Milky Way at a 60 degree angle near the constellation Sagittarius. This rare galactic alignment was predicted anciently by the Maya, whose culture, calendar and beliefs were based on their prophetic interpretation of these significant celestial events.
According to researchers, something definite happened in the middle of the first century BC and it was carved in stone by the Maya. Something also happened in 830 AD (in Baktun 10) which signaled the ‘Beginning of the end’ for the Maya civilization. The Maya considered these events to be so significant that they calculated a ‘countdown’ of sorts, beginning August 11th, 3114 BC and ending on December 21st, 2012.
Better hurry, they’re only making 52 of these babies and they’re going for a mere $4,900.