Winter Solstice

I guess we're not going to be seeing the lunar eclipse tonight... it has been snowing all day today, turning to a frozen rain in the afternoon, and then back into snow again after the sun went down, creating a nice cake-like layer on the pavement of snow, ice, snow. Nonetheless, there is something pretty cool about an astronomical event that* occurs only once every five hundred years, and something a bit ominous about a full lunar eclipse on the winter solstice. Perhaps it is one more reason why the Mayans predicted certain cataclysmic changes for about this time.

Friday was my last day of work before the winter break. The kids are always asking me about what I think about 2012, "Isn't it true that the world is going to end?" "Aren't we all going to die?" and so on. They always look so disappointed when I tell them, no, the world will not end in 2012, don't listen to what the television says. I can be so boring sometimes. But I guess that it's just a bit of human nature to secretly hope that you get to live to see the End Times. It might give existence meaning, who knows?

Also, kids fucking love vampires. I found a notebook lying on the muddy ground by the bus stop a few weeks ago. It had two pages of long division followed by several pages of vampires:

This vampire makes me think of Trent Reznor, circa 1989.


This one has a beard. Because it must have been cold that day.

I think that kids - people - are fascinated by 2012 for the same reason that they are fascinated by vampires. Supernatural, thrilling, mysterious. Give you some insight into Death - What Lies Beyond - Etc. Also, both may give you the opportunity to prove how heroic you can be, a la Left Behind or Dead Rising or Dawn of the Dead or Twilight.

*Initially wrote, "astronomical event hat." If anyone has any last minute Christmas shopping to do, I would like one of those.