Roger Moroney: No doubt it was in the stars

AHHH, the end of the world huh?
I shall begin this sarcastic abuse of a keyboard with some verse ... for I am a closet poet ... albeit a failed one (as the following lines will illustrate.)
"May twenty-one, it came and went,
And now my spleen I have to vent (it doesn't get any better, believe me)
That loony-toon from the USA,
Had told us we had had our day,
That the earth would burn on May twenty-one,
So I went out for some credit card fun,
And now I owe about 35 grand,
With a hangover in my skull what sounds like a marching band,
I wonder if the bank will ... understand?"
The only mildly apocalyptic thing that happened last Saturday was as the result of a fish curry I put together but I don't think we need to go into that at this moment.
Point is, Harold the doomsayer did what so many in his position do.
He made a bucketload of money. He's a businessman.
He runs a radio network in the US. He knew his ratings would soar as the gullible souls amidst that nation's flock indeed flocked to him.
Now he'll repent, of course, and say he got the numbers wrong. No, he didn't. He probably made the seven figures he was hoping for.
Now, we could all do with a few more bob and all it takes is that "point of difference".
That masterstroke of commercial genius ... like the kid who came up with the idea for Facebook and who now perches contentedly upon the rich list.
You need an idea.
I've tried a few things, but the bottom line is I'm an idiot.
I share the same financial acumen as the bloke at Decca Records who in the very early '60s turned down signing the Beatles ... rather pompously citing the reason that guitar bands were never going to cut the mustard.
And I have, somewhere in the murk of my ancestry, a long-departed great-great-grandchap who once pursued technology's mother lode ... perpetual motion.
No kidding. He was a great-rellie of some description and apparently it drove him bananas.
He had plans and models and books of figures and notes and diagrams ... but he ultimately failed to realise his single-minded passion to build a machine that once started, would go forever without the need of any fuel or force.
I think it shortened his life.
Mind you, had he succeeded, he would have been a very wealthy man and that fortune would have trickled down to me and I'd be an appalling sort of beast ... hanging around bars and things and playing silly beggars on motorbikes and the like ... hang on.
Oh, and he would have prevented the oil companies from sucking the world's economies dry.
What a great bloke ... had he succeeded.
There is perpetual motion on this planet, of course, but I don't know how to harness it.
It's called a rising and falling sun. You can set your clocks by it. In fact, since the time Neanderthal man invented the Rolex we, indeed, have been doing just that.
But how do I harness this perpetual thing?
Don't know. Too hard, so I'll do what I did in the fourth form when we were doing logarithms ... I'll give up.
Instead, I shall take a leaf out of Harold (what do you mean it's May 22nd?) Camping's book and make some startling predictions.
If I get one or two right I could become the next Ken Ring (remember him? He's our home-grown failed quake predictor).
I shall open a website and charge people $11 a time to check in to see what's going to happen next Thursday.
Well it's worth a shot.
So ... on May 27 expect the phone to ring. Someone will be on the other end and they will ask you something.
On June 1 there will be a chill in the air at 6.37pm. Do not be alarmed. There will be a similar chill on July 18 at 7.55pm.
On the morning of August 3 you will succumb to hunger. You will feel a thirst and a need to take succour (that's food but in fancy lingo, yeah?).
On December 25 you will hear yourself say "I can't believe it's come around so fast."
And you will witness the nodding of many heads in agreement.
And in my own case, tomorrow (May 25) will be a significant day.
For I shall receive a missive from my editor requesting I call at his office door "for a word".
"We are paying you for this?" he will enquire.
"Yes," I shall reply before adding "and I knew you'd say that ... that'll be $11 thanks."
Roger Moroney is an award-winning journalist for Hawke's Bay Today and observer of the slightly off-centre.