So there are rumors going round that Joaquin Phoenix is punking us all with his recent foray into rap, and that that devilish Casey Affleck is behind it.  It would explain a lot, actually, and kudos to them both if it's true and they end up pulling it off.  I guess the only question would be how deep the conspiracy goes.  Did Letterman know?  Was Ben Stiller in on it?

I'm not sure Phoenix is a sympathetic enough character in the first place that if it is a joke at everyone else's expense it won't backfire.  It's dangerous playing with your public persona like that, and while it could be a career coup, it could also be a career killer.  Not for Casey Affleck, though.  This could launch him into the big time.  I mean, this is like a real live version of Spinal Tap, which was a fake documentary.  Talk about meta. 

I was hanging out with a couple of friends the other night — it was trivia night at C.F. Donovan's in Dorchester — and the topic of the world ending came up, as it does fairly often these days.  My drinking buddies had recently seen Zeitgeist, a sort of at times mock-seeming documentary that's been making the rounds on the web for awhile now (I wrote about it back in October of '07).  Talk about conspiracies.

One of my friends seems absolutely convinced that the world is going to end on 12/12/12 along with the Mayan calendar, and one of his friends had done all the math.  He told me several sources had predicted the end of the world as we know it.  Here's a short-list from wikipedia:

• The 1997 book The Bible Code by Michael Drosnin suggests that, according to certain algorithms of the Bible code, an asteroid or comet will collide with the Earth. Drosnin also states in his book that the Bible code only predicts possibilities.
• The 2006 book 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl by Daniel Pinchbeck discusses theories of a possible global awakening to psychic connection by the year 2012, creating a noosphere.
• Riley Martin asserts that Biaviian aliens will allow passage aboard their 'Great Mother Ship' when the Earth is 'transformed' in 2012.
• Terence McKenna's numerological novelty theory suggests a point of singularity in which humankind will go through a great shift in consciousness.
• Dannion Brinkley, in his 2007 book, Secrets of the Light, a follow-up to his 1995 bestseller Saved by the Light, predicts "that by the year 2012 humanity will experience unprecedented mental and spiritual transformations, coinciding precisely with the Earth's passage through great physical upheaval".

Hey, it could happen.  I'm not against it, even.  But up to now apocalypses have been pretty disappointing, you have to admit.  I mean, how many times was the world supposed to have ended and then didn't? Hundreds in just our lifetime.  You mark your calendar, get dressed up for it, and then they go and cancel at the last minute.  It's worse than the prom.  Now, I'm not normally a gambling man, but if someone wants to place a bet on 12/12/12, I'm game.  Otherwise, I'm not about to get too exercised over it.

And anyway, no disrespect, but the world actually seems to have ended for the Mayans about 300 years ago, whatever their calendar says.  Truth is, I think a lot of end-of-the-world scenarios, much of religious eschatology, and most modern conspiracy theories like Project Blue Beam, can probably be explained by too much instant coffee. 

According to the BBC, in a recent study "people who drank more than seven cups of instant coffee a day were three times more likely to hallucinate than those who took just one."  Although I was never an instant coffee fiend, college, even in the Pre-Starbucks era, was one long jittery caffeine-induced hallucination for me. 

Particularly when finals rolled around, starved of sleep and racing around on amphetamines, the day began with tonic-clonic seizures, stigmata by lunch, followed by a brief OBE, and then perhaps a bit of Charles Bonnet syndrome before hitting the stacks for the night. 

And while I occasionally miss all my many imaginary coffee mates from back in the day, I know they're always waiting for me on the bottom of that eighth cup of Folger's crystals.  All I have to do is add water.  It's like having instant frenemies! 

Thank goodness, just because you believe it doesn't make it real!  Of course, everyone gets their own, personalized apocaplypse, regardless.  I guess the caffeine just makes it more interesting.