Make Friday party plans for The End of Summer & The World

Well, that’s it: It’s over.

You don’t need every news alert buzzing a cell phone in your skinny jeans to know the end is near. It is imminent. And we can’t stop it.

The Summer of 2017 ends at 4:02 p.m. Friday, when this tilted planet like a spinning top circling the sun revolves around to where its bottom is turned in and tip turned out.

When the sun crosses the equator at 4:02 p.m., the Autumn of 2017 begins.

So that would be a good time to knock off early Friday and go have a drink. Forget the Summer of 2017. It was a little stressful, what with the hurricanes and wildfires and Tiki torch parades and all.

Two massive hurricanes are enough, for one season, so goodbye, Summer of 2017, and hello….

Uh oh. Two more tropical storms are in the Atlantic, and one is named “Maria.” That can’t be good. That’s like “They Call the Wind Maria” and “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria” and “Take a Letter, Maria.”

Good thing I haven’t bothered putting the porch furniture back out.

If all these storms keep clouding the sky, we won’t be able to see signs of the end of the world.

That’s coming up, too, apparently. Well, it’s always coming up, eventually. This can’t go on forever, you know.

It’s Saturday

Usually the end of the world is not next weekend, however, and the latest prediction has it scheduled for Saturday – another reason not to put the porch furniture back out.

Some prophets of doom foresee in the heavens a sign foretold of in the Bible: On Saturday, the planet Jupiter leaves the constellation Virgo after having lingered there near the constellation Leo in alignment with Mercury, Venus and Mars.

So, you people better start checking your horoscope in the newspaper, because some wild crazy stuff must be happening. And if you don’t read a line like “your magnetism grows beyond your inner circle and draws others into your orbit,” you won’t know that means the world’s ending.

I read about this on National Public Radio’s website, but I haven’t heard anything about it on the radio. All I hear on the radio is the fall pledge drive, and it’s not even fall yet.

Anyway, according to Revelation 12:

"A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. She was pregnant and … about to give birth. Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on its heads…. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that it might devour her child…. She gave birth to a son…. And her child was snatched up to God and to his throne.”

According to an AT&T documentary called “The Sign,” believers see the birth as Jupiter leaving Virgo, and the planets in Leo making 12 stars, and the red dragon as Planet X, a distant, undiscovered neighbor beyond our orbit.

So far no Planet X exists, so a substitute’s needed for the red dragon. Maybe it means a dragon-shaped asteroid. Maybe “red dragon” means China. Or Russia. Or a huge, orange … meteor.

Or maybe it means “Game of Thrones” is going to knock off the blonde who rides dragons, and fans will get so upset you’d think the damn world’s coming to an end.

The good news is that if the world’s ending Saturday, we still have time to celebrate the End of Summer & The World on Friday evening. We can stay out all night, watching the planets and stars signal our impending doom.

So get out your boogie pants and Google a playlist for flatline-dancing this Armageddon Eve. And put something besides REM’s “It’s the End of the World” on there, this time.

Find a song with “Maria” in it.

This story was originally published September 17, 2017 at 2:03 PM with the headline "Make Friday party plans for The End of Summer & The World."