People raise their hands during a ceremony by Mayan sages in Bacuranao, Cuba, Thursday, Dec. 6, 2012. Three Guatemalan sages burned wood resin, seeds, fruits and flowers on a beach outside Havana on Thursday in a ceremony marking the end of a Mayan calendar cycle that some have wrongly interpreted as a prediction of a looming apocalypse. The ceremony in Bacuranao took place two weeks before Dec. 21, 2012, when a more than 5,000-year period of the Mayan calendar ends. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)

Means: Taking advantage of the ‘Maya Apocalypse’

By Sean P. Means

| The Salt Lake Tribune

First Published Dec 13 2012 08:04 am • Last Updated Apr 08 2013 11:32 pm

If the Maya are right, we all have a week to live.

Of course, the Maya are almost surely wrong, and it’s scientifically dubious to believe that a clerical discrepancy by an ancient civilization would translate to a doomsday prophecy.

But that doesn’t mean we who believe in rational thought can’t use this moment to weed out a few of our fellow Earthlings to whom rational thought is a foreign concept.

It’s not exactly a new idea. The late, great Douglas Adams wrote about it in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, the second in his Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy book series.

In the book, our heroes, Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect, find themselves on a ship populated by telephone sanitizers, hairdressers, marketing executives and other less-than-useful members of the planet Golgafrincham’s society.

The Golgafrinchams came up with the idea of putting all of their useless population on a spaceship, telling them the planet was on the verge of destruction and that three ships would be constructed to rescue the whole population — with the thinkers and leaders on the "A Ark," the laborers and workers on the "C Ark" and the middle-management types on the "B Ark." The "B Ark" left first, never knowing that no other ships left Golgafrincham.

So maybe we could set up a similar scenario and persuade some of our not-so-bright members of society to escape Earth before the Maya’s prophecy comes to pass.

We’ve only got a week, so we have to move fast.

The first step will be finding someone rich enough and stupid enough to bankroll the thing. I recommend Donald Trump, who showed during the recent election season an uncanny ability to swallow any idiotic conspiracy theory.

While Trump’s busy building the ship, let’s start making a list of the people who should get a ticket to ride.

Here’s my partial list:

• The cast of "Jersey Shore."

• Honey Boo Boo, and the rest of her family to keep her company.

• The programmers of TLC who decided the world needed to meet Honey Boo Boo.

• "The Real Housewives" of wherever.

• Those Australian radio hosts who prank-called that poor nurse at the British hospital where Kate Middleton was being treated.

• Any radio "personality" who would prank-call anybody.

• Fox News "analysts" Karl Rove and Dick Morris — and, to be fair, Ed Schultz and Lawrence O’Donnell from MSNBC to keep them company.

• The next Hollywood executive who says "yes" to whatever Adam Sandler has scrawled on a cocktail napkin.

• Any Utah legislator who can’t tell the difference between a bar and a restaurant.

• Movie bloggers who wrote more than 5,000 words about the new "Man of Steel" trailer.

• Charlie Sheen.

• Howard Stern.

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