Not a Sign of the Apocalypse

OK, so today is 6/6/06, and people are either freaking out about it or having fun with it. Some mothers-to-be have been trying like crazy to not have their babies today; there's an online wagering site where you can bet on whether the world will end today (the good news is that the oddsmaker gives the world a 100,000-to-1 chance of making it to tomorrow...but if you bet against the world and won, how would you collect?); there's a site called RaptureReady that has a "rapture index" of sorts; and in big media, both a new book in the Left Behind series (called, naturally, "The Rapture") and a remake of the movie The Omen are being released today.

It all got started with a verse from Scripture:

"This calls for wisdom: let him who has understanding reckon the number of the beast, for it is a human number, its number is six hundred and sixty-six.
--Revelation 13:18

However, many scholars note that the number of the Beast (also known as the Anitchrist) could have been a coded reference to the Roman emperor Nero, and most of them believe that the number has to do with a person and not a specific date on the calendar. (As I've noted before, some manuscripts refer to 616 instead of 666, which amuses me, because the former is included in my cell phone number.)

At any rate, while some people are either celebrating or panicking today (one of the bigger celebrations is taking place in the town of Hell, Michigan today), most of the world is probably treating today just like any other day. I doubt I'll be able to go see the movie tonight, but I'm reasonably sure there will be a world on whose Web I'll be posting again tomorrow.

The other side of the coin: The "666" phenomenon is creating a totally different sentiment in Malaysia, where ethnic Chinese were clamoring to get married today; the number six is pronounced like the word "luck" in the Hokkein dialect of Chinese, so a wedding today was expected to bring the couples triple luck.

Not-so-happily ever not-so-after: A bride- and groom-to-be had to cancel their wedding after being involved in a fistfight the night before; conditions of their bond prohibited them from being close enough to each other to go through with the ceremony.