Family captured by ninjas

Regular readers (or irregular readers. Or anyone who's looked at 'Blog Archive') will have noticed that The world according to Arun has been somewhat irregular of late. When I started this blog, I intended to post once a month and was determined not to miss a month, no matter what. So what happened? ISP knocked out by a meteorite striking the server farm, thereby preventing me from accessing blogspot? Alien abduction keeping me away from home for two months? No, much more incredible than that; I got a girlfriend. There were other factors, of course, but most aren't that interesting and I can't legally disclose details of any of the rest, and the fact remains that being in a relationship does mean that I spend less time than before in front of the computer, wondering if the blinking cursor is somehow mocking me.

Being in a relationship also means that I find myself thinking of things Girlfriend and I can do, places we can go, etc... and, well, I have to either stop thinking, or make more money somehow. The second one it is, then. My first thought, unsurprisingly, was a new job. Nothing in particular, just something that pays more than my current job. This is not without its problems; not least the fact that the economy is still on its knees (as I type, the UK has just gone back into recession) and jobs are a little thinner on the ground than they used to be. Besides, the whole business of applying for a job, tweaking my CV to make myself appear to be a relatively employable human being, then being interviewed for a job I may or may not get is, at best, time consuming. If someone gave me a thesaurus and at least an hour to come up with one word to describe myself, that one word would not be 'patient', so what I need is a significantly quicker way to make money. Ideally, something I can start straight away. Something I don't even have to leave the house for. Looking down the back of the sofa for loose change might be a worn-out joke nowadays and certainly not a guaranteed way to make big money, but I decided to have a go, just in case.

Fair enough, it was a waste of time. Found nothing but biscuit crumbs (chocolate Hob Nobs, in case you were wondering), a pen and, somehow, a small allen key. No matter, that wasn't my only hope, just a low-hanging fruit to be picked first. Other things require me to actually leave the house.

I decided that my new occupation should not involve;

1. Any real effort. Unless it's absolutely guaranteed to give me abs that make an actual washboard look a bit soft and the cardiovascular fitness of a racehorse.
2. People skills. I am not a naturally obsequious person. Also, I prefer brutal honesty to innocuous diplomacy. It would therefore be preferable if my new occupation does not require making strangers like me. Especially before about 11 am.
3. Any sort of criminal element. Partly because I'd just really rather not, partly because there's a good chance that the guilt would cause a stomach ulcer so severe, it would end up being classified as a whole new sort and then named after me, and partly because I would almost certainly forget some small but important detail and spend the next couple of years getting amateur prostate exams from a large man called Moose.

For example, bank robbery is not for me. I could spend months researching a particular bank's layout and security systems, planning my escape and establishing an airtight alibi, but, as I said, I would almost certainly forget something. And I'm not just being hard on myself, either; you'd be amazed how many people try to rob banks and fail miserably. The FBI say most bank robberies are 'unsophisticated and unprofessional' crimes, which, if anything, is being kind. An estimated 76% of bank robbers don't bother with a disguise, despite the fact that your average bank has more cameras in it than a Sony Centre. Even those who do try to conceal their identity occasionally make a right hash of it. One man tried smearing mercury ointment on his face, presumably believing this would make his face appear on cameras as a featureless white blur. It did not. The ointment actually gave authorities a much clearer picture than would otherwise have been possible.

Mind you, I like to think I'm not completely clueless. I like to think, for example, that I would do better than the criminal mastermind from Grand Forks, North Dakota, who went to a bank in Fargo, North Dakota, handed the teller a demand note and ran out the door with his money. Police searched the surrounding area and found nothing. Then they discovered the demand note was written on the back of the robber's personal bank deposit note. They went to his house and arrested him.

I like to think I would do better, but I know I am as prone to occasionally throwing a teabag in the sink and teaspoon in the bin as anyone else, so probably better to forget about it.

Professional poker player looks good on paper; you hardly have to move at all, if you're too nice everyone will think you're cheating and its perfectly legal (in most places). Spend a bit more time playing Texas Hold 'em, familiarising myself with the rules and what beats what, and I might eventually be good enough to play at a professional level. Like most forms of gambling, poker is all about odds. It's easy enough to work out the odds of your opponent having a hand you can beat, based on the strength of your own, for example, and if you make the decision to check/call/raise, etc... based on those odds, then most of the time (in theory) you should win. Sounds simple. Unfortunately, there's a little more to it. Professional players devote their lives to the game, spending all day for days on end constantly trying to out-bluff opponents, knocking them out one by one. It's hard work. It's mentally draining. And because the prize money comes from the players, for one to win big, another has to lose his shirt. This isn't an issue for some people; they seem to thrive on crushing lesser mortals. Others tolerate it for a while, before eventually succumbing to the guilt, quitting poker for good and forever after regarding card games as somewhere between divine and infernal. Maybe poker isn't for me, either.

Obviously, I had to consider at some point the idea of selling something, but what? There might be some money in buying cheap paracetamol pills, painting them blue and selling them online as 'The little blue pill', or something similarly trite, but it is a little unethical. The same could be said for breeding Roborovski hamsters and selling them as pedigree racing hamsters, although, to be fair, those things can shift when they want to.

In the end, though, I thought of something which requires almost no effort at all, doesn't depend on any kind of people skills and is completely legal. Deciding there just aren't enough social networking sites on the internet, I'm creating my own. My new social network will be called Fakebook (copyright law permitting), and is founded on one very simple premise; everyone lies. I don't mean that in any conspiratorial, trust no-one sort of way, I just mean that everyone on the site lies about everything. Create an account with the username Hugh Jazz, upload a photograph you found on the internet of some UFC fighter whose name you can't even remember, and so on. Finish creating your profile by filling in some basic details which in no way represent your likes/dislikes, your real opinion on anything, or any other aspect of your life, and you're ready to connect with other Fakebook users and tell them all how brilliant your imaginary life is. Think of it as a fantasy version of Facebook and I think it makes sense. You know all those horror stories about meeting online contacts who turned out to be murderers, rapists or paedophiles? Not an issue when you know for a fact that an online friend is being deliberately deceptive about who they are and what they do.

The aim of Fakebook is not to provide a new way for old friends to stay in touch, but to let people tell everyone how great they are. It might all be based on lies, but if you spend enough time telling people you're amazing, you'll start to believe it yourself. Every time you sign in, you get an ego boost, partly from talking yourself up and partly from the sycophantic friends you've acquired (because if you have no idea who anyone really is, there's no reason to continue to be friends with someone who's less than flattering) telling you that they think you're amazing, too. This boost will make you want to keep using Fakebook, to keep getting that nice warm fuzzy feeling, until you eventually become addicted, and that's where I make my money. Everyone on the site will see ads for various things, but these will initially be unobtrusive banners. If a user has been a member for less than a month, they probably aren't hooked yet, so they see ads for beauty products and pet food. However, once they've been active members for six months or so, they are addicted to the nice warm fuzzy feeling and more likely to just put up with a homepage that's 70% advertisements, mostly for the sort of crap they get emailed to them anyway. Basically, once the site has been up and running for a year or so, I'll hopefully be making enough money to quit my job and pay some assorted IT guys to run Fakebook for me, while I spend my time writing The world according to Arun, doing coupley things with Girlfriend and keeping Mike Hunt's Fakebook page up to date.

Anyone know where I can buy some cheap servers?

It's not the end of the world (as we know it)

Congratulations; you're alive. The fact that you just read that first sentence means that a; you're alive, and b; the world hasn't ended. Not yet, at least. I point out this plainer than plain fact because, as many of you are no doubt aware, the world is due to end this year. Come in, number three, your time is up. Do not pass go, do not collect £200. You are the weakest planet. Goodnight, Irene. Et cetera...

How do we know the world is nearing its expiration date? Step forward the Maya, a Mesoamerican civilisation finally subdued by the Spanish in 1697. They had some interesting ideas; notably the belief that blood-letting almost to the point of death allowed them to communicate with their gods (severe blood loss triggers large amounts of endorphins, the body's own natural painkillers, to be released into whatever blood is left, which could conceivably lead you to believe that you are playing pool with the Stay-Puft marshmallow man from Ghostbusters) and a game rather like soccer, but set in a sort of large basketball court and played with severed human heads instead of a ball, but most important for those of us trying to decide what we're doing for Christmas dinner 2012 is the long count calendar. The current cycle (or 'Baktun') will end on the 21^st of December this year. The end of this, the 13^th Baktun, is considered to have been thought of by the Maya as very important and this is what has lead people acquainted with the long count calendar to conclude that at the end of this cycle, the world as we know it will end. Look on the bright side; if they're right, you won't have to bother with Christmas shopping this year.

The (almost certainly not mental) people who study the Mayan calendar of doom claim that it was created to count down to some great astronomical event, prompting speculation that something not of this world will be what brings about its sudden demise. And yes, some say that could involve <sigh> aliens.

Ever heard of Planet X? After Neptune was discovered in 1846, there was speculation that there may be another planet out there, somewhere beyond Neptune's orbit. In the early 20^th century, the Planet X hypothesis was put forward in an attempt to explain apparent discrepancies in the orbits of Uranus (stop it; I can hear you giggling) and Neptune. The theory was that if there was a large (and thus far unseen) planet orbiting the sun outside the edge of the known solar system, its gravity could influence the orbits of the above mentioned planets as it passed them, a bit like how the gravity of the moon influences Earth's oceans and gives us tides. The discovery of Pluto in 1930 caused some excitement, partly because it appeared to validate the Planet X idea. Until it was discovered to be nowhere near big enough to have that powerful a gravitational field in 1978, prompting the search for a larger tenth planet. Some bright sparks, combining the study of the Mayan calendar with a basic knowledge of astronomy and our solar system in particular have suggested that Planet X, or Nibiru, as it was called by the Sumerians and Babylonians, may be due to enter the solar system this year. They have therefore conclusively proved that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. For a start, there is the implication that Nibiru, apparently well documented by the Sumerians, is the Planet X we started looking for only relatively recently. It can't be. Nibiru is meant to pass between the orbits of Mars (the fourth planet) and Jupiter (the fifth planet), causing Jupiter to move closer than normal to the sun, making it hotter than normal, basically igniting the gases it is made up of and turning it into a sort of secondary sun. This would be bad news for Earth, but would require that Nibiru somehow passes through our solar system, without technically being part of it.

Still, I suppose it is possible that the Sumerians were right and there is a planet whose orbit of something other than our sun brings it into our system every 3600 years or so and that it is inhabited by sentient beings who created us to mine Earth's gold for them, in order to preserve their own environment. Oh, and in the billions of years the sun and its planets have been here, Nibiru has been regularly popping in and out without catapulting any other planets closer to the sun. Personally, I find that one a little hard to swallow.

Yet more doom-mongers say that a 'very rare' planetary alignment, due during the winter solstice (21^st December) will cause planet-wide mayhem, as it triggers a reversal of Earth's magnetic poles; basically our magnetic north and south poles swap places. Such a reversal could indeed mean that life on Earth is what physicists describe as being wrapped helically around a cylindrical object*, since Earth's magnetic field, which protects us from the solar wind (a stream of charged particles ejected from the sun) may greatly reduce in intensity or vanish altogether during a geomagnetic reversal. Sounds serious, doesn't it? Well, it certainly would be, but read on.

First, I'd like to clarify the term 'planetary alignment'. Imagine the solar system as having the sun at the centre and the planets in concentric orbits, all in the same horizontal plane, sort of like balls on a pool table, in that no one of them can be higher or lower than any other. Now stop imagining it like that. While the first three or four orbits are within a few degrees of each other, the rest are within 96 degrees, meaning that the planets, while they do sometimes align, can never line up quite as neatly as the people who wish they were real astronomers would have us believe. Planetary alignment isn't that rare, either; the planets were actually in alignment in 1982. A lot of things happened in 1982. The Falklands conflict, the pound coin was introduced, the first IVF baby was born, but (and please feel free to correct me on this) the world did not end.

I will admit, however, that some real scientists say that the solar flares released from the sun are set to hit the peak of an eleven-year cycle in 2012. Excuse me for not hiding under the table. While it is true that a large solar flare could disrupt satellites, mobile phones, the internet et al..., think back to 2001, when solar flares did absolutely nothing like that. I fondly remember the day in 2001 when my phone didn't leap out of my hand and run down the street screaming the scream of a thousand hell-scorched souls, kicking puppies and praising satan as it went.

But can it really be a coincidence that solar flares are set to peak, the planets are set to align and Nibiru is predicted to enter our system in the same year as the long count calendar counts down to zero?

Yes. Yes, it can.

Just in case, I'm not going to do any Christmas shopping until at least the 22^nd of December. As if I was going to anyway...

*I was going for 'screwed', without having to actually say it. Damn; I just did.