Well, it looks like there’s one more movie I won’t be going to see.

This time it’s the latest end-of-the-world flick — “2012.” It’s not that I have any deep rooted antipathy to cinematic depictions of the apocalypse — it’s just that in this case, I don’t want to give the ding-a-lings any encouragement.

At first glance “2012” doesn’t look much different from any other film that draws it’s entertainment value from the painful extermination of millions of human beings.

The difference is that in most of the films featuring decimation by aliens, asteroids or the Antichrist pretty much everyone in the audience understands that all the eviscerations, incinerations and folks being squashed like bugs is all in good fun. Entertainment — nothing more.

This time, there are a lot of people who believe it’s for real — a full-length Cinemascope preview of coming worldwide attractions.

Just in case you haven’t been keeping up with the nutball press, the story behind the story is that on December 21, 2012, the ancient Mayan calendar runs out of days — hence, the world ends.

Now considering that the Mayan empire pretty much ran out of steam well over a thousand years ago, it would seem that back then the Maya calendar makers figured they had laid in a pretty hefty inventory of days and decided to knock off until they were down to the last couple of centuries, then rebuild the stock. Trouble is, the Maya went out of business before the calendar went back into production. What these doomsayers are seizing upon sounds a bit like hinging the apocalypse on Hallmark staying in business to help mark all those special times.

Of course there’s more to it than that — or so we’re told. The Maya were great visionary mystics who saw deep into the future with insights lost to the ages ...

Rrrrrriiiiiight.

I’ll grant that the Maya did some pretty remarkable things. They built great cities, figured out a calendar that beat the snot out of anything to come out of Europe for a long, long time and managed to keep a civilization going for a good number of years. In lots of ways the Maya were no slouches.

On the other hand, how far do we want to credit the supposed cosmological insights of folks who believed they had to stick cactus spines through their private parts to keep the cosmos on track and practiced human sacrifice lest the universe slip into chaos and the world come to an end?

And if their theology doesn’t raise a few questions, let’s recall this was a culture that never did figure out metallurgy or the wheel — much less the infield fly rule.

Still, people are taking this seriously. How many and how seriously? Enough for NASA to put up a special Web site to offer rational explanations for the hocus-pocus put out by the “2012” scammers.

Not that it’s likely to do any good.

Some of us just seem to love the end of the world. Once you’re convinced you’re one of the chosen few, anticipating the rest of the world headed for hell in the proverbial hand basket seems to have a certain perverse charm.

Belief in universal annihilation is the ultimate game changer: Let the unemployment benefits run out. Toss the foreclosure notice in the trash. Who cares if the 401k goes in the tank? Gabriel is warming up his trumpet and it won’t be long until the whole world dances to a different tune.

Unfortunately for the crowd that turned the “Left Behind” books into best sellers and made Jerry Jenkins and Tim LaHaye more money than they can spend in all eternity, things aren’t likely to work out that way.  Not only is NASA on record that Dec. 22, 2012, will be a day like those that came before and those that will come after, the same Bible these folks like to cite when there aren’t any Maya handy warns in Matthew 24:36: “No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven ...”

In other words, thinking about what you’d like to tell the boss on Dec. 20, 2012, may be somewhat soul-satisfying, but is sorely lacking as a life plan.

Meantime, I’ll pass on the movie —  at least until New Year’s Day, 2013.

No sense encouraging the nonsense before then. 

Contact Jerome at 507-453-3522 or jchristenson@winonadailynews.com