‘I was going to avoid posting about today being 6/6/06 (other than to say happy birthday Sarah!), since there are things that really are just too dumb to talk about. Pregnant women getting induced early to avoid having a baby on that date (as someone pointed out to me, what if it’s God’s will they give birth that day?), people staying home to avoid (I imagine) the devil, and other superstitious nonsense.
But I did find out that there is a chilling event that occurs today, one that may be a clear sign of the Apocalypse: Ann Coulter has a new book coming out today.
Dreee! Dreee! Dreeee!
I would be remiss not to point you to an older BAblog entry about the Devil’s TV news stations, too.
‘
June 6th, 2006 at 12:50 pm
She says liberals are all godless, hence the name of her book. I really wish she was right about that. But, unfortunately, she’s not. Instead they’re mostly religious folks who choose to omit different parts of that magical book than she does.
June 6th, 2006 at 1:11 pm
I’ve been telling people that the calendar we use was changed in 1752 (true if you’re in the UK or a former UK colony) and that 6-6-06 was actually 11 days ago on that calendar (also true), which is really convenient because the mark of the beast is actually three vertical bars that happen to translate to 666 in our number system (possibly true, but I don’t really know and it makes a good story anyway). The 11 being two of the vertical bars and the third bar being put there solely to balance the prophecy.
It’s great for torquing up your local die-hard believer.
June 6th, 2006 at 1:36 pm
I wrote up the history of 666 (courtesy Asimov’s Guide to the Bible, a really great book) in a comment over on Pharyngula.
June 6th, 2006 at 1:39 pm
That licence plate photo reminds me: just the other day I realized that BFG-9000 is a valid plate number here in North Carolina.
June 6th, 2006 at 1:42 pm
The part that gets me, is the whole “and his number is 666″ is more or less the equivalent of us today saying “Let’s refer to this giant jackass as ‘Ushbay’”.
June 6th, 2006 at 2:30 pm
Ann Coulter? Did you mean…
June 6th, 2006 at 2:32 pm
In Mike Leigh’s film Naked, the main character Johnnie has a rant about the end of the world, and how the number of the beast is tied to selling and buying, according to the bible. He points out that the three double lines representing each a “6″ are the three markers on a bar code, which is now used on pretty much anything we buy. Spooky…
PS. If you want to hear the rant, listen to The Orb’s S.A.L.T. on the (excellent) album Orblivion, where pretty much the whole scene is sampled.
June 6th, 2006 at 2:37 pm
We had a guy here in Ontario a few years back that refused to get his picture taken for a driver’s licence using the line of reasoning that having his photo taken and placed on the licence would mark him for The Beast.
Not surprisingly, he eventually lost in court and got told to get his picture taken or don’t drive, although when all is done, he probably never got his picture taken and drives without a licence.
It was one of those things that make me wish judges could order people smacked upside the head with a dead fish.
June 6th, 2006 at 2:38 pm
People seem to forget that there has been another previous 06/06/06 since the book of revelations was written. Nothing happened that time, why should it now?
June 6th, 2006 at 2:42 pm
In Canada, the beast would be subject to PST and GST, so his number would be 765.90 after taxes in Ontario.
June 6th, 2006 at 2:43 pm
There’s been lots of 06/06/06 since Revelations was written. At least 14, probably a handful more.
June 6th, 2006 at 3:53 pm
I’ve rarely seen a day with that much nonsense. Why would the antichrist be born today? Why not… I don’t know, in 1966 or 1996? It’s the same thing! Today’s not 666! It’s 6 6 2006! Why drop all the others numbers? Are they unimportant? Only the last one counts? The would oughta be dead a couple hundred times by now, then!
June 6th, 2006 at 4:24 pm
Were people of the time worried about the years 666 and 1666? After all, they were each a full 365 days that had the ‘Number of the Beast’ on them!!!
June 6th, 2006 at 4:46 pm
I live about four miles from the tiny “town” of Hell, Michigan, and a local mid-size-wig orgainized a 6/6/06 party that has apparently attracted 500,000 people, and about half that many Harleys. I just thought I’d throw that in.
June 6th, 2006 at 5:10 pm
I couldn’t resist this…
June 6th, 2006 at 5:11 pm
But apparently the board resisted it.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v471/dcowan38/board_posts/mindless.jpg
June 6th, 2006 at 5:23 pm
The End-Of-Days stories all have the hallmarks of a bad dream enhanced by currently illegal mind altering substances – and millions believe it. I’ve read Revelations a couple of times at least. If that isn’t a recount of a really “bad trip” I don’t know what is.
Every June 16 should be feared at 6:16 AM in each time zone. (Since 616 is the correct numerical value – obviously the devil is hiding his true mark!) Obviously the world’s end occurred thousands of times already.
And how can Anne C. claim that liberals are godless when the conservatives also claim that 95%, or some such number, of the Nation believes in a deity. I’m sure more than 5% of the population is liberal and that not all atheists are liberal (though that’d probably be the way to bet).
Related to End-Of-The-World predictions (or dire disaster at a minimum) – anyone notice Eric Julien has claimed that comet fragments really did crash into the ocean? He’s received anecdotal reports of waves of unusual size that “prove” it. Perhaps he’s never heard of rogue waves (or else he’s found their mysterious cause!). He also claims “Tens of millions of lives saved on May 25, 2006 thanks to the announcement of a giant tsunami for that date!” – yeah, right.
jbs
June 6th, 2006 at 6:24 pm
End of Days? Now there was a bad movie! There was a countdown to midnight in New York, but at least pre-Govenor Arnuld asked why midnight in that time zone? The answer was basically “shut up!” (although they could have easily explained it by “this is where the anti-christ will be born, so this is the time zone that matters”).
Ah, the millennium hysteria…
June 6th, 2006 at 6:52 pm
If Liberals are “godless,” why would a rational person show up on a national news show dressed like a whore at 7:15 in the morning?
Inquiring minds and all that (I gather comic Kathy Griffin made much the same point later that day on the Today Show).
One small ray of sunshine for the rational folks out there – over the last 30 years, the number of Biblical fundamentalists has decreased from 38% to 29% in the US. I guess facts just make the radical right scream all the louder…
June 6th, 2006 at 7:44 pm
Hey! How did you know I watched CNN!
June 6th, 2006 at 10:28 pm
A more sensible take on 666
June 7th, 2006 at 2:29 am
Regarding Evolving Squid’s comment, I offer this (which was emailed to me):
666
The number of the Beast
664
The Neighbor of The beast
667
The neighbor across the street from the Beast
660
Estimated number of the Beast
666-66-6666
SSN of the Beast
666.0666
The number of the High-Performance Beast
0.666
Number of the milliBeast
1/666
The Denominator of the Beast
666[-/(-1)]
The Imaginary Number of the Beast
1010011010
The Binary Number of the Beast
29A
The Hexidecimal Number of the Beast
1-666
The Area Code of the Beast
60666
The Zip Code of the Beast (somewhere in Chicago)
1-900-666-6666
The Psychic Beast ($6.66 for 666 seconds – over 18, please)
$666.00
MSRP of the Beast
$726.66
The price, including sales tax, delivered
$10,666.95
Price, with leather, sun-roof, and radials
$566.69
The Wal-mart price of the Beast
Phillips 666
The gas the Beast runs best on
Route 666
The road the Beast likes best
666ºF
The temperature at which to roast Beast
666 k
Retirement plan of the Beast
666 mg
Minimum Daily Required dosage of Beast
6.66%
Annual Percentage Rate on a mortgage from First Beast Bank
DSM-666(r)
Diagnostic and Statistics Manual of the Beast (revised)
Lotus 6-6-6
Spreadsheet of the Beast
DOS 6.66
Operating system of the Beast
i68666
CPU of the Beast
666tii
BMW of the Beast
June 7th, 2006 at 4:03 am
Code test ignore post
June 7th, 2006 at 4:06 am
code test ignore post
June 7th, 2006 at 4:18 am
I failed my code test so the link address will have to remain as is.
Coulter’s religious convictions:
http://users.rcn.com/skutsch/anticoulter/quotes.html
RAPE THE PLANET! IT’S YOURS! GOD SAYS SO!
COULTER: I take the biblical idea. God gave us the earth.
PETER FENN (Democratic strategist): Oh, OK.
COULTER: We have dominion over the plants, the animals, the trees.
FENN: This is a great idea.
COULTER: God says, “Earth is yours. Take it. Rape it. It’s yours.”
FENN: Terrific. We’re Americans, so we should consume as much of the earth’s resources…
COULTER: Yes! Yes.
FENN: … as fast as we possibly can.
COULTER: As opposed to living like the Indians.
So Jesus advocated strip mining, ozone depletion, toxic waste spills, and polluted waterways. Who knew?”
Further Coulter quotes posted on multiple sites:
“The ethic of conservation is the explicit abnegation of man’s dominion over the Earth. The lower species are here for our use. God said so: Go forth, be fruitful, multiply, and rape the planet–it’s yours. That’s our job: drilling, mining and stripping. Sweaters are the anti-Biblical view. Big gas-guzzling cars with phones and CD players and wet bars — that’s the Biblical view.” – from column “Oil Good; Democrats bad”, 12 October, 2000
“Well, my point is that it shows the ideological insanity of these people and how they are terrified of anyone who believes in a Being even higher than the New York Times. When you try to figure out what the Religious Right is, essentially my conclusion is that it either comes down to one man, Pat Robertson, or 80 percent of Americans, anyone who believes in God and wants his taxes cut. When you look at Pat Robertson’s positions, they are really quite moderate positions, as one would expect from a Yale Law School graduate. I may not agree with him as a conservative, but my point is they are trying to demonize Pat Robertson as some sort of horned conservative. If he didn’t believe in God and go on TV and talk about it, he would be Jim Jeffords, he would be Christie Todd Whitman, I mean just in his political positions. It really shows how crazy these people are. They really are terrified of believing Christians.” — Ann Coulter to Pat Robertson, The $700 Club, Oct. 2, 2002
“…a cruise missile is more important than Head Start.” — Ann Coulter, Nov. 2001 speech rebroadcast by C-Span in Jan. 2002
“If they have the one innocent person who has ever to be put to death this century out of over 7,000, you probably will get a good movie deal out of it.” — Ann Coulter, MSNBC July 27, 1997
“When we were fighting communism, OK, they had mass murderers and gulags, but they were white men and they were sane. Now we’re up against absolutely insane savages.” – [2], 16 August, 2004
I think the government should be spying on all Arabs, engaging in torture as a televised spectator sport, dropping daisy cutters wantonly throughout the Middle East, and sending liberals to Guantanamo.” Coulter’s syndicated column, Dec. 21, 2005
* “Would that it were so! … That the American military were targeting journalists.” Kudlow & Cramer, CNBC, February 7, 2005″
So you might see why the following quote broke my hypocrisy meter.
“Being nice to people is, in fact, one of the incidental tenets of Christianity (as opposed to other religions whose tenets are more along the lines of ‘kill everyone who doesn’t smell bad and doesn’t answer to the name Mohammed’)”. – from her column (at townhall.com), 4 March, 2004
June 7th, 2006 at 4:19 am
I failed my code test so the link address will have to remain as is.
Coulter’s religious convictions:
http://users.rcn.com/skutsch/anticoulter/quotes.html
RAPE THE PLANET! IT’S YOURS! GOD SAYS SO!
COULTER: I take the biblical idea. God gave us the earth.
PETER FENN (Democratic strategist): Oh, OK.
COULTER: We have dominion over the plants, the animals, the trees.
FENN: This is a great idea.
COULTER: God says, “Earth is yours. Take it. Rape it. It’s yours.”
FENN: Terrific. We’re Americans, so we should consume as much of the earth’s resources…
COULTER: Yes! Yes.
FENN: … as fast as we possibly can.
COULTER: As opposed to living like the Indians.
So Jesus advocated strip mining, ozone depletion, toxic waste spills, and polluted waterways. Who knew?”
Further Coulter quotes posted on multiple sites:
“The ethic of conservation is the explicit abnegation of man’s dominion over the Earth. The lower species are here for our use. God said so: Go forth, be fruitful, multiply, and rape the planet–it’s yours. That’s our job: drilling, mining and stripping. Sweaters are the anti-Biblical view. Big gas-guzzling cars with phones and CD players and wet bars — that’s the Biblical view.” – from column “Oil Good; Democrats bad”, 12 October, 2000
“Well, my point is that it shows the ideological insanity of these people and how they are terrified of anyone who believes in a Being even higher than the New York Times. When you try to figure out what the Religious Right is, essentially my conclusion is that it either comes down to one man, Pat Robertson, or 80 percent of Americans, anyone who believes in God and wants his taxes cut. When you look at Pat Robertson’s positions, they are really quite moderate positions, as one would expect from a Yale Law School graduate. I may not agree with him as a conservative, but my point is they are trying to demonize Pat Robertson as some sort of horned conservative. If he didn’t believe in God and go on TV and talk about it, he would be Jim Jeffords, he would be Christie Todd Whitman, I mean just in his political positions. It really shows how crazy these people are. They really are terrified of believing Christians.” — Ann Coulter to Pat Robertson, The $700 Club, Oct. 2, 2002
“…a cruise missile is more important than Head Start.” — Ann Coulter, Nov. 2001 speech rebroadcast by C-Span in Jan. 2002
“If they have the one innocent person who has ever to be put to death this century out of over 7,000, you probably will get a good movie deal out of it.” — Ann Coulter, MSNBC July 27, 1997
“When we were fighting communism, OK, they had mass murderers and gulags, but they were white men and they were sane. Now we’re up against absolutely insane savages.” – [2], 16 August, 2004
I think the government should be spying on all Arabs, engaging in torture as a televised spectator sport, dropping daisy cutters wantonly throughout the Middle East, and sending liberals to Guantanamo.” Coulter’s syndicated column, Dec. 21, 2005
* “Would that it were so! … That the American military were targeting journalists.” Kudlow & Cramer, CNBC, February 7, 2005″
So you might see why the following quote broke my hypocrisy meter.
“Being nice to people is, in fact, one of the incidental tenets of Christianity (as opposed to other religions whose tenets are more along the lines of ‘kill everyone who doesn’t smell bad and doesn’t answer to the name Mohammed’)”. – from her column (at townhall.com), 4 March, 2004
June 7th, 2006 at 4:20 am
I failed my code test so the link address will have to remain as is.
Coulter’s religious convictions:
http://users.rcn.com/skutsch/anticoulter/quotes.html
RAPE THE PLANET! IT’S YOURS! GOD SAYS SO!
COULTER: I take the biblical idea. God gave us the earth.
PETER FENN (Democratic strategist): Oh, OK.
COULTER: We have dominion over the plants, the animals, the trees.
FENN: This is a great idea.
COULTER: God says, “Earth is yours. Take it. Rape it. It’s yours.”
FENN: Terrific. We’re Americans, so we should consume as much of the earth’s resources…
COULTER: Yes! Yes.
FENN: … as fast as we possibly can.
COULTER: As opposed to living like the Indians.
So Jesus advocated strip mining, ozone depletion, toxic waste spills, and polluted waterways. Who knew?
Further Coulter quotes posted on multiple sites:
“The ethic of conservation is the explicit abnegation of man’s dominion over the Earth. The lower species are here for our use. God said so: Go forth, be fruitful, multiply, and rape the planet–it’s yours. That’s our job: drilling, mining and stripping. Sweaters are the anti-Biblical view. Big gas-guzzling cars with phones and CD players and wet bars — that’s the Biblical view.” – from column “Oil Good; Democrats bad”, 12 October, 2000
“Well, my point is that it shows the ideological insanity of these people and how they are terrified of anyone who believes in a Being even higher than the New York Times. When you try to figure out what the Religious Right is, essentially my conclusion is that it either comes down to one man, Pat Robertson, or 80 percent of Americans, anyone who believes in God and wants his taxes cut. When you look at Pat Robertson’s positions, they are really quite moderate positions, as one would expect from a Yale Law School graduate. I may not agree with him as a conservative, but my point is they are trying to demonize Pat Robertson as some sort of horned conservative. If he didn’t believe in God and go on TV and talk about it, he would be Jim Jeffords, he would be Christie Todd Whitman, I mean just in his political positions. It really shows how crazy these people are. They really are terrified of believing Christians.” — Ann Coulter to Pat Robertson, The $700 Club, Oct. 2, 2002
“…a cruise missile is more important than Head Start.” — Ann Coulter, Nov. 2001 speech rebroadcast by C-Span in Jan. 2002
“If they have the one innocent person who has ever to be put to death this century out of over 7,000, you probably will get a good movie deal out of it.” — Ann Coulter, MSNBC July 27, 1997
“When we were fighting communism, OK, they had mass murderers and gulags, but they were white men and they were sane. Now we’re up against absolutely insane savages.” – [2], 16 August, 2004
I think the government should be spying on all Arabs, engaging in torture as a televised spectator sport, dropping daisy cutters wantonly throughout the Middle East, and sending liberals to Guantanamo.” Coulter’s syndicated column, Dec. 21, 2005
* “Would that it were so! … That the American military were targeting journalists.” Kudlow & Cramer, CNBC, February 7, 2005″
So you might see why the following quote broke my hypocrisy meter.
“Being nice to people is, in fact, one of the incidental tenets of Christianity (as opposed to other religions whose tenets are more along the lines of ‘kill everyone who doesn’t smell bad and doesn’t answer to the name Mohammed’)”. – from her column (at townhall.com), 4 March, 2004
June 7th, 2006 at 4:24 am
I failed my code test and now can’t even post the link????? So I named it instead. I’ll have to figure it out later.
Coulter’s religious convictions:
From Anticoulter.com
RAPE THE PLANET! IT’S YOURS! GOD SAYS SO!
COULTER: I take the biblical idea. God gave us the earth.
PETER FENN (Democratic strategist): Oh, OK.
COULTER: We have dominion over the plants, the animals, the trees.
FENN: This is a great idea.
COULTER: God says, “Earth is yours. Take it. Rape it. It’s yours.”
FENN: Terrific. We’re Americans, so we should consume as much of the earth’s resources…
COULTER: Yes! Yes.
FENN: … as fast as we possibly can.
COULTER: As opposed to living like the Indians.
So Jesus advocated strip mining, ozone depletion, toxic waste spills, and polluted waterways. Who knew?
Further Coulter quotes posted on multiple sites:
“The ethic of conservation is the explicit abnegation of man’s dominion over the Earth. The lower species are here for our use. God said so: Go forth, be fruitful, multiply, and rape the planet–it’s yours. That’s our job: drilling, mining and stripping. Sweaters are the anti-Biblical view. Big gas-guzzling cars with phones and CD players and wet bars — that’s the Biblical view.” – from column “Oil Good; Democrats bad”, 12 October, 2000
“Well, my point is that it shows the ideological insanity of these people and how they are terrified of anyone who believes in a Being even higher than the New York Times. When you try to figure out what the Religious Right is, essentially my conclusion is that it either comes down to one man, Pat Robertson, or 80 percent of Americans, anyone who believes in God and wants his taxes cut. When you look at Pat Robertson’s positions, they are really quite moderate positions, as one would expect from a Yale Law School graduate. I may not agree with him as a conservative, but my point is they are trying to demonize Pat Robertson as some sort of horned conservative. If he didn’t believe in God and go on TV and talk about it, he would be Jim Jeffords, he would be Christie Todd Whitman, I mean just in his political positions. It really shows how crazy these people are. They really are terrified of believing Christians.” — Ann Coulter to Pat Robertson, The $700 Club, Oct. 2, 2002
“…a cruise missile is more important than Head Start.” — Ann Coulter, Nov. 2001 speech rebroadcast by C-Span in Jan. 2002
“If they have the one innocent person who has ever to be put to death this century out of over 7,000, you probably will get a good movie deal out of it.” — Ann Coulter, MSNBC July 27, 1997
“When we were fighting communism, OK, they had mass murderers and gulags, but they were white men and they were sane. Now we’re up against absolutely insane savages.” – [2], 16 August, 2004
I think the government should be spying on all Arabs, engaging in torture as a televised spectator sport, dropping daisy cutters wantonly throughout the Middle East, and sending liberals to Guantanamo.” Coulter’s syndicated column, Dec. 21, 2005
* “Would that it were so! … That the American military were targeting journalists.” Kudlow & Cramer, CNBC, February 7, 2005″
So you might see why the following quote broke my hypocrisy meter.
“Being nice to people is, in fact, one of the incidental tenets of Christianity (as opposed to other religions whose tenets are more along the lines of ‘kill everyone who doesn’t smell bad and doesn’t answer to the name Mohammed’)”. – from her column (at townhall.com), 4 March, 2004
June 7th, 2006 at 6:36 am
I have to say that my favorite (fictional) Ann Coulter story is the one about inadvertently meeting her at the Farmers’ Market in Los Angeles. You know the one I mean…
June 7th, 2006 at 8:31 am
Several citizens of the city of San Marcos, Texas Between Austin and San Antomio) are all a-twitter because their ZIP code is 78666. I tell them so what, the ZIP codes of NE Kansas are 666xx!
During the big CB boom of the early 70s, I worked in the electronics department of a store in Topeka. In order to demonstrate CB radios, I needed a temporary license. The format for a temporary license was the letter K, first initial, last initial, ZIP code. My temporary license number was KKK-66611!
June 7th, 2006 at 9:33 am
Most people who fear the Number of The Beast don’t even really comprehend what the number is. I’ve occasionally had people tell they were worried over such numbers as 0.666, 6.66, etc. I have to point out that there is supposedly a “number” of The Beast, not a “digit string” of The Beast.
June 7th, 2006 at 9:36 am
At 66 minutes past 6 PM yesterday, a comet fragment hit my neighbour’s pond. The resulting impact generated tsunami may have swamped a frog that was floating near the edge of the pool.
Or maybe his kid threw a small rock in the pond. I’m not sure, but crop circles lately have indicated a dearth of frogs, and I’m certain my neighbour’s kid is The Beast.
June 7th, 2006 at 12:09 pm
So apparently when I got those error messages, something to the effect of, “you can’t alter the heading…” the posts actually appeared.
My apologies for the triplicate posts. Feel free to delete 2 of them if anyone with the “power” wishes to.
June 7th, 2006 at 1:24 pm
Let’s see if I have this right: 666 is the beatsy boys number, 7(in numerology) is the number of the prophet, 13 sat at the last supper, saying something 3 times means “PAY ATTENTION”, and 1 ” is the loneliest number that you’ll ever know,,,”, but there are left an infinite number of numbers unaccounted for,,,Gee, isn’t it cool that these numbers are so important? I guess it’s because that’s about as high as most religious fundementalists can count, then they run out of fingers, toes and imagination,,,
Gary 7
June 7th, 2006 at 2:56 pm
This guy was born on 06/06/06. In 1906, that is. He was apparently not the Antichrist, but led an interesting life anyway.
June 7th, 2006 at 3:41 pm
It’s a little appreciated historical fact that the number of the Beast originated when Belle asked how to contact him after their first date. Back then there were a LOT fewer phones in use, so the numbers were still all just three digits. By coincidence his number was 666 *and* the local church elders were bloody well ticked at him for the “enchantments” of his entire staff.
June 8th, 2006 at 2:47 am
I had to do a presentation at work on that Tuesday and it went splendid. I was laughing all day at all the numerologically challenged christians who were covering in fear for that entire day. I just couldn’t stop smiling.
Disregarding the completely arbitary selection of this date and the fact that the bible says absolutely nothing about 666 having any relation to a date whatsoever, the 666 in itself was also an early mistranslation of the bible. Maybe an accident, maybe on purpose because three of the same numbers in a row look a lot more ominous. The actual number of the beast in the bible is 616. Everything else is urban legends and popular fiction. Like the water in the sink running in different directions depending on what hemisphere you’re on.
But according to their logic, apparently the clammy hand of the beast moves with timezones too, right? So it’s a bad day starting in Australia and then the influence of the Beast moves around with the sun until it hits the USA some 18 hours later.
Even disregarding the fact that they counted jesus’ birthday wrong and the 6/6/6 date actually happened a couple years ago, who could possibly believe something as stupid as that?