A Crypt Fit for The King, or You

Seems a bit creepy to me, but I can't afford it anyway. 

Someone, however, will get the chance to be interred in the tomb that once housed Elvis. At least, that's the intended purpose of the crypt that once held the King for all of two months before he was reburied at Graceland.

(Let me just say here for the record, too, that this whole business of Elvis being dead is a vicious rumor designed to foment discord among the faithful. But that's another story.)

Anyway, a guy named Darren Julien, who makes his living auctioning off famous things once belonging to famous people, has put up for auction a whole new lot of stuff, in a big sell-off in June titled "Music Icons." One of those celebrity possessions is the actual tomb, which is still in the actual Kingly mausoleum in Memphis's actual Forest Hill Cemetery. 

(For those of you who believe this) Elvis was buried there next to his mother, the great Gladys, until such time as Graceland was ready to receive long-term internees. Since Gladys (and her son, if you choose to believe this line of thinking) was/were moved out of the crypt, it has remained empty. So there's plenty of room for you or whoever happens to be the highest bidder at the end of the auction.

So circle June 23 on your calendar if you want a piece of the action. Bidding starts at $100,000. If you do win it, no need to wait to occupy it. You could certainly outfit it yourself, and you might even see Elvis one day.

End of the World Postponed, Again

The world isn't going to end after all, at least not this December.

That's the word from a group of archaeologists who have found a Mayan calendar that doesn't end at 2012. No, if early reports are anything to go by, it will take these brave diggers a few generations just to untangle the delicate bob and weave of the complexity of this newly discovered calendar. (The Maya couldn't make things easy, could they?)

See, this intrepid bunch of doomsday-naysayers (not really, but I couldn't resist the phrase) were digging in and around and under the ancient city if Xultun, which is in present-day Guatemala, the northeastern part, when they found traces of ancient paint. That's not so much of a surprise, except that the ancient paint was on a depiction of a Maya king and another nearby painting wasn't a painting at all but a calendar.

This calendar had the usual cycles and cycles and more cycles that we're used to seeing on these sorts of things. So the baktun (400-year cycle) that ends on December 21 isn't the last one after all. It's just the one that ends on that day. The next one begins on the next day. Experts in this sort of historical timekeeping had long speculated exactly that, but the doomsayers among us had rushed to their judgement (day) long before that. And really, what sells better than the End of the World?

So, go ahead and book your Christmas holidays because you will be around to enjoy them. (And, if this is some sort of conspiracy by the Deniers, then you won't have to worry about forfeiting all that Christmas cash anyway because you — and the cash — won't be here.)