Can't We Turn This Into a Drinking Game of Some Sort?

 Holy Crap, we've only got 18-shopping days left until the End of Earth.  I haven't even drawn up a Christmas list.   How did this slip my mind?  And why did I shell out so much last week to have my driveway powerwashed?

The Russians, it seems, are already showing the first signs of End of Earth syndrome.

Inmates in a women's prison near the Chinese border are said to have experienced a ''collective mass psychosis'' so intense that their wardens summoned a priest to calm them. In a factory town east of Moscow, panicked citizens stripped shelves of matches, kerosene, sugar and candles. A huge Mayan-style archway is being built - out of ice - on Karl Marx Street in Chelyabinsk in the south.

Russia is not the only country to face this problem. In France, the authorities plan to bar access to Bugarach mountain in the south to keep out a flood of visitors who believe it is a sacred place that will protect a lucky few from the end of the world. The patriarch of Ukraine's Orthodox Church recently issued a statement assuring the faithful that ''doomsday is sure to come,'' but that it will be provoked by the moral decline of mankind.''

Down in Mayan country, the Yucatan, the locals understand that this is big time tourist season when the Gringos show up to buy their wares and leave their tips.  They aren't digging this End of Earth stuff at all.   That, however, is of little help to Russian authorities.

Last week, lawmakers took up the matter, addressing a letter to Russia's main television stations asking them to stop airing material about the prophecy.

Russians are approaching the deadline with their characteristic mordant humour. An entrepreneur in the city of Tomsk has sold several thousand emergency kits, a $29 package including sprats, vodka, matches, candles, a string and a piece of soap.

The motto on the package is a classic refrain of the Russian optimist: ''It can't be worse.''