If we are to believe certain people, then we have a scant 46 weeks to go until the end of the world is upon us.

Not long to go now, eh! Yes, the apocalypse is coming, folks, so I hope your shelter is well stocked with bottled water and tinned Spam – we’re in for a long haul.

Of course, the world doesn’t end on 21 December (a Friday, if you’re interested), and, no, the Mayans didn’t predict such a thing (their calendar just ran out – a fairly loose interpretation). If we are to base our scientific predictions on a civilisation as primitive as the Mayans, who were too thick to invent something as simple as a wheel, let alone a telescope or even basic astronomical equipment [calm down, dear – History Ed], then we really are stupid ourselves.

Not that trivial things like science and facts have never got in the way of a good story, and fortunately, popular fiction is on hand to give us an idea of what to expect. Take the imaginatively titled and even more imaginatively scripted disaster film 2012, for example – a film so bad that you will eventually pray for a hasty apocalypse.

Director Roland Emmerich attributed this year’s coming doomsday to the Mayans (obviously), earthquakes (fine), solar flares (er, right, OK), the earth’s core overheating (really?), all the planets aligning (now, hang on) and neutrinos mutating (OK, never mind then). It’s a fantastically silly piece of tosh, which implied that by 1 February 2012 – ie today – the world’s leaders had already begun building a massive ark in the Himalayas. ARE YOU LISTENING, DAVID CAMERON?

Meanwhile, if we are to believe the Terminator films, we need to destroy all technology; so stop reading and throw your computer out the window immediately. If Cormac McCarthy’s cheerful novel The Road is anything to go by, the survivors of the apocalypse must resort to baby-eating in order to survive. If Michael Bay was on the mark with Armageddon, it’s an asteroid dooming humanity and we need to send Bruce Willis up there to blow the shit out of it. Bruce, I imagine, is on call at the Kennedy Space Centre, 24 hours a day, ready for wise crackin’ and earth savin’.

If we listen to the endlessly sentimental romantic comedies, now’s about the time we ought to “live each day as if it’s your last”, a mantra nothing if not problematic. I’d ideally like to spend my last day on earth eating a multipack of iced buns, call up all the people I fancied, then maybe smash up some antiques and break into a zoo. After a few weeks of living each day as if it was my last I’d probably be arrested/sectioned for my various acts of injudicious living.

Anyway, I’m not one for pompous hyperbole, but a significant chapter of the universe comes to an end today. After six months of unadulterated waffle, alas, this will be my last column for the good ship IdeasTap. I certainly don’t want to encourage mass suicide pacts as a result of me leaving, but what people do behind closed doors is their own business. For those of you who didn’t immediately balk at the gaudy mix of bad jokes and grumpy whinging, the waffle continues on my blog.

Thanks for reading. It’s been emotional. See you on judgement day.

More John:

... on piracy

... on red carpets