Have you packed for The Rapture?

If not, then you'd better hurry, because it's happening today. At least according to serial Rapture-predictor Harold Camping. It's really inconvenient for me. It's my sweetie's birthday, so we have plans for tonight and tomorrow I'm having people over for dinner, so I should at least pretend to drag the vacuum around and perhaps do some shopping. On, the other hand, I'm probably not among the ones chosen to rapturate (rapturize? raptate?). If you think you may be one of the lucky ones chosen to get sucked up into heaven, leaving behind your pets and your non-believing relatives, it's recommended that you pack lightly. One pair of slippers, one white gown and a couple of light snacks in ziploc bags.  

This from Slate: "The end is near, again, probably. So get ready, maybe. Harold Camping, the 90-year-old radio host who famously predicted the world would end last May on the 21st, has confirmed that he believes the world will now end Friday, "probably." After God failed to deliver on the appointed date last spring, Camping, facing mockery from the press and crushing disappointment and anger from his followers, quickly produced a revision to his predication, setting the new, for-real-this-time, date of Oct. 21. According to his revised explanation, the "spiritual rapture” did indeed occur on May 21, but the actual end-of-the-world rapture will occur Friday. Conveniently, the spiritual rapture passed virtually undetected to all but Camping. Camping, who suffered a stroke last June, has been absent from his Family Radio broadcasts while hospitalized. He left the hospital in early September and earlier this month posted a podcast, saying: "October 21, that's coming very shortly, that looks like it will be, at this point, it will be the final end of everything." As the San Francisco Chronicle points out, Camping seemed to be hedging with this revised doomsday prediction: “The Oakland minister's latest prediction of the end of the world … is couched among words like 'probably' and 'maybe,' a far cry from the carved-in-stone certitude he projected onto his infamous May 21 forecast.” And, as the International Business Times notes, the end of the world will be very quiet. Quoting Camping: "[Non-believers will] quietly die…the true believers will quietly receive the new heaven and the new earth. I really am beginning to think as I restudied these matters that there’s going to be no big display of any kind."