Is the Devil really in the details?

So, today is the sixth day of the sixth month of the year two thousand six. 6-6-6, for the numerically challenged. The Mark of The Beast, etc, etc. This date doesn’t come around very often… only about every hundred years or so, so it is pretty unique.

This day has different significance to different people. If you’re a relatively normal, i.e., not freakin’ crazy, person, this day has no significance whatsoever.

However, if you’re a superstitious Christian (Go God!) or Hessian (Satan, anyone?), then this particular day might hold greater significance. The number 666 is described in Revelations as the mark of the beast and has fueled speculation, superstition, and profiteering for years. Really crappy heavy metal albums and horror movies take advantage the fear/excitement surrounding this date.

Numerology – the finding of significance in numbers – has been around a lot longer than even Revelations. People have been looking to numbers to find order in their world for thousands of years. A good article about these things was recently published at LiveScience.com, here.

Here are a couple of the more entertaining items I found regarding today and its unique date:

“National Day of Slayer”

A quaint little page put together to honor everyone’s favorite Satanic speed metal band.

Their website lists the Official Statement on Participation as follows:

• Listen to Slayer at full blast in your car.
• Listen to Slayer at full blast in your home.
• Listen to Slayer at full blast at your place of employment.
• Listen to Slayer at full blast in any public place you prefer.

Not a bad aspiration for a band that hasn’t put anything out since 1992.

The page is entertaining in a couple of ways. First, if you don’t actually have any desire to own a Slayer album, you can just go to their page and crank your volume. It plays about a minute of some Slayer song over and over… and… over. Also, National Day of Slayer, LLC, is a non-profit corporation in the State of Wyoming. I think that’s hilarious.

[Update! (8 a.m. Wed, 07 June 2006) -- Slayer is coming to Denver! OMG, wow. The Unholy Alliance Tour featuring Slayer will be at the Fillmore Auditorium (Colfax and Clarkson, next door to the Turnverein) this Friday 09 June and in July on the 26th. While I have no intention of going to this show (Swing at City Park sounds much safer), the line up of bands is entertaining as, well, hell: Lamb of God, Children of Bodom, Mastodon, and Thine Eyes Bleed will be joining Slayer for an evening of mayem. No little emo pansies here! Although, I don't think that they can match the seriously unholy carnage of Norwegian Black Metal bands such as Mayhem. Okay, that's all I got. End of Update!]

“The Nick of Time”

Good article by the BBC today. Introduced me to the word “hexakosioihexekontahexaphobic,” or, one who is afraid of the mark of the beast. (If you can pronounce that word at a normal pace, let me know. You’ve won a cookie.)

The article also mentioned that Tom Chase, a “a New Age Christian writer from the US, has used astrology and the Bible to calculate that the antichrist will emerge, followed by an asteroid collision and within a year or two the battle of Armageddon. The antichrist, according to Chase, is Vladimir Putin.”

This prompted me to do a little Google-ing in search of this nutjob’s research. I have not yet read it, but it’s in his article “Revelation 13: Is the Antichrist Russian President Putin? -- More on Putin and Russia -- a Bible prophecy and New Age analysis.” And yes, his website is called Revelation 13. Uh huh. Weird. (Scroll down a bit past the dozen Amazon adds to find the freakishly long text.)

Oh, and if you want to prove that today, 06 June 2006, isn’t actually 6-6-6, check out these other weird calendars here.

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Moving on…


Much more importantly, let us not forget about what 06 June has stood for since 1944: D-Day, when the Allied forces invaded Europe in World War II.

This marked the beginning of the end of a living hell for millions of people in Europe. At least for those who hadn’t ended up in the gas chambers and crematoriums of the Nazi’s. So, amid all the hubbub of scary movies and bad omens, take a moment to remember those brave souls from around the world (well, America, Britain, Canada (where’d they go?), and Australia, at least) who gave their lives to save the world from tyranny.

God bless America, and God save the Queen. “V” for Victory.