This meme was an excerpt from the paranormal/art history documentary called "Ghostbusters 2" (1989). In the same year that Bobby Brown was telling us his prerogative and Chicago was telling us to "Look Away" (but presumably buy their album), "Ghostbusters 2" was telling the world about the exact day that the world would end. In disbelief, yet resigned to my fate, I wrote the the following response to this meme and the original scene it was extracted from (I will provide a link to that scene on the bottom page).
Here was my response to the news of the world's imminent demise, which we were warned about twenty-seven years ago (and ignored):
Since all information learned by aliens at the Paramus Holiday Inn are by definition accurate, I suppose that means we have about twenty-fours left on this planet. That the planet itself probably also only has about twenty-fours left. Well, it was a nice run while it lasted. Bummer. Happy Valentines Day.
I was convinced that we were all goners. Of course, I would. How could I not? It's conventional wisdom that any eschatological predictions made by an alien at the Paramus Holiday Inn, presumably the one near The Outlets at Bergen Town Center or the IKEA, about six miles from Teterboro Airport (if memory serves me right), are true. Unless the Ivan Reitman documentary written by Harold Ramis and Dan Aykroyd was referring to a different Holiday Inn in Paramus, New Jersey, which considering that Route 17 itself is about twenty-seven miles long, seems possible but I don't know for certain.
Before this morning proved that yesterday was not the end of the world because I am living in that tomorrow I thought would never come, I thought the validity of eschatological predictions made by aliens in the Paramus Holiday Inn were axiomatically true. Axiomatically true like Eulcid's Fifth Postulate, which President Lincoln in a 2012 movie whose title I can't recall because it's too long and has too many syllables, told us that "It's true because it works; has done and always will do". I thought something similar applied when it came to eschatological predictions by aliens at the Paramus Holiday Inn (or a room on the spaceship made up to look like a room at the Paramus Holiday Inn). I was wrong. I was very wrong, and I am man enough to admit that.
Until today, I never would have questioned this Paramus theory or denied the validity of its most essential assumptions. In fact, I probably would have considered myself a blasphemer if I ever even entertained the doubt as to its legitimacy even as part of some ludicrous thought experiment. Now, having survived the Armageddon that was supposed to happen yesterday, I am forced to reconsider a theory which has always been a resolute conviction: that all eschatological predictions made by aliens at the Paramus Holiday Inn can be trusted. Now I know they cannot be assumed as anything suspect. I was wrong and I'll admit it. I wish there could have been a better way to learn this lesson. However, it is better to have learned the nullness of this hypothesis now than many, many years from now. Valentine's Day. Bummer. No. But for those who did believe, it kind of is because the end of the world didn't happen. Oh well.
© 2016 by Gary Hainsworth
Links:
Ghostbusters II The End of The World is Feb. 14 2016
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