"It has been a really tough weekend," said 89-year-old Howard W. Camping, after God and Ashton Kutcher pulled a prank on the old fart doom-sayer, leaving his followers impoverished and stranded on a dying planet battered by tornados and reeling from a prolonged economic downturn. "I'm looking for answers ... But right now I have nothing else to say," he said, adding that he was really bummed that only Hamas, Al Qaeda, The Taliban, and Shining Path rebels were given safe passage to the afterlife.
A spokescripple for Camping, Steven Hawking — no relation to the renowned theoretical patapastrophysical atheist — was likewise at a loss for words that the end was so anti-climactic, saying only that he was personally "disappointed" that 200 million true believers were given the wrong coordinates to embark on their otherwordly chariots. Instead, the armada of angelically piloted craft descended on remote locations where a few hundred surviving meeks were whisked away to their promised heavenly reward.
Camping and his followers are particularly upset that they will be forced to suffer and die along with everyone else on the planet as a series of earthquakes, wars, storms, pestilence, and famine destroys all life, between now and October 21, 2011. "You can imagine we're pretty disappointed, but the word of God is still true," Hawking said. "We obviously went a little too far in our calculations, or maybe not quite far enough, and that's something we need to learn from. Next time, we’ll be better prepared."
Thousands of Camping’s disciples ran up huge credit card bills in the weeks leading up to the end of the world, and now many are contemplating suicide as the only way out of what some are calling an economic and social apocalypse of biblical proportions.
Robert Fitzpatrick, who spent $140,000 of his life savings to advertise the rapture in New York, said he was dumbfounded when life went on as usual Saturday. "I do not understand why God has forsaken us. I do not understand why nothing has happened. I’ve got nothing planned for tomorrow. This is just a nightmare. My wife is threatening to leave me for a Jew or an Arab. I am so embarrassed."