The top trend for 1998, according to the latest edition of The Trends Journal, printed by the Trends Research Institute, which refers to itself as the World Leader in Trend Forecasting and so ought to know, is the end of the world. The journal also lists nine other trends, but they seem sort of irrelevent, all things considered.

“In widespread mailings,” The Trends Journal states, “anonymous biblical numerologists claim that the year 1998 is ominously coded into familiar, innocent-looking biblical passages. To them, the message is clear: the end is near.” Key dates to await the end are May 5, 2000 and Dec. 23, 2012. The first is a time of a rare astronomical conjunction of the Sun, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn with the Earth and the moon. Gravitational effects from this alignment, the journal has been told, could upset the Earth’s axis, spilling the Antarctic ice caps across the rest of the planet.

The second date is less terrifying but no less absolute. It is the last day recorded in the Mayan calendar, according to the journal. No calendar, some people apparently reason, no days.

A skeptic might conclude that the doomsayers simply are unnerved by the thought of those three zeros after the 2 that is to arrive in two years and have let their imaginations get away from them. But that dismisses this group too lightly. Humankind spends an inordinate amount of time concluding that its ornaments — its governments, opinions, conflicts — are what matters in the universe. Why shouldn’t it also assume that its calendar is paramount?

Fortunately, The Trends Journal allows us to push aside such questions with this decisive conclusion: “Regardless of the meaning (if any) of the millennium, Millennium Fever is both a fact and a major trend.” Brace yourself.