The 2000 Concept
by Mr.e

By now most of you are aware of the fact that the world clock is about to roll over. Sort of like when dad would holler from the driver’s seat that the odometer in the car was about to roll over some (to him) significant number.

The big number on our calendars is going to change. So what! ‘Every’ year many of us struggle to write the correct new number for many months and for some of us, were it not for computerized assistance, would still be scribbling last years digits.

This millennium thing is one event that should have been fixed on celluloid. Pandora’s box jam packed with all sorts of technological paraphernalia that we’ve come to depend on that may well go "bump" new years eve.

Seeing the final moment of 1999 click over offers up an interesting and slightly more anxious countdown. What are we supposed to believe when the expert analysts predict both negative impact scenarios and also spout glib ‘don’t worry messages’.

The armies of code guys have not spanned the entire globe on their holy quest to prepare the masses for the numeric. And now the paranoia really kicks into gear. What about the parts of the globe we rely on for trade that have not been rendered Y2K compliant. Of course it’s too late to catch up now! No reboot here Floyd.

Unless you’ve hooked up your cool 10-speed bicycle to a funky generator system, maintained an optimum fitness level and exchanged your comfy office chair for a hard patent leather bike seat, you may or may not have the juice to run your dream machine. Haven’t quite worked out the number of revolutions per minute to juice this machine, yet.

Then there’s the ‘once in a lifetime party’ milestone. We’ve been blasted with news of outrageous celebrations to mark this event. You know that there’s nary a good bottle of Champagne to be had (should have procured that one last year). And what about the morning after? No pill for that one my dear.

Just think about it. You wake up the next morning. You might sleep in anyway; due to the tipsy stupor that you decided was appropriate to face the coming mess with … or because your bedside clock just stopped. It’s not even flashing.

Electricity is the fly in the ointment. If that searing jolt of convenience were to dissolve with the last tick of the clock, well … The word "pandemonium" sounds strangely musical.

The bottom line is this: Either all will be well or all won’t work very well. And this millennium craze has created a bit of a dilemma what with its two options. On or off! I’d love to be able to offer some words of consolation, some bit of wisdom or such that could foretell the near future. But I can’t, nor do I care to.

I do know that we never gave Murphy a decent burial and that he’s been haunting us for ages. Suppose he’s out there getting all gussied up, busting a gut and choosing his biggest and shiniest monkey wrench to use on the big cliché; happening soon in many near empty ballrooms worldwide.

The end of the millennium and all the assured techno fall out is like waiting for the ‘big one’ in quake prone zones, with one distinctive difference: this one has a date on it!