New Years Eve Anxiety

by Baron Earl

1999-12-31 22:31:12

Y2K Madness

I woke up this morning thinking "Wow, this is it, the last day before the year 2000."

I've been thinking about this day for a long time. When I was a little kid I calculated just how old I was going to be on New Year's Eve 1999. Very OLD, it seemed then.

Today I'm excited and anxious. I'm not too worried about the Y2K bug. I figure we'll have glitches and inconvieniences galore, but I don't expect major, catastrophic system failures.

I figure several groups of religious nuts will commit mass suicide because they got tired of waiting for God to show up. It's sad but hey, good riddance. I feel sorry for their kids, who will undoubtedly be killed off by their own parents so they can also experience God's Glory without the wait. I expect lots of hand-wringing fake-sincere TV coverage of the suicide sites, with a reporter looking on, all solemn and attempting dignity.

I feel especially sorry for those who will be killed by the religious crusaders who want to take some people with them, which is why I plan to party the night away in a place where I hope the zealots will not be doing their dirty work. I expect endless hours of news explaining how the crusaders did what they did and what steps are being taken by authorities to keep this from happening in the future. I do not expect to hear any thoughts on how we can build a world where people won't feel the need to kill people they've never met.

Then of course there are the assorted militia nuts, terrorist cells, and political freedom fighters who figure that New Years Eve 1999 is the perfect time to maim, kill, and destroy property... in the name of freedom and justice of course. I hope the damage they cause is minimal and the lives they wreck are few. I also hope that at least some of them manage to blow themselves up with their bombs, because I love a news story with lots of irony.

I know I can watch it all appear live, on CNN, on FOX, on ABC, NBC, and CBS. I can sit safe in my living room and watch bits and pieces of the world shatter and die. Then on Saturday we can sit back and reflect on just how few of the failures were related to technology, and how many had their origins in abnormal human psychology.

The end will be covered live on TV. It will not be the end.

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