New Year Wishes
Date: Fri, 31 Dec 1999 00:12:13 -0500
To: autonomous@listbot.com
From: big mike bigmike@autonomousfootsoldiers.com
Subject: new year wishes
As I sit down to write this, it is just after 12 am on the last day of December, 1999. Twenty-four hours from now, it will be 1/1/2000. In fact in seven hours that date will already apply to some people in the world....or is it six hours? Yet I resist calling this my last message of the millennium, for I am one of those obnoxious people that have been insisting all along that the millennium is still a year away. But after thinking about it for a long time, I have decided that it's unlikely that next year's parties will come close to this year's in any way. It isn't really the new millennium that we're celebrating here....we're celebrating the time when all the numbers on the calendar roll over. Like when you're car's odometer rolls over and you just want to pull off the side of the road and stretch that moment out a little longer than the 45 seconds that you usually get to appreciate an odometer reading.
A similar rollover occurred already this year when the world population capped 6 billion people. But that number doesn't mean that much to any of us because we know there's no one counting at the box office and that the margin of error for those kinds of guesstimations is astronomical compared to those atomic clocks they have these days that can tell us exactly when midnight hits. That's right, I'm not going to blow my party horn until it is 2000 years to the second after Jesus was born. Good thing Pope Gregory XIII did the dirty work and pinpointed that info back in the 1500's when they could still remember the time of Christ. Truth is, their guess as to when the son of God was born of mortal woman away in a manger is every bit as shaky as our being extra nice to one underprivileged kid because that child is the 6 billionth person on Earth. If Jesus were to pick this year to interrupt the celebration with all that Revelations stuff, it would be sheer coincidence.
There is another reason why this year is the year of the big parties, and that's that this is the dreaded year that all the computers might blow up. There are two ways that this thing can pan out: either we all laugh our asses off at that guy at work who's been stockpiling water, gold, cigarettes, and ammunition for the last 90 days, or he laughs his ass off at us. Most of us aren't too worried...yet. But who among us would be brave enough to take the red eye to the east coast about this time tomorrow? Hope for the best and prepare for the worst. I ain't laying any money on the table either way.
I really do hope that this isn't the end of civilization as we know it; I for one, had a lot more things I wanted to do before the apocalypse came. But if the Internet goes down forever, I'd be kicking myself if I didn't post something thanking all of the Autonomous Footsoldiers for making this year a great one in my book. And while I'm at it, I'd like to offer the assurance that if the world doesn't come to a fiery end by this time tomorrow, you'll still be hearing from the Autonomous Footsoldiers...at least this one. I hope you all enjoy the trip, and I'll see you on the other side.