Monday, December 31, 2007

• 20 Oh Eight

  Currently Listening The Best Damn Thing By Avril Lavigne see related

  The new year is upon us, but I’m not thinking about 2008.  Every New Year’s Day I think about 2001.

  No other year has had a more profound impact on American culture than 2001.  In 2001, Apple released the first generation iPod, which revolutionized the way we listen to music.   Microsoft released the Xbox game system, which kicked off a furious game-platform war that has ultimately resulted in Americans playing silly video games that make them simulate tennis swings while standing in front of their television sets.  In 2001, Barry Bonds broke the single-season homerun record, which catalyzed the steroid debate that overshadows most professional sports today.  2001 was the year in which a nimrod from Texas moved into the White House, and he would become the worst President in American history.  And in 2001, America was attacked by Islamic extremists who used commercial airplanes as missiles, thus redefining the threat of terrorism
  

  Each of these events has had a significant impression on our culture and how we live our everyday lives.  But none of these events was more puissant than the year 2001 itself.   The year 2001 was so devious in its actions that most of us are unaware of its sinister infiltration into our way of life.  Even as you are reading this, there is a very high likelihood that you are falling victim to the 2001 curse. 

  2001.  (You probably did it again.)

  Two-thousand-one.

  Two years before 2001 was 1999, and 100% of Americans called it nineteen-ninety-nine.  I’m fairly certain that no one said one-thousand-nine-hundred-ninety-nine.  When 2001 rolled around, we started saying two-thousand-one, instead of twenty-oh-one.  And then it continued with two-thousand-two, two-thousand-three, etc.  (The year 2000, as in two-thousand, gets a pass, just as 1900, as in nineteen-hundred, gets a pass.  I doubt that people called 1901 "nineteen-hundred-one".  I would speculate they called it nineteen-oh-one, but I don't know for sure because I wasn't alive back then.  Someone should ask Barbara Bush.)  Why did we make such a radical change in our year-nomenclature?  As a country, we have been saying things like fourteen-ninety-two and seventeen-seventy-six for over 200 years, so it perplexes me why this change occurred.  This is something that I can’t envision going on forever.  For example, in, let’s say, 2053 (which is the year I will die of natural causes, unless I kill myself, die in a car accident, or get devoured by a tiger at the San Francisco Zoo before that), I honestly can’t foresee that we will be saying two-thousand-fifty-three.  Unless the country loses its mind (relatively speaking), we will be saying twenty-fifty-three.   I asked my friend Violeta about this, and she said that things will go back to normal in 2010 (as in twenty-ten), although she conceded that she only thought that because she is an eye doctor and twenty-ten is an actual term (like twenty-twenty vision).

  Most people I’ve talked to have said either (1) things will change in 2010, (2) things will change in 2011, or (3) who the hell cares?  I care.  Things haven’t been right since two-thousand-one.  Since then we’ve been in a war on terror that may or may not exist.  The globe has become 10 degrees warmer (just an estimate).   The Writer’s Guild of America has gone on strike.  Ryan Seacrest received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and Coldplay is still making music.  How did we let this atrocity happen?  How did we let two-thousand-one take away twenty-oh-one and, thus, drastically change our lives?  Even the current conservative-right administration has succumbed to this radical change without putting up much of a fight.  I fear the terrorists may have already won.

  We need to make a change.  And we need to make it now. 

  End the two-thousand-one curse.  Join the twenty-oh-eight movement.  You can listen to your iPods, play your Wiis, and watch your steroid-enhanced sports.  But whatever you do, don’t let two-thousand-eight win.  Tell everyone you know.  Tell your mother.  Tell your pastor.  Tell your Bikram instructor.  Make a comment on someone’s blog.  Two-thousand-seven was lost, but twenty-oh-eight can still be saved.  You may not think it will make a difference.  You may not even think that there is a battle to be won.  But that’s exactly what two-thousand-eight wants.  It’s subversive like that.

  Happy two-thous... er, twenty-oh-eight.

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