MORE Y2K JELLY BOOKS
Lead pipes brought down Imperial Rome. With the Washington Post just releasing the Senate’s Y2K report, warning of dire consequences, it’s not crying wolf anymore. Y2K has become the biggest growth industry since Beanie Babies. If it hits as hard as some people think, especially in poor countries still functioning on previous generations of outdated software, we may experience global unrest the likes of which we've never seen. All the more reason for countries like the US to prepare for the worst.
There was nothing in the Apocalypse of St. John about the Y2K horseman. That’s a new one on me. Most nations on the planet don’t even recognize our calendar as legitimate. Yet it’s been running all software applications from the simplest pocket calculator to the Space Shuttle. Leave it to Swatch to start selling web time watches. As if Greenwich standard time wasn’t good enough. So ready or not, 2000 is the first real international disaster our world has ever faced. Where’s Bruce Willis when you really need him?
In a way, this is good. So good in fact, alternative energy companies have never been doing better. The Real Goods catalog is riding the gravy train. It’s about to publish it’s own little manual: "Y2K & Y-O-U". It urges its customers to stock up, rig up a windmill, lay down photovoltaics, and buy an ELECTRIC VEHICLE, just in case. Because, in Clinton’s own words to the National Academy of Sciences, and we know he cannot tell a lie: "An oil drilling rig alone may include ten thousands separate chips." Humanity thrives in the face of adversity.
Who would have ever thought that a publication like Utne Reader and The Spotlight could have anything in common? And yet, Utne’s "Y2K Citizen’s Action Guide" at your newsstand now advises the same ready preparedness as full page ads for Y2K supplies.com in The Spotlight, the same crank-it-up radio flashlight, freeze dried food, and water filters. But the cutest of ’em all is "The Hippy Survival Guide to Y2K" by jovial Mike Oehler. Our drug-induced paranoia has taken shape in cyberspace and our reality has begun to reflect it. We’re having fun with this. Do I hear Ben & Jerry’s come out with a new Y2K flavor? Triple chip!