Cream of the Crop 11/Cream of the Crop 11-1.iso/faq/df9601g.zip/7R

Text File | 1996-01-01 | 6KB | 113 lines

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  THE FUTURE BEGINS LATER
    by Bob Rhubart
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    Another new year is upon us. Here it is, 1996, just four
  years from the year 2000, and we still haven't answered the most
  important question of our time: When, exactly, does the 21st
  century begin?

    People are getting into bar fights over this one. There are
  those who say that the new century begins with the year 2001. Then
  there are those who believe that the it begins with the year 2000.
  And then there are those who simply push their tables out of the
  way and make bets on which side will end up in the ambulance.

    My feeling is that the next century begins the first time I
  forget to write "2000" on my checks. In the date part, not the
  money part. If I wrote "2000" in the money part the check
  wouldn't stop bouncing until the year 3000. But I digress...

    To really answer the question of when the new century begins
  requires an examination of history. Those of you who are still
  reading after the previous sentence are to be commended. Far too
  many people have no interest in the lessons history has to offer.
  This is unfortunate since, as we all know, those who fail to learn
  the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them in summer school.

    The whole argument has to do with the formation of calendars.
  Many millennia ago, insurance salesman were forced to rely on word
  of mouth for their advertising. This was difficult since insurance
  salesman were no more popular then than they are today. One day, a
  particularly enterprising insurance guy decided that what was
  needed was a way to keep his name in front of people on a daily
  basis, without actually talking to them. Trying to talk people into
  expensive insurance had so far resulted in low sales and several
  nasty wounds from primitive weapons wielded by people who were too
  busy inventing civilization to worry about the financial security
  of their loved ones if one of the gods got miffed and turned them
  into a goat.

    So this ancient insurance salesman invented the calendar,
  which divided the year into months, gave each month a different
  name, numbered the days, and offered handy reminders of which days
  you were called upon by different gods to sacrifice something so
  that your crops would grow, your cattle would multiply, and your
  kids would finally get jobs and move out.

    These early calendars were not at all like the calendars of
  today, since Cindy Crawford wasn't going to hit big for a very,
  very long time. Early calendars were chiseled onto stone, and the
  finished products often weighed more than one hundred pounds. Many
  of the ancient insurance salesman had to go in for hernia surgery
  after delivering their load of calendars. This dramatically reduced
  the number of insurance salesmen, since hernia surgery at that time
  was performed with sharpened sticks and leeches. But the idea
  caught on, and soon everybody was making and using calendars.

    Historians are unsure when the first calendar was invented,
  and this results in the key debate over when the B.C.(Before
  Calendar) period ended, and when the A.D. (Allowable Deduction)
  period began. So now, nearly two thousand years after the opening
  of the very first office of the Internal Revenue Service, we still
  have no idea about what to tell the caterers about when to plan
  the really big parties that will mark the end of the old century
  and the beginning of the new one -- the one during which the aliens
  are supposed to land and forever end hunger, disease, war, and the
  publishing career of Howard Stern.

    Frankly, it doesn't matter when one century actually ends
  and the new one begins. It's not like anything major is going to
  happen, not right away -- not until the Mothership lands. Oh sure,
  the parties might be a little wilder. But on New Year's Day of the
  next millennium, your credit card balance will still be an
  embarrassment, and most of what's in your closet will still be in
  no danger of being up-to-date, fashion-wise. Everything about you
  is going to seem a hundred years old.

    Let's avoid the emotional trauma by not getting wrapped up in
  the question of when now becomes the past and the future becomes
  now. Those mysteries have already been addressed on some of the
  more confusing episodes of Star Trek. Time marches on, that's for
  sure. Let's do what we can to not let it march on us.

                                 (DREAM)

  Copyright 1996 Bob Rhubart, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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  Bob Rhubart, 42, was born in Pensacola, Florida. After being
  kidnapped by aliens, who taught him to speak Spanish and pick
  fruit, he moved to the the western suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio,
  where he still resides. He has one wife, two daughters, one house,
  two mortgages, two cars, two dogs, a rabbit, a parakeet, bad eyes,
  bad knees, a bad back, bad sinuses, and things are going just fine,
  thank you very much. We hope to see him regularly in DF.
  email: [e-mail]
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