The Besz Dispenser - This Week's Rant

For the week of September 25th, 1998

It's the End of the World as we know it

Well, the year 2000 is approaching faster than Bill Clinton's pants dropping in front of an intern, and boy is the world going mental! God knows I am, what with all the shows on TV and at least two movies out this year about how we, as a civilization, are going to get wiped off the face of the earth. Tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, heat waves, nuclear fire, nuclear winter, locusts, viruses, plagues, asteroids, meteorites, and all our computers crashing at 00:00:00 a.m., January 1, 2000. Some believe all of it will happen at once, or a mix, or a few, or just one is enough. And no, Jenny McCarthy's fame is not a sign of the Apocalypse.

So, let's take our pick of ways to die. Personally, one could overload his or her brain with the choices of mass destruction nowadays, so one must choose carefully. Either ground zero of a nuke, or Barry Manilow playing "Mandy" over and over again in hell. Which would you rather?

I don't know about all of this. I know a few of my friends who know what state we're in, wondering but not taking anything too seriously, and I know a few who have become more and more paranoid as the year goes on. I try to ignore the shows and believe none of it, but it creeps in. Welcome to the information age, where you can research how probable each form of destruction is. How do you ignore the flow?

Why are we so obsessed with the millennium? What is it about 2000 that we fear? It happened before in 1000 AD, where people started killing everyone, including themselves, and fearing the worst. Then, about 30 years later, they realized their calculations were off, and so it happened all over again. When nothing happened, they started to breathe easier, knowing that it was 2000 they should fear, and they'd be dead by then.

So for 2000 years, this year has been built up to be the end of everything. Or at least everything as we've come to know it. That means a lot of things, people. Aliens, cloning, cyborgs, androids, space travel and colonization, the end of hunger, poverty, disease and various other options. Yes, these may be pipe dreams, but I'd rather focus on pipe dreams and continue being normal than go freaking out, running north, barricading myself in a log cabin with a dog and a shotgun.

I don't see the fuss, and I don't want to. Why wait for the end with nothing but dread, when you can live the rest of your life, just being a person. Don't go mental, don't go raping and pillaging, don't do anything stupid. Just live like a normal person. And if the end does come, then worry. Or just accept, because you can't do a thing about it then, and ten bucks says no amount of preparation you could have done would have saved you.

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