Rather Noughty Karl Whitney The Guardian, Tuesday 11th January 2000 - - - - Karl Whitney discovers why the year 2000 fills him with unease Wow, what a century that was, eh? The twentieth I mean. Anybody who can still remember the nineteenth (century, that is) isn't reading this; they're off enjoying the more hedonistic pleasures of hardcore gambling and raging alcoholism (when you get to that age you really find out what's important in life). You don't miss what you've always had, until you lose the keys or it's stolen by some crazy kids, do you? I feel that way about the twentieth century. To me it was always just a lot of big dumb numbers that changed every 12 months, but now it's gone it feels like more than that: it's a bunch of big dumb numbers I'll never see again. Two thousand. 2-0-0-0. Too many Ohs. You never see anything on sale for 20.00, do you? You know why? It makes customers scared; it's the unknown, the unaccounted for. Paying 19.99 is good, its a robust and healthy price. But 20.00 is a sickly, diseased, gaping void of a tag to hang on a product; it plagues the proto-purchaser until he/she/it (welcome alien brethren if you've already touched down) walks away, their millennial tension dispersed through outright denial. Maybe we should have done the same: denied the existence of 2000 (the year, not the number that would be silly) and jumped straight from 1999 to . . . Well, not 2001, no one would have bought that. But doesn't 2099 sound like a good bargain? A hundred years may be a long time, but I dont think they would have been all that great anyway. These millennium things always take a while to get off the ground. We could have got in there after all the bad mid-century unpleasantness had cleared up. We could have avoided the ugly excesses of the 2070s with their tiresome Steps revivals. So too could we have missed out on Vinnie Jones' Oscar triumph in 2013, in a blockbuster called Hackney's Empire, in which he plays a down-on-his-luck East End cabbie forced to make ends meet by fighting the dark side in between picking up fares. The less said about Liam Gallagher's all-midget musical the better (2017). And what about the advances in science that the next 100 years will see? Well, through advanced cloning technology a talking horse is created by over-eager (and possibly bored) scientists. It speaks in a mid-Atlantic accent and has a weekly TV show (just like Mr Ed!). But unlike Mr Ed, it eats nuclear waste and has a strange aversion to air travel. Not all ideas of the 21st century will be useless. After it is pointed out (in 2057) that all politicians do is fill chairs in some big office somewhere and spew spurious facts at the easily-bored public, the chairs are removed. Two years later the politicians are removed too, and replaced with nice water coolers, which the voters are more comfortable with. They are no longer bored but refreshed, and politics is saved from extinction. So if we follow my plan, skip the next few years and edge closer to the 22nd century, will we be better off? Trust me, I've seen a sneak preview of Liam's musical, and we definitely will. But is denial really the answer? Denial, some say, is the last refuge of a scoundrel. To them I say only this: No it isn't, I'm not listening to you, this is not happening! That usually works, so why shouldnt this? I dont know about you, but I'm slightly soured on 2000, and it's barely underway. Already this year I've had to sign numerous cheques due to a court case resulting from some excessively incendiary Yuletide festivities (wantonly shredded furniture, juggling of champagne bottles, inopportune outdoor nakedness, unforeseen police presence, etc). So you understand my (perhaps prematurely) jaded stance towards the 21st century. In closing, then, you'll hear a lot of testimony from people who say that as sure as day follows night, one year should follow the next. Have these people never heard of a leap year? In that case whats wrong with a leap century, you doom encrusted naysayers! Don't be swayed by the idiot-talk gurgling (via mouth) from these atrophied pseudo-savants. Listen to your heart (or, even better, me) when voting for a swift and painless end to this century. You have been warned. Karl Whitney studies English at University College Dublin. -------- Journalism | Stories | Home | About