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Welcome to the 21st Century!
There was some dispute about whether the 21st thing began in 2000
or 2001. All I can say is: get a life guys! It's here. Handle it.
But
I'm a little disappointed with what I've seen so far. For starters,
I've been hung over for at least 1/3 of it. Based on this trend, the
21st will be a century of disprin.
And, quite frankly, its not a very sexy century. No trim
mini-skirts in some shiny plastic material being worn by everyone
(guys included). No constant stream of 60s-style sex set to the beat
of bongos and sitars. Goodness me, I got it good quite a few times
last century (and sometimes with other people too). But this century?
Well remember that hangover thing? Not very sexy.
You know, maybe we've been given the wrong century. Lets check-
what do we expect in the 21st? Hmmm... hover cars: can't see any. Jet
packs? Nope. Ray guns? Uh-uh. Underwater cities? Can't see any round
here. The teleportation booths? Absent!
This gets worse and worse. No robots. No alien bartenders. No
rockets blasting their way into the sky carrying hardy space men to
the stars. No clean nuclear power that transformed the cities into
clean gleaming spires of light and somber thought.
Where are the well
fed citizens, gazing through smog-free air at a brighter technological
tomorrow? Where are the over-educated child geniuses in every home
playing mathematical games with strange glowing morphing blocks? You
know the ones- these are the kids who interrupt their parent's talking
about new energy sources (not that there is anything wrong with
nuclear power, mind you) to ask about cosines? I can't see them and
I've looked everywhere.
Not that I want to set back the clock. Sure, the 20th had its moments:
antibiotics and the end to smallpox,
air flight and space flight,
television and the film industry,
computers and the internet,
the international Olympic games.
Not to mention all those (mostly) peaceful revolutions:
women's suffrage and contraception,
the American civil rights movement,
the push to democracy in Eastern Europe that pushed over the Berlin wall.
But you gotta admit: the 20th had its downside. Especially for
me. Birth (ouch- all those bright lights). Puberty. Disco
music. Good riddance.
And that nuclear war thing- one of those
could have ruined my whole day/year/century.
(Strangely, I'm not so worried this century about nuclear
war as I used to be.
Now I think that the materialism I so abhor will stop the more
industrialized countries from leaping into the abyss. See, there's no
McDonald's or cellphones in the the abyss. But there's probably disco
music in there- another reason to avoid it.)
Yessiree. This century,
I've got a little more control over what I do in my life and
when. Last century? I needed nappies. No contest really. So I've
decided I'm going to like this century- even though I'm pretty sure
it'll kill me.
Happy new century everyone!