Millennium rantings
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
My thoughts on the bits of the last 1000 years that pop into my head in the next hour or so
So what did you make of that? I guess this little rant can be broken into 3 sections:
What I did on New Years EveIn case you didn't know, I spent this New Years Eve in Sydney, and ironically I wasn't planning on celebrating the Millenium because 90% of all the New Years celebrations I've ever been to have been the most deathly depressing events of my life. So anyway, one sunny Sunday afternoon I'm taking a walk with one of my housemates, Trea, past the Opera House1 and picked up a leaflet for a party that was happening there.
As you can probably guess, once the idea was in my head there was no way of stopping it (I'm like that - my mind's not used to ideas so whenever they do occur, it pretty much doesn't know how to defend itself from them) so I decided that if I was going to celebrate the Millenium, and I am in Australia, I might as well do it with one of the best views in the city (short of being on the Harbour Bridge itself which would be a stunning, but rather painful and terminal, way to see the fireworks2)
So I spent New Years Eve at the front of the Opera house (by myself to begin with, but god bless the Aussies for being such a friendly bunch of people who take pity on anyone with an Irish accent) and what can I say. It was fantastic. We drank, we danced, we attempted to sing (badly), we mauled and clawed at each other any time a waitress came around with the free (well - if you forget the obscene price of the ticket) food, we cheered as we watched the dance troop abseil down the side of the Opera House3, we drooled at Vanessa Amarosi's backing dancers, we cringed at the butch trio of accapello women singers (and cheered heartily when they finally left - although I was a little worried that they may think we were looking for an encore), and just generally had a great time of it.
If there was one thing that marred the whole event it was something I learned later. I was about 30 feet away from Sarah Michelle-Gellar4
who was on the other side of the Opera House at the Mayor's party. ARRGGGHH!!!! I nearly died when I read it in the papers, because I heard she was around (I just didn't realise how close around actually was!!) And, to make matters worse, she looked so damn cute that night as well. But it's a good start to the millenium. We're getting progressively closer to each other so it's only a matter of time before we meet, we catch eyes, we kiss, her bodyguards grab me and beat me to a messy pulp... oh well...
There will be photos put up on my homepage and in this entry just as soon as I get them developed (and scanned in). But that was how I spent the last hours of the 20th century... kinda memorable and well worth the effort!
1This isn't a footnote in the usual sense but I have to say I love dropping phrases like that into conversation. "Oh yeah, strolled past the Opera House, took a ferry to the beach, walked across the Harbour Bridge..." It drives people back home nuts!! ;-)2Seeing as the whole world watched it on TV, I'm not going to explain why... should be fairly obvious. God - ruined another perfectly humerous line by explaining it... now you know why I never became a writer.3At least I assume it was a dance troop. Either that or the worlds most obvious and ineffective group of terrorists in lovely pink lycra outfits.4For those of you living under a rock for the past 5 years, she is the cutest and most perfect woman ever. Even if she does have a bit of a funny nose (Thanks to Tara for pointing that one out to me. Didn't have the effect you hoped for though.).
What didn't happen on New Years EveActually now that I think about it, the whole Sarah Michelle Gellar bit should really have gone in here, but what I was thinking about at the time I came up with the 3 topics was this whole Y2K thing.For the same people who didn't know who Sarah Michelle Gellar (I should really start referring to her as SMG or just stop mentioning her - it's getting a little ridiculous now) was, I'll take some liberty to explain what Y2K is/was. The Year 2000 problem (or Y2K which apparently is the abbreviation of Year 2000 but I'll be damned if I can work out exactly where the K is - must have been a problem with the computers when they came up with it) was a computer problem designed to keep Cobol programmers in the money long after their skills became redundant, to cause large corporations to spend obscene amounts of money to fix (but am I complaining - I'm sitting here typing this whilst on the Y2K weekend nightshift so I'm guilty of cashing in on it too!) and to allow Mac users to be incredibally smug about the fact that Apple machines wouldn't be affected by the bug (and then despair about the fact that no-one in Apple actually mentioned this to PC users but instead decided that computers should be Ice Lolly coloured instead. But hey - it worked for them so who am I to complain!!)
So, after all the hype and all the Luddites running for the hills with their shotguns and canned food supplies, waiting for Armageddon to strike, well... nothing happened. (well - the Australian mobile phone network didn't really work at all during the New Year weekend, but that's business as usual for them!!) Seriously, a lot of people said that this was just a ploy by computer people to make lots of money and now they'll sue because nothing went wrong. Which is, if you pardon my french, a complete load of b****x5. Now, if there transpires that there's a Y2K+5 problem... well.. then we can start to get a little dubious about the whole affair (actually there probably will be but it'll be called something innocuous like.. Windows 2003)In some ways, I was a little disappointed (I'd been practising my shooting skills in the video arcades for months and was well prepared for any attackes by blocky, 3 dimensional polygon terrorists) but once again, humanity has proved the doomsayers and futurists wrong. Which brings me neatly to...
5Which isn't, strictly speaking, French but I was just being polite.
How badly wrong TV and Movies predict the future.On the way home from the Opera House, I looked at my mobile phone and noticed it was displaying the date "01 JAN 2000". It was only then that it really hit me, we're now in the 21st Century. If we haven't partied like it was 1999, well, sod it, we're too late. And my mind starting wandering when it hit me. Nasa really needs to get it's finger out, and pull something special out of the bag in the next year. They're so far behind schedule it's scary. And I'm not talking about subtly bombarding Mars with probes. I mean - there's a big black monolith that'll be discovered in a years time, and they are no way near the point of building a large kleenex toilet tube space ship with Ping Pong balls attached to either end, never mind an intelligent computer that can carry a tune and kill people at the same time. And that got me thinking. How wrong do they get the future in movies. Then it hit me - not only that, but in 1987, they were meant to launch the last of their deep space probes, have a freak mishap and freeze Captain William "Buck" Rogers for 500 years. At this rate, when he wakes up, apart from being able to buy CDs and see women's breasts on TV quicker than before, things will more or less be the same as they were when he left. Wouldn't make for much of a tv series now, would it? What kind of funny differences would he be able to point out between the past and the future?
Buck: "What's this Wilma?"
Wilma: "A Snickers bar, Buck"
Buck: "In my time, we called it a Marathon bar"
All :"Ho, ho ho"
I mean - that show would get cancelled so quickly.
And as luck would have it, Lost In Space (the 60s version, not the one with the beautiful Heather Graham) was on TV earlier - the family were hurled back in time to the 1940s - a whole 50 years back in time for them!!! Has someone been firing families into space in dodgy 60s outfits with a really unrealistic robot and not being telling us?
The point is... having looked at how wrong we've gotten it so far (okay - before all the trekkers come out and flame me, I know they've got some things sorta right like mobile phones and removable storage devices etc. but I bet you $100 when the people of Earth do meet aliens for the first time they won't look exactly like us with a bit of PlayDough on their heads or ears!) what does this bode for the future? I have the sneaking and worrying suspicion that there's not going to be any post-apocolyptic age, no nuclear devestation, and no-one is going to ever wear paper as clothes. And when we do finally create artifical intelligence and robots that can think independantly, they won't wipe us out or use us as batteries but will be relatively pleasant and understanding of their slower counterparts (that's us). I have good hopes for the future, not because of any inate belief in the goodness of mankind cos let's face it, as a race we're bound to do everything in our power to screw this planet and everyone on it up - it's just us - but rather because TV and movies, for the majority, said we will, and they haven't gotten it right so far!
Well, that killed an hour or two... and I don't think this'll ever be published in the Guide... but here's looking forward to a new millenium... maybe we'll screw this one up less than we did the last one. If we do, then we're all in for a good time! ;-)
1This isn't a footnote in the usual sense but I have to say I love dropping phrases like that into conversation. "Oh yeah, strolled past the Opera House, took a ferry to the beach, walked across the Harbour Bridge..." It drives people back home nuts!! ;-)2Seeing as the whole world watched it on TV, I'm not going to explain why... should be fairly obvious. God - ruined another perfectly humerous line by explaining it... now you know why I never became a writer.3At least I assume it was a dance troop. Either that or the worlds most obvious and ineffective group of terrorists in lovely pink lycra outfits.4For those of you living under a rock for the past 5 years, she is the cutest and most perfect woman ever. Even if she does have a bit of a funny nose (Thanks to Tara for pointing that one out to me. Didn't have the effect you hoped for though.).5Which isn't, strictly speaking, French but I was just being polite.
