In 1958, the year of this author's birth, an early computer scientist named Bob Bemer discovered this glitch, as a result of his work on genealogical software. Bemer spent the next twenty years trying to make programmers, the government of the United States, IBM, and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) aware of this problem with little result.
Bemer's motto was "((((DO SOMETHING!) SMALL) USEFUL) NOW!)"
2020 is fast becoming the new Y2K, or Y2K 2.0, as I now call it. The world is not ending, but it sure is whimpering. Some people are calling for an end to the year, just pulling the plug on October 31, and advancing straight to 2021.
Unfortunately, cancelling the rest of 2020, would leave us with a bad trump taste in our collective mouth, as we would in effect, be cancelling the election on November 3.
Modern life is a combination of moving rapidly, both forwards and backwards. Like running with scissors, with a blindfold, in a sensory deprivation tank. Like running a tank into a crowded emergency room. Like pissing on your motherboard, then wondering why the reboot is not working. We are advised to unplug, wait 20 seconds ( might as well wash your hands at the same time), then plug back in, and hope for the best.
The modern equivalent of the town fool or the village idiot, Facebook, Twitter and their ilk, trade in rage and umbrage, reinforcing the desire to just go back to bed, hoping against hope that after a short nap, the results might be different when we get back out of bed.
There is only magical thinking. The news is all fake, even the fake news. Recently, I was offered to "friend" an old family friend, the son of an actual friend of my father. This young lad, who is now in his 50's, was the typical quiet type. Respectable. A church going kid, whose mother veered off the mild path of Episcopalian gossip and bake sales, to a full blown case of evangelical fervor, biblical fundamentalism, and purple sweaters. Wow, I said to myself, young Friend from my youth is on Facebook. Let's see what he is up to in his life.
Well, it appears that young Friend is now an older fellow who believes that European White Supremacy is in a Coal Miner Glove Match with the Forces of Diversity. He sees a vision of a bloody end of life on earth, a fate we all deserve for our mistaken beliefs in equality among races, respect for all religions, equality of the sexes. There seems to be a questioning of all modern advances since Leviticus.
Was I shocked? Shock has been so overused that they don't even bother to take the wires off before letting us go back to the padded walls of the ward. I see that a sibling of his is merely a Trump supporter and looks just like his father once did. I couldn't find the other two siblings on social media. Can we mark them as safe and sane, or just missing? As I'm not a milk drinker, I may have missed the photos on the carton.
My, how time passes when your bible gets dusty.
I wrote a song many moons ago, called Blood Beach. It was an apocalyptic song about the meltdown of the nuclear family.
https://soundcloud.com/dense-milt/blood-beach-mp3?in=dense-milt/sets/rhythm-mission-1982-1989-1
Blood Beach
Red hot like a bible
Bleach Beach
Sand the color of bonemeal.
densemilt 1985 (c)
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