Now That's Entertainment . . . Issue # 5

[[ WARNING: The following piece contains material and/or language that may offend some readers.  Do I care?  No, not really.... but either way, Reader discretion is advised. ]]

"Y2K ... more than a number?"

For a change of pace, I'd like to do something a little bit different with today's edition of Now That's Entertainment . . . For those of you who have been on my list since day one, have obviously noticed that the majority, if not all of my previous pieces have been written almost purely for a comedic effect.  Albeit it may not be all that funny, it was meant to have that subtle humor to it.  No specific punchlines, just a humourous take on the world around us.  However, for today's edition, I'd like to put on that serious mask, and like almost everyone else nowadays, talk about the coming of the new millenium.  Talk about the coming of Y2K.

Thanks to the mass media, and the invasion of the internet, people are hooked to their computers every day, fearing the coming of the Y2K bug.  A bug.  A computer bug.  For those of you who don't know, which should be damn near none of you, I'll briefly explain the Y2K bug.  On computers, because of the limitations of memory and such when they first started out, programmers found whatever way they could to cut down on useless data, to make room for "useful" data.  One cutback was the first two digits to our calendar years.  The 19.  Instead of 1976, they simply input 76.  The 19 remained constant, and no problems arose.  That is until now.  In less than three short months, the first two digits of our calendar year will no longer be 19... no no no, it changes to 20.  No big deal right?  Wrong.  With banks, for example, if you deposited money today, October 1, 1999, you wouldn't have any problem doing it.  But what about when you want to withdrawal funds in January.  Say on the 13th.  The withdrawal date, according to the computer, would be 01/13/00.  It reads the year as 1900.  So, according to the computer, you're trying to withdrawal money that won't be deposited for another 99 years.  That's just the begining of it.  Yeah, they fixed it up here and there, but there are no guarantees what this "bug" will do to the computers, to us.

Moving away from the computers, we have to look at the bigger picture.  One quote that I came across the other day was: "It takes a substantial amount of knowledge to realize just how ignorant we are."  And that's true.  The more you know, the more you realize how much you don't know.  The past few months or so, I've gained a "substantial amount of knowledge" regarding the coming of the new millenium.  Through 20/20, Dateline...books...etc.  The two main things that have come into my mind regarding the coming of the new millenium, the coming of the 21st century (Will 20th Century Fox change their name?), is the Holy Bible and Nostadamus.

For those of you that subscribe to "A Joseph Planta Commentary" have probably read my guest commentary on Y2K.  And have heard me talk about the Armageddon.  And have heard me talk about the prophecies of Nostradamus.  However, some of you may not have read it, and for those of you who did, I will go more in depth this time around, with my own medium here, at "Now That's Entertainment . . ."  

In the year 999, in Europe, many people feared the coming of the Armageddon.  The coming of the Apocalypse, as mentioned in the Holy Bible, for both Jews and Christians alike.  In this Apocalypse, there were the infamous Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Death, Famine, Pestilence, and War.  These "horsemen" would come and destroy the Earth as we know it, as it plummets to the fiery depths of Hell.  Well, as far as I can tell, the world isn't in the fiery depths of Hell right now, sometimes it feels like hell, but it's not.  At least not yet.  Back in the year 999, the actual year itself was not consistent around the world.  The Japanese had their calendar, the Chinese had theirs, African tribes had theirs, even different denominations in Europe had their own annual system, called a year.  For everyone, it was not 999.  

Now, in the year 1999, most cultures around the world have at least, somewhat, adopted the Christian Julian calendar.  For most peoples around the world, it is October 1, 1999. I mentioned the following in my commentary for Joseph, but I must re-iterate.  I happened to catch a story on Dateline NBC a while ago about the Armageddon.  They talked about the thousands and thousands of people flocking to Israel on one-way tickets, because God told them to do so.  These people say that at the end of this century, the end of the millenium, the world will plummet to the fiery depths of Hell, but Jesus will descend to Earth to take the people of Israel to Heaven to join God, for that divine afterlife.  However, there are a few stipulations to that.  It doesn't just happen.  According to these people, three things have to happen.  One of them is that there has been chaos and disaster before it happens.  They say that Hurricane Mitz, the Gulf War, and all these other things fulfill that.  And let us not forget the tragic earthquakes in Turkey, Greece, and most recently Taiwan.  And what about the Hurricane down in Florida every couple weeks.....As far the second stipulation goes, frankly, I can't remember, but I think that there has to be a Jewish State, and they say that Israel fulfills that.  There is the star of David on its flag after all.  The third and final stipulation is that there is to be a Jewish temple built on a specific spot.  That spot is currently occupied by a Muslim mosque.

As of right now, the Jews and Christians who have flocked to Israel are keeping peace with the Muslims.  No fights or anything have broken out just yet.  However, the way I see it (the only way that matters), these Jews and Christians will get so fed up, and riled up, that they will go and destroy this mosque, thus starting a true world war.  A war of the world's largest religions.   The muslims will get pissed at the Jews and Christians for destroying their holy sanctuary, so this world war will encompass all four corners of the globe.  If that should happen, the earth could very well "plummet to the depths of hell" so to speak.  Which brings me to Nostradamus.

Nostradamus was a famous "seer" (see-er..ie. psychic) from the 
sixteenth century.  He has his twenty-some odd centuries (groups of 100) of prophecies which range from the French Revolution to the Space Race.  An alarming amount of these quatrains, these prophecies pertain to the Armageddon, much like the one mentioned in the Bible.  Here's one of them, translated into English:

In the year 1999 and seven months,
From the skies shall come an alarmingly powerful king,
To raise again the great King of the Jacquerie,
Before and after, Mars shall reign at will.

Well, July 1999 has come and gone.  No big deal so far.  No fire and brimstone just yet.  However, he has others, with specific references to November 1999, so on, and so forth.  As you all know, Mars is the Roman god of War.  With War comes destruction, chaos.  That ties in directly with the stipulation in the Holy Bible, saying that the end of the world will come when there is an abundance of natural disasters all around, just prior to the Armageddon.  Scary thought.

Everything is starting to tie in, all the pieces of the puzzle are finding their spots, and should this Armageddon come about as the clock strikes midnight that fateful night, we can't do anything about it.  This may be completely off topic, but maybe it's not.  I recently read Richard Belzer's book on Conspiracies you don't have to be crazy to believe.  A section was devoted to UFO's and ET's.  The stories in there range from saying that the moon is just an extra-terrestial's spaceship watching us.  After all, many believe the moon is hollow.  Another story is that the aliens are conditioning us to their arrival.  The same way the scientists conditioned a tribe, who were living in the Stone Age in the Philippines.  Slowly making us aware of their presence, but why?  This may be a pessimistic view, but I think these aliens, the little grey-green big-eyed big-brained sons of bitches will be responsible for the Armageddon.  They will arrive December 31 and destroy us, "plummeting the world to the fiery depths of hell."  A sadistic view, yes.  A pessimistic view, yes.  But what's to say that it won't happen.

Now, I didn't write this to scare all of you into finding ways out of the Armageddon.  Making you afraid of y2K, no no no.  I just wanted to enlighten you on the subject.  Am I a believer in all of this nonesense that's being spewed out?  Well, the more I read on the subject, frankly, you can't really stop yourself from starting to believe at least some of it.  Of course, I don't want it to happen.  I'm young.  I want to live.  But we don't have a choice.  If it does indeed happen, we can't do a damn thing about it.  So, don't even think about it, and just grudgingly drone on in your day-to-day routine, and should it happen, it happens....

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© 1999 Michael Kwan.  Reproduction, exhibition or distribution of the preceeding piece without the expressed written consent of the author(s) can result in severe criminal and civil penalties under international agreements.  

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