Nap Time.Lots of people are making their plans for New Year's 2000, reserving hotel rooms, gathering in out-of-the-way places, or just staying home. Many Evangelical Christians are planning to be taken up into heaven during the Rapture. That will certainly make my gay life easier. I had been thinking of organizing a big farewell party. We'll all stand on a hill somewhere, waving, "Bye, bye! We'll watch your stuff." Plan on strong employment figures for the year 2000. But I've changed my mind. In celebration of Y2K See Y2K problem and Y2K compliant. Y2K - Year 2000 , I am calling a general strike. All nonessential non·es·sen·tial adj. Being a substance required for normal functioning but not needed in the diet because the body can synthesize it. employees will stay home for a couple of weeks, or until the millennial bugs get worked out, whichever comes first. Then we'll go back to our jobs. America is working too hard. Quarterly-statistics-mongers exult that productivity is up everywhere in the United States. It should be. Everyone is putting in sixty- or seventy-hour weeks. Whatever happened to those Haymarket Square Riots for the eight-hour day and all that agitation for the five-day week? When I worked in daytime television and would leave bleary-eyed and delirious de·lir·i·ous adj. Of, suffering from, or characteristic of delirium. after ten hours, my co-workers would look at me as if I were some kind of traitorous slacker. Each day I would promise myself I would go home after eight hours, and each day I broke that pact. Caffeine is to the United States as vodka was to the old Soviet Union. Global capitalism is the new global communism and everyone is jazzed on java, slaving away in different cells of the Internet gulag. I believe that Starbucks and other coffee concerns are in conspiracy against Americans. At first, I thought it was just in New York City New York City: see New York, city. New York City City (pop., 2000: 8,008,278), southeastern New York, at the mouth of the Hudson River. The largest city in the U.S. where people swagger and proudly proclaim to each other, "I worked 120 hours last week," but from what I can see from my travels, it's happening all over the country. It's getting worse. Bill Gates's chilling new book, Business @ the Speed of Thought (which was released by Time Warner Books and pimped on the cover of Time magazine--the synergy gives me goosebumps), lays out a twelve-step program twelve-step program, n group programs that treat problems such as alcoholism by completing twelve tasks. Participants gain self-acceptance and share experiences. Twelve-step programs traditionally ask members to rely on a power greater than their own. for better business, and it's got nothing to do with recovery. Workaholics will never have to stop. A continual looping digital process will move between your brain and e-mail. Gates completely discounts the fact that most of us are sleep-deprived enough to think that Wrestlemania is real. Though he never clearly cops to it, the driving thought for Gates is, of course, making money. Lots of Dilberts who are supposedly working those fourteen-hour days are actually day-traders in their cubicles, obsessively checking their Internet stocks like handicappers at off-track betting windows. The new game is to push the Dow Jones Industrial ever higher over 10,000, even though there is absolutely nothing industrial left in this country. When Amazon.com was valued at more than Lockheed, I did enjoy thinking that a book chain was beating out a munitions mu·ni·tion n. War materiel, especially weapons and ammunition. Often used in the plural. tr.v. mu·ni·tioned, mu·ni·tion·ing, mu·ni·tions To supply with munitions. maker, and that instead of smart bombs we could be lobbing copies of Danielle Steel, Patricia Cornwell, and Tom Wolfe into Kosovo to bring down Milosevic. Thankfully, there's another bestseller available at special savings on Barnes and Noble Dot Calm that's sure to bolster any waffling day-traitor: The Courage To Be Rich. Order now and get the free fragrance: Eau de Smug. In the late 1970s, Father Guido Sarducci Father Guido Sarducci is a fictional character made famous by American comedian Don Novello. Sarducci, a chain-smoking priest with tinted eyeglasses, works in the United States as gossip columnist and rock critic for the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano. released his own encyclical encyclical, originally, a pastoral letter sent out by a bishop, now a solemn papal letter, meant to inform the whole church on some particular matter of importance. Benedict XIV circulated the first known encyclical in 1740. , Vitum est Laborum (tr: Life Is a Job). In that spirit, I have a few suggestions for the Y2K general strike. It must be low tech: no e-mail, no cell phones. The only thing on TV will be continuous loops of Sesame Street reruns, VH1 Behind the Music (a.k.a. The Recovery Channel), and Turner Movie Classics. Beyond that, all activities have to involve at least three senses and no electronics (e.g., walking, sleeping, eating, sitting by the fire, having sex, tickling children, and birdwatching birdwatching bird n → ornithologie f (d'amateur) ). Possible strike slogans: NAFTA--We don't hafta!; 2-4-6-8, we will nap and feel just great!; and Hey--there's a bluebird bluebird, common name for a North American migratory bird of the family Turdidae (thrush family). The eastern bluebird, Sialia sialis, is among the first spring arrivals in the North. It is about 7 in. (17.8 cm) long. ! Kate "Strikes Again" Clinton is a humorist hu·mor·ist n. 1. A person with a good sense of humor. 2. A performer or writer of humorous material. humorist Noun a person who speaks or writes in a humorous way . |
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