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THE FUTURE BEGINS LATER
  by Bob Rhubart
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  Another new year is upon us. Here it is, 1996, just four 
years from the year 2000, and we still haven't answered the most 
important question of our time: When, exactly, does the 21st
century begin?
  
  People are getting into bar fights over this one. There are 
those who say that the new century begins with the year 2001. Then 
there are those who believe that the it begins with the year 2000. 
And then there are those who simply push their tables out of the 
way and make bets on which side will end up in the ambulance.

  My feeling is that the next century begins the first time I 
forget to write "2000" on my checks. In the date part, not the 
money part. If I wrote "2000" in the money part the check
wouldn't stop bouncing until the year 3000. But I digress...
  
  To really answer the question of when the new century begins 
requires an examination of history. Those of you who are still 
reading after the previous sentence are to be commended. Far too 
many people have no interest in the lessons history has to offer. 
This is unfortunate since, as we all know, those who fail to learn 
the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them in summer school.
  
  The whole argument has to do with the formation of calendars. 
Many millennia ago, insurance salesman were forced to rely on word 
of mouth for their advertising. This was difficult since insurance 
salesman were no more popular then than they are today. One day, a 
particularly enterprising insurance guy decided that what was 
needed was a way to keep his name in front of people on a daily 
basis, without actually talking to them. Trying to talk people into 
expensive insurance had so far resulted in low sales and several 
nasty wounds from primitive weapons wielded by people who were too 
busy inventing civilization to worry about the financial security 
of their loved ones if one of the gods got miffed and turned them 
into a goat.
  
  So this ancient insurance salesman invented the calendar, 
which divided the year into months, gave each month a different 
name, numbered the days, and offered handy reminders of which days 
you were called upon by different gods to sacrifice something so 
that your crops would grow, your cattle would multiply, and your 
kids would finally get jobs and move out.
  
  These early calendars were not at all like the calendars of 
today, since Cindy Crawford wasn't going to hit big for a very, 
very long time. Early calendars were chiseled onto stone, and the 
finished products often weighed more than one hundred pounds. Many 
of the ancient insurance salesman had to go in for hernia surgery 
after delivering their load of calendars. This dramatically reduced 
the number of insurance salesmen, since hernia surgery at that time 
was performed with sharpened sticks and leeches. But the idea 
caught on, and soon everybody was making and using calendars.

  Historians are unsure when the first calendar was invented, 
and this results in the key debate over when the B.C.(Before 
Calendar) period ended, and when the A.D. (Allowable Deduction) 
period began. So now, nearly two thousand years after the opening 
of the very first office of the Internal Revenue Service, we still 
have no idea about what to tell the caterers about when to plan 
the really big parties that will mark the end of the old century 
and the beginning of the new one -- the one during which the aliens 
are supposed to land and forever end hunger, disease, war, and the 
publishing career of Howard Stern.
  
  Frankly, it doesn't matter when one century actually ends 
and the new one begins. It's not like anything major is going to 
happen, not right away -- not until the Mothership lands. Oh sure, 
the parties might be a little wilder. But on New Year's Day of the 
next millennium, your credit card balance will still be an 
embarrassment, and most of what's in your closet will still be in 
no danger of being up-to-date, fashion-wise. Everything about you 
is going to seem a hundred years old.
  
  Let's avoid the emotional trauma by not getting wrapped up in 
the question of when now becomes the past and the future becomes 
now. Those mysteries have already been addressed on some of the 
more confusing episodes of Star Trek. Time marches on, that's for 
sure. Let's do what we can to not let it march on us.
                           
                               (DREAM)
                               
Copyright 1996 Bob Rhubart, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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Bob Rhubart, 42, was born in Pensacola, Florida. After being
kidnapped by aliens, who taught him to speak Spanish and pick 
fruit, he moved to the the western suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio, 
where he still resides. He has one wife, two daughters, one house, 
two mortgages, two cars, two dogs, a rabbit, a parakeet, bad eyes, 
bad knees, a bad back, bad sinuses, and things are going just fine, 
thank you very much. We hope to see him regularly in DF.
email: bobrhub@aol.com
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