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 By C. Ravin, Esq. December 1998 Yet, I started to ponder the question of compliancy before I received my first issue of TMA as a most thoughtful Yule ’98 gift. As the owner of an Aquarius Moon, I don’t really want to comply with anything. And while Aquarius rules the computer business, it also is the sign most related to the larger issues of humanity, rather than the more individual focus of Aries or Gemini. I have always been one to endeavor to offer my thoughts and assistance to others, helped also in large part by my Virgo Sun, which is the sign of service. So it came to me recently that, hey, are human beings Y2K compliant? My answer after meditating on this is no, we are probably not. Now, I am normally a very optimistic fellow. My Mercury, Venus and Mars in Leo help me in this department, and they usually do a good job helping to keep a half-smile on my Saturn in Pisces, generally a weaker placement for this old boy. Yet on the issue of Y2K compliancy for Cro-Magnons, I am confident that we will, at the very least, have issues with this momentous and imminent time change in our daily lives. For example, you will wake up on January 1, 2000. It is a Saturday, and the start of a three-day weekend. You probably will have partied well into the morning and the Year 2000 is here at last! No real issues other than cell phones and TV remote controls maybe not working, and maybe your car’s 'check engine' light is flashing when you head out to have brunch. The first real test of human compliance with the dawning of the new millennium will be when we engage in normal conversation with others. I think at first there will be a period where people will avoid mentioning the actual year, and will use phrases common to all such as 'this year', 'next year' and 'last year'. In the meantime, I am hoping that Hollywood will step in and point the way for us in 1999, otherwise, as time goes by, it will become apparent that we forgot to program ourselves for this whole transition.  Think for a moment how fluidly we deal with the years in our thinking and our conversations now. I have some back issues of Heavy Metal that I would like to unload, most from the early ‘80s, like ’82 and ’83. Got around fifty or so, most are in near mint to very fine condition, bagged in ’92 and I rebagged them in ’97. I wonder if I can find my copy of Horns and Crescent from Lughnasadh ’98, I would love to take a trip to that Pagan-owned inn in Vermont, what the heck was it called? I know I saw the owners at the Manray nightclub back in ‘96, what were their names? Gods, it seems like yesterday that I turned in my ’97 lease car, I wonder what the new models go for now? Hey man, want to check out the ’99 VW Beetle with me? No big deal, right? Now, what happens as we progress later into the year...? Will you be going to PSG this year or are you doing it every two years these days? I’ll probably make the one in....1....after I get back from Germany, that is if I can get that much time off from work. We will, ever so cautiously, follow our preprogrammed custom of wanting to refer to the years without the first two numbers, yet this will sound just too stupid for people to handle! Well, maybe I’ll go to that gathering in 04, because my sabbatical will be over by then, and I will be looking for fellowship again. Yes, my Avatar is getting old, and I am afraid that he will not be around much past 05, for his health has taken a turn for the worse. And I just lost my grandmother back in 03, so I shouldn’t let too much time go by... Yeah, as if!! I am telling you, friends, we are not going to be that uncool, at least not me! Even if we wanted to talk like that, it would not be intuitive, and I am certain that that we would not be able to keep it up for long. And even if we do, the 0-whatever business can only last in our present tense for ten years! Then we are in the teens! Then, maybe jokingly we will say things like, yeah, back in 07 boy that was some year for the Bruins. I thought that rookie forward kicked ass in 06, but man was he strong in 07 or what... 63 goals, that kid is a monster! Using the single digit for the year just doesn’t sound right either. I plan to buy a house by 6, and then maybe I can get the new wheels by the Spring of 7. Maybe I’ll just wait until the Summer of 7 for the new 8s to come out. Neither do I think that we will be able to get our minds around the 'ot' thing. Yes, in ot ot, I will be going to the NCGR conference, you know, and I hope that this year Demetra George will go over the transits to my Juno, Eros, Psyche, and Chiron for ot 1 and ot 2, and sign my copy of Asteroid Goddesses! Ot this, fanboy! Isn’t that what our great-great-great grandparents used to say? Yet I will say in defense of the 'ot' language, that if you take peoples’ credit card numbers all day, then you may be getting a little used to hearing the occasional old folks chuckle as they say the expiration date of their cards, because now they are all ot ot, ot 1, or ot 2. Perhaps we will all simply pronounce the entire full year, actually saying 'two thousand and three'. Yes, what a time we had at the renfair in 2001...it was like a space odyssey! I believe, however, that nearly every living American has a natural propensity toward abbreviations. Even when we call somebody 'dude', or 'honey' or when we just say 'hey', we are unconsciously dispensing with the actual enunciation of the person’s full name, and whether we actually know why or not, it is nevertheless a learned behavior our entire lives. Here is my plan. I am going to start a trend, and it has less than a year to catch on. My Leo planets compel me to have the hippest lingo around. So I am going to say 'two', and then the last digit. So, I will be at Free Spirit in 2-1, Craftwise in 2-2, and maybe 2-3 and 2-4, I will just do Panthea. I really think that works, so mote it be! I have already heard the "Just get over it, Count Carlo,"s. Well, we shall see when the Time comes, my friends. For I truly believe that we are just so used to abbreviating the year in our conversation that we will collectively have a Y2K compliancy problem, and even if folks do not concur with me now, wait and see, for time will most certainly tell how we will certainly, or with uncertainty, tell 'time'. Suggested Links: Griffin Grove Inn NCGR 
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