Sometimes it's easy to forget that in less than a month, we will leave 1999 and jump right in Year 2000. Notice I didn't say "we'll jump from one millennium to the next." Because we won't. Most of us know that the first year was 1, not 0. But who cares? For all intents and purposes, this is the last month of the year, the decade and of the second millennium. And yes, I do think we sometimes forget this. We've been inundated with apocalyptic non sense from everyone from Art Bell to Pat Robertson. We've seen the adverts for essentials for the Y2K crisis, anything from guns and ammunition to safes for the money you'll withdraw from the bank to blankets for the bomb shelter. And somewhere through all of this, what with the holidays, I guess, we've forgotten that we are on the edge of a new century here.

So what's going to happen? Who the hell knows? The fact that no one does seem to know only means that more people who obviously don't have a clue find their way onto talk radio shows all across America spewing all kinds of non sense.

So what's going to happen? Well, something tells me that Jesus won't be coming back then. You know, I've never understood why people place so much importance on Y2K as the return date for the long haired Messiah. But then I realized there have been predictions for His grand arrival since basically the moment of His Accension. Most dates make no sense at all. For instance, September 18, 1985. I'm not sure that was ever a date He was supposed to come back, but it has about as much relevance as any other date.

I'm sure there will be some computer glitches. It would be hard to imagine nothing happening with the news we are hearing all the time. That is, the news we don't tune out.

Then again, there is a river of rampant paranoia flowing through the streets, over the airwaves and the internet. What? You haven't heard? Big Brother is coming with their martial law signs, gas masks and enough military power to take over a once free and civilized America. That's if you believe the white trash rednecks spouting some sort of conspiracy propaganda that somehow connects the Jews in their Tokyo offices and the new Black Power Balance. Don't ask me. It doesn't make any sense to me either.

Just last week, of course, there were the protests in Seattle against the World Trade Organization. It was so bad that all the area Starbucks had to close down for a time. Brothers and sisters, when Starbucks shuts down, you know there's some serious shit going down. It almost looked like the 60s, or at least the 60s we've become accustomed to on old news reels, television mini series and VH1's "Behind The Music." People were marching in the streets carrying signs, chanting slogans and, every once in a while, throwing bricks through windows. And then there were the cops in full battle gear launching canisters of tear gas and brandishing batons. Can't you just hear it? "Four dead in O-hi-o!"

But this was not the over glamorized 60s. This wasn't the 1969 Chicago Democratic Convention or Kent State. And the target was not the evil and wrong Vietnam War. It was today. And the target was the World Trade Organization. The main goal of the WTO is to decide who gets to sell whom to what and under what terms. But there was something more to this riot, a deep rooted fear that some sinister force is piloting the plane we are all on, hurling us toward Armageddon or a New World Order or some strip mall somewhere in the middle of nowhere. As protester Michael McKinnon, a 20 year old pizza delivery guy from Euegene, Oregon said, "They're (the WTO) basically like a New World Order, and that scares me. It's not thinking about human beings or the environment. It's all about how corporations can make more money."

That's easy to say. Blame the evil corporations. Blame the media. Blame anyone. We do live in the Age of Blame, afterall. Or is it the Age of Paranoia? They're coming to get us, you know? All under the cover of the World Trade Organization, a body that has no authority over any country to tell it what trade policies, or any other policies, to adopt.

People, don't believe the bullshit you hear, whether it's Pat Buchanan and his isolationist speeches, Rush Limbaugh and his diatribes against us heathen liberals or even the fictional shadow government on "The X Files." Think for yourselves. There is a lot of things out there to get you worried. Y2K might be one of them. A coming New World Order is not.

Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be a part of the conspiracy.

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