The Loony Bin
(
loonies@bloodaxe.com
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Sat, 24 Feb 2001 16:33:38 +0000
The Loony Bin - http://loonies.net800.co.uk/
Hiya Folks...
A new Millennium, a new problem...
Wishes & Dreams...
- ANDREA
xx
*********THE LOONY BIN****loonies@bloodaxe.com*********
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************ANDROMEDA******Internet Goddess************
------- Forwarded foolishness follows -------
THE Y1K BUG
Canterbury, England. A.D. 999.
An atmosphere close to panic prevails today throughout Europe as the
millennial year 1000 approaches, bringing with it the so-called "Y1K
Bug", a menace which, until recently, hardly anyone had ever heard of.
Prophets of doom are warning that the entire fabric of Western
Civilization, based as it now is upon monastic computations, could
collapse, and that there is simply not enough time left to fix the
problem.
Just how did this disaster-in-the-making ever arise? Why did no one
anticipate that a change from a three-digit to a four-digit year would
throw into total disarray all liturgical chants and all metrical verse
in which any date is mentioned?
Every formulaic hymn, prayer, ceremony and incantation dealing with
dated events will have to be re-written to accommodate three extra
syllables. All of the tabular chronologies with three-space year
columns, maintained for generations by scribes using carefully hand-
ruled lines on vellum sheets, will now have to be converted to four-
space columns, at enormous cost. In the meantime, the validity of every
official event, from baptisms to burials, from confirmations to
coronations, may be called into question.
"We should have seen it coming," says Brother Cedric of St. Michael's
Abbey, here in Canterbury. "What worries me most is that 'THOUSAND'
contains the word 'THOU', which occurs in nearly all our prayers, and of
course always refers to God. Using it now in the name of the year will
seem almost blasphemous, and is bound to cause terrible confusion. Of
course, we could always use Latin, but that might be even worse - the
Latin word for 'Thousand' is 'Mille', which is the same as the Latin for
'mile'. We won't know whether we're talking about time or distance!"
Stonemasons are already reported threatening to demand a proportional
pay increase for having to carve an extra numeral in all dates on tomb-
stones, cornerstones and monuments.
Together with its inevitable ripple effects, this alone could plunge the
whole medieval economy into chaos. A conference of clerics has been
called at Winchester to discuss the entire issue, but doomsayers are
convinced that the matter is now one of personal survival. Many
families, in expectation of the worst, are stocking up on holy water and
indulgences.
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