Systems & Software Talk 

New Year’s Eve of 2010 Catastrophe In the Works

< I just noticed that my free site-visit counter is defective and rolls over on some strange boundary between 20K and 21K>

After reading this you may agree that we need to call on all manufacturers of numeric New Year's Eve year party eyeglasses to conduct product testing and make product alterations as indicated by such tests. Remember all the Year 2000 cussing, fussing, mussing and dooming and glooming? Well, unlike the actual results which were much milder than the predicted results, the New Year’s Eve celebration of the arrival of the Year 2010 will likely be catastrophic unless product design testing of numeric year party eyeglasses occurs, and – design changes are made accordingly.

Picture a million revelers in New York City’s Times Square on December 31, 2009. How many more millions will be assembled in a similar fashion around the world? How many of them will be wearing those goofy-looking numeric year party ungreen plastic eyeglasses – 2010? Did you notice something? “2009” glasses are natural for the eyes since they do not obscure one’s vision; the zeroes aligned perfectly with the vision-giving apertures. “2010” with the “1” over the left eye is going to impair depth perception. That sounds low-risk – correct? Think again. Imagine millions of shoulder-to-shoulder, hip-to-hip revelers worldwide already or soon to be impaired by giddiness, alcohol and d.r.u.g.s. Toss in impaired depth perception. We have a looming major problem of a magnitude not previously seen.

All hell will break loose with a series of small incidents that would be otherwise insignificant if one was sporting 2009 glasses.  Here is how major mayhem and mass rioting will shake the very core of this planet Earth, causing worldwide tremors and sending seismographs into frenzied activity. Some newly engaged couple already under the depth-perception-robbing effects of hemp will attempt to kiss each other, with someone partially “lodged” between the kisser and the kissee.  The kiss will not land on the fiancée, but instead land on the upper lip of that someone running block betwixt the original kisser and the kissee. Instant jealously and misunderstanding will drive the ensuing actions. A punch from the dominant and protective fiancée will fly, miss the intended face and land on an unintended face. Faster than a security hole in Windows can be exploited, the jealously, misunderstanding, and punch will go plural and spread. Similarly and concurrently elsewhere in these masses of humanity, other activities will trigger spawning mayhem. Other kisses will land at the business ends of cold-driven runny noses belonging to unfamiliar persons. Grabs for the usual body parts of familiar people will result in grabs of familiar parts on unfamiliar people. Males will be overheard asking the right question of the wrong females, "Did a mobile plastic surgeon just attend to you?" - OR - the wrong question of the right female where the response is a slap and escalation to feed the all-out brawl in progress.

Left-to-right, right-to-left eye-darting speed users will strobe themselves into seizures and nausea. The stroboscopic effect will act as an emetic and the resulting ejecta will find a partially bared bosom; triggering yet another rapidly spreading fight. Cocaine users armed with razor blades will miss the handheld mirrors and slice/dice someone’s digits.  Human males wanting to unload processed liquids will miss the ground and decorate someone’s party stockings, pant legs, or ankle bracelet.  More fighting erupts. Police on foot and horseback will respond. Some of those police and some of those horses will be wearing 2010 glasses. One can easily imagine the impact of horses with impaired depth perception. Some revelers will instantly acquire hoof-in-mouth disease. Other revelers may be handed some barn biscuits courtesy of the horses’ backside exits. They will launch these into the crowd and feed the Santa Ana winds-driven fire of hysteria. The perception-impaired police officers will miss their handcuff targets. Trump and O’Donnell will be accidentally cuffed together.  OMG! The never-one-so-large largest riot is now underway. The fighting is unstoppable. People try to flee. It will be like a soccer game in Europe or a Who concert in Cincinnati! Hockey fans will feel at home. Those party-glasses equipped revelers on rooftops will misjudge the edges of their perches, soar to new unheights and then tattoo the road surfaces below. Unfortunately, Jerry Springer’s camera crews will not be on hand to film what would be his crowning achievement - millions of people with impaired depth-perception, fighting with temporarily defective targeting systems.

You can help prevent this looming tragedy of worldwide proportions. Please implore of the manufacturers of these to consider alternate designs.

For ABC Television and their Rocking Eve, please send me a set of earplugs and glasses for the year 2111 if you are going to air the Pussycat Dolls again.