Bruce Peel ArchivesDecember 2, 1999
Dave Lergier
Much to my annoyance, it has occurred to me that one of the many insignificant worries that crowd my brain is what I’ll be doing on New Year’s Eve. That’s right, the biggest party in a thousand years, and who knows where I’ll be? I could just stay home, or I could go out, or I could join a cult and wait for the hidden spaceship. All these sound just fantastic, right? Wrong.
Thanks to television, or, more specifically, television commercials, I’ve learned that everyone’s favourite purveyor of animated redundancy, Disney, and their herd-feeding sidekick, McDonald’s, have decided that I can win a New Year’s holiday that I’ll never forget. Apparently, if I’m the lucky winner out of the six hundred billion McDonald’s customers served, then I get to spend my holiday first on a cruise ship, playing shuffleboard and fighting nausea with with hundreds of octogenarians from Orlando. From there, it’s battling crowds in Disneyland (or Walt Disney World, whichever). Then, I get to ring in the new millennium among gigantic throngs of people, all waiting around in a plastic village surrounded by poor, cartoon-costumed bastards who were unlucky enough to have to work. Sounds like fun, no?
Still, if I’m the sap that wins, I’m gonna stand there during the long-awaited countdown, look up at that glowing Disney castle and think about the promise held by the next thousand years. The elimination of disease and poverty, the salvation of our environment, peace and tolerance among all countries and races, the improvement of life through even newer technologies, these are all blessings that the year two-thousand will bring us. Yes, it will be the age of Aquarius, and I, in Disneyland, will be privileged enough to see it all unfold. I think it will be beautiful.
On the other hand, I could count down the last seconds of our millenniums, scream “Happy New Year,” look around … and see that everything is exactly the way it was before. Money will still rule the world, people will still die violent deaths, hatred will still exist, McDonald’s will still feed us all, and parents will be a thing of the past, to be replaced by smarmy videotapes that will still fuel the action figure trade. Yes kids, that’s my vision of what the millennium will be.
So my mind is made up. Come New Year’s Eve, I’ll take all my money out of the bank, stockpile some food and water, and get a couple of guns. When the hysteria breaks out, you can find my on the floor of my apartment, eating a shitty Big Mac, surrounded by my cash. If you need me, I’ll be there, brandishing my firearms and dreaming of the day when I can nail a couple of big, plastic mouse ears to the wall.
Happy New Year. I hope that hidden spaceship comes in one hell of a hurry.
Original link: https://peel.library.ualberta.ca/newspapers/GAT/1999/12/02/7/
