Y2K Computer Scare Starting To Really Bug Me

So, did you hear that when the new millennium strikes on New Year’s Eve, North Idaho will be overtaken by an army of super-Nazis?

They’ll call themselves the Y2KKK.

Sorry. I just made that up.

But my scenario seems as good as any of the other Y2Kraziness floating around. Gloomy forecasts have scared otherwise sane people into buying generators, stockpiling canned peaches and fretting that The End is but 11 flips of a Hallmark calendar away.

Many so-called Y2K experts claim that when 1999 fades to 2000, the world’s computers will become more useless than Iraqi air defenses.

Because everything including manual toenail clippers operates on teensy computer chips these days, a mass download could trigger a chain of calamities.

Planes may drop out of the sky. Dams may burst. Electricity may fizzle. Kenny G CDs won’t play … Well, not everything would be a negative.

According to the Amazing Kreskin’s Predictions for 1999, humankind is teetering like Ted Kennedy on the brink of a spiritual new dawn. Panic over millennial mayhem, says the psychic, will “give way to not one but two new cult figures who will lead thousands of people.”

That was prediction No. 1. Prediction No. 5, however, sounds a lot more intriguing: “Nudism will become the fastest-growing social activity replacing swing dancing of this past year.”

In Spokane, some of us already are bracing for the coming micro-crash.

A group billing itself as “Y2K Neighborhood” recently asked area residents to set aside Jan. 29 for Millennium Bug rehearsal.

Those who participate are encouraged to flush their toilets with buckets of stored water, listen to their hand-cranked radios and basically scratch for survival like members of the Donner Party.

P.S. Park your cars and don’t forget to switch off the lights and furnace.

“The idea is to see if our human systems are Y2K-compliant, so we can unplug for a while and not freak out,” Y2K Neighborhood co-founder Judy Laddon told a reporter. Laddon, by the way, is co-editor of “Awakening,” a collection of essays on Y2K.

I don’t know about you, but this human system has a lot more important things to do than shiver around the house listening to Art Bell’s late-night radio ravings. I’m a busy man. I’ve got a cult to form. Nudists to recruit.

But before I ascend to Pope of the Millennial Church of Doug, I don’t want anyone accusing me of being noncompliant.

Seeking answers, I went to a Y2K Neighborhood meeting the other night. Unfortunately, nobody there had any deeper insights into what Y2K will actually do to us than I do.

No, I take that back. The most self-assured person in the room was Jeff Brune. He works for Washington Water Power, which changed its name recently to the sound of a sneezing goat: “Ahh-veesta!”

After spending lord knows how much money and time checking out Avista’s many systems, Brune reported that his company should pretty much weather the Millennium Bug.

Or Millennium Dud. This may be the biggest flopola since Geraldo Rivera opened Al Capone’s safe.

Y2K feels to me like another of those New Age trends-of-the-moment, like Hands Across America or the Harmonic Convergence.

It’s interesting to note that two of the evening’s speakers were into channeling back in the cosmic ‘80s. Laddon, a pleasant woman, once publicly claimed to be a conduit for a long-winded spirit being who promoted virtues like peace, love and spiritual goodness.

Af was its name.

I have nothing against anyone chatting with invisible beings from the beyond or even from Bothell. But it’s a damn shame Af didn’t warn us to fix our software.