Tirconnail Tribune, 7th January 2001
Remember the doomsday Bug?Remember only a year ago-we was on the brink of “The-End-of Civilisation-As-We-Know-It”. Remember? You should-it cost you enough. Y2K “consultants” sprang up all over the place peddling their shite to all the big companies. Just about anything you bought was made or produced or provided by a company that had to get its stuff fixed for the millennium. It was only a year ago-oh how we forget so easily how we were scared & scammed by the nerds.
Y2k was their finest hour.
All of those wee weedy guys you went to school with went away to college and spoke to computers because unlike humans computers can’t run away.
The wee specky guy who you slapped about school because he wanted to be in the camogie team and shuffled off to.
They told us that at midnight on the millennium every microprocessor with an internal date clock (that’s all of them) would go from 99 to 00-not knowing it was 2000 instead of 1900 it would erase itself in a puff of logic.
Planes would fall from the sky washing machines would turn killer.
I use planes but I never go near washing machines-as I consider them inherently unstable-just like the species designed by nature to operate them.
I looked at a washing machine once the instructions were all written in women-no wonder I flooded the place.
All of these machines which we had become hopelessly dependent were going commit mass cyber-suicide because some eejit had decided to save some computer space way back when the year 2000 sounded like a good title for a sci-fi film.
Suddenly the year 2000 hoved into view like the big iceberg that sank the Titanic.
This was the doomsday bug-the hidden time bomb in every modern device.
On that millennial eve all of the things that we’re totally fecked without would feck us.
Planes, Trains & automatic washing machines.
Traffic lights & tumble dryers.
But perhaps it wasn’t an honest mistake by wee Nerd face?
Yeah, thought about that one?
Less face it-he did get his own back on the rest of us.
There he was after all those years suddenly in control of all the known world-not bad for a guy who clearly never had a lunch in him!
His left-right combination was to speak nerd to people in charge of large organisations and speak in measured nerdish tones about planes falling and worse-share prices…..
The only real way to scare rich power full people ids to threaten to make them poor & powerless-quickly.
If you can manage that you might well end up very rich yourself-because you are already powerful.
Like any good heist the Y2K gang disappeared without trace with the lot.
Now they’ve stashed the cash what else will they come up with?
I think it might be a computer virus that turns computers into love machines.
Can you imagine the defcon mainframe controlling the US of A’s Armageddon toys suddenly going all soppy?
Armageddon is of course ancient Hebrew for “Feck this for a game of soldier’s I’m off!
Armageddon =Armageddingoutahere!
Instead of sending out the digital codes to the ICBMs it was going to Bluemountain.com instead and sends little romantic e-cards to Saddam.
I mean has anyone thought of this?
I reckon we call it quits on the nerds if they could make it impossible for all those old fat men to play with the end of the world.
For at the end of the world you don’t Jehovah’s Witnesses you need computers.
The next big war-if there is one- will be digital.
The pentagon are-apparently-spending billions on how to feck u the other sides computers.
Those fat generals couldn’t turn on a computer without some wee girls help.
Now they need their nerds like they used to need John Wayne & Audie Murphy.
The wee guy that didn’t get picked for the team at school now has the power to scam the generals into something they’re terrified of-peace.
Gates was correct-of course-that it isn’t the hardware of computers that’s the short hairs of It-it’s the software-that’s the stuff he has firmly in his tiny fist.
The Pentagon & the Brits and all the other warmongers now need computer software where before they only needed some unemployed blokes with bayonets.
Destruction is now digital.
But although they control their weapons organisationally they don’t understand them technically. They need Norman the nerd for that.
What if Norman-always a nice guy at heart- put a wee love bug or two into the war machines?
To be activated the day that Old fat Guts decides to take his badness out on the planet.
Warplanes would act like chitty chitty bang bang.
Trident subs would become the Love Boat.
Cluster Bombs would drop sweet little notelets.
I reckon that if Norman the Nerd became Kim Philby for world peace then we’d never begrudge him any of the dosh he ripped out of eircom for his dotcom.
Got get em Norman!
Phil Mac Giolla Bhain
