Y-to-K Ready . . . or Not

With 68 days until Y2K, not one major institution has thrown in the Y2 towel.

Hardly a day goes by that some big company or government agency doesn’t send out a press release proudly declaring itself “Y2K-ready.”

Ventura County is well-equipped to deal with any possible crisis, the grand jury has announced.

The utilities, the phone companies, the supermarkets: All have been working on this for years. Computer systems have been updated and will issue no bills dated any time before the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand at Sarajevo. Extra-sharp employees have been plucked from the ranks for disaster duty on New Year’s Eve. It’s all under control.

That, of course, makes me nervous. If clearing up a simple problem with my credit card takes three months and two dozen phone calls to confused temps, can I trust the bank to get me and my vast holdings past Armageddon? Amid all this can-do optimism, it would be reassuring to read about an agency that has declared itself Y2K-hopelessly-unready:

“Our computer screens are spinning around and spewing green stuff, like that girl in ‘The Exorcist.’ ” said a Pokeville official. “We’re not looking forward to this at all.”

But, no. Our leaders all seem to believe the center will hold. Last week, Gov. Gray Davis’ Y2K advisor was as sunny as officials of the Cunard Lines must have been just before the Titanic hoisted anchor.

“We think this will be the biggest nonevent in history,” David Lema confidently told a gathering of Ventura County officials.

Wisely, he didn’t add: “Read . . . my . . . lips.”

A number of citizens are alarmed. One of them expressed his concerns to me in an e-mail titled, “Everyone starts to eat everyone.”

“That little Y2K thing is going to collapse all the economies in the world,” he wrote, sounding just as confident as the governor’s Y2K man. “No more food, electricity, fuel, communications, etc. . . . and the survival of the fittest will become the law until the antichrist takes over the world.

“BUT THE RAPTURE WILL NOT OCCUR UNTIL THE UNIVERSE IS PROPERLY DISPLAYED,” he continued in the characteristic upper case of the true believer. “STAND UP AND OPEN YOUR MOUTH!”

Sensing that officialdom’s anti-panic message hadn’t quite sunk in, I decided to perform a public service by clearing up some common Y2K misconceptions. That way, if people choose to panic, they’ll at least have a rational basis for doing so.

Here are some FAQ about Y2K:

What is Y2K?

As if you didn’t know!

That reminds me of the story about the dimwitted secretary who, because it’s 1999, we’ll make a brunet and, on top of that, a man.

Told about his company’s Y2K problem, this secretary decides to take the initiative and solve it himself. So his boss comes back from lunch and gets the secretary’s handwritten message: “Kour wife called, and saks for kou to drop bk the tok store and buk Sallk a stuffed bunnk. Okak?”

Get it? Dumb brunet? Y-to-K?

If you must know, Y2K is a phenomenon wherein the world’s computers will be absolutely convinced that today is happening exactly 100 years ago. It has to do with misplaced zeros, and most rational people think it’s a billion-dollar scam by computer consultants. Call it a conspirack.

What will happen on New Year’s Eve?

Explaining his department’s elaborate emergency plans, Sheriff Bob Brooks said last week that “people have never celebrated the way they will celebrate this year.”

I have to disagree.

Professional revelers have long derided New Year’s Eve as “amateur night,” and this one won’t be any different.

Poking my head through the curtains of time, I look to the future and see: A Dick Clark special--Guy Lombardo and the Royal Canadians, resurrected for the umpteenth time--people trapped at parties, knowing how bad it would look to leave at, say, 10:15; lots of noise; lots of booze; lots of kissing; lots of pointless gunfire.

That’s pretty much how we celebrated it exactly 100 years ago, and that probably will be the scene at Y3K too.

Should I stock up on emergency supplies?

Why not? If the Y2K don’t getcha, the Big One will.

At Survivor Industries, a distributor of disaster goods in Newbury Park, sales manager Carole Currier reports that business is brisker than ever.

She can’t say whether it’s earthquakes, Y2K or general edginess.

Survivor’s basic Y2K kit includes seven days worth of food, water, and “infectious-waste bags.”

“It’s like a spare tire,” Currier said. “You hope you never have to use it, but thank God you have it.”

When will the millennium start?

Literal-minded people insist that the next millennium actually begins on Jan. 1, 2001. That’s because nobody ever wanted to live and do business in the Year Zero. Obviously, they’re right--but that doesn’t mean we have to agree with them.

By the way, a man named Alan Dechert in Beaverton, Ore., set out a few years ago to defuse the Y2K problem by getting the world’s governments to declare 2000 the Year Zero. He alerted the press, printed Year Zero calendars, set up a Web site (https://www.go2zero.com)--all in the interests of starting over at square Zero.

Sadly but somehow appropriately, the idea has gone nowhere.

How will life be different on Jan. 1, 2000?

It will be a time of challenge--to wipe the slate clean, to start over, to treat each other kindly, to strive for integrity, to appreciate life’s joys, to help the other guy along, to try to do good.

In other words, it will be just another day.

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Steve Chawkins can be reached at 653-7561 or by e-mail at [email protected].