According
to The Semantic Rhyming Dictionary, there is no perfect rhyme for
the word "millennium."
"Centuries and millennia are always arbitrary: You don't need to be
a medievalist to know that. However, it's true that syndromes of decadence
or rebirth can form around such symbolic divisions of time."
- Italian scholar and novelist Umberto Eco
The landmark science fiction film Metropolis, made by German
director Fritz Lang in 1926, portrayed a world of miserable workers
enslaved by a heartless technocracy. The picture was set in the year
2000.
New Year's Scrooges wishing to skip the millennial rollover entirely
can reserve a ticket on Qantas Air flight 8, scheduled to depart Los
Angeles at 12:50 a.m. on December 31, 1999. Flying west across the international
date line, the flight arrives in Sydney, Australia, late at night on
January 1st - without ever having experienced a midnight transition
into the year 2000.
Because so many customers of British recording label Millennium Records
were unable to spell its name correctly -- and therefore unable to look
up its Web site - the company established a second site, this time using
the popular "Millenium" misspelling.
The hard-to-spell Millennium Society of Washington, DC, has received
membership applications addressed to:
The Melanium Society
The Millenneum Society
The Millionian Society
The Millinial Society
The Malanuim Society
Windows on the World, the restaurant at the top of New York's World
Trade Center, took its first reservation for the night of December 31,
1999, all the way back in 1986.
The trademarked term "Millennium Celebrations" belongs to a marketing
firm in Oakbrook Terrace, IL.
"Secular millenarianism," as defined by the American Encyclopedia
of Religion: "A belief that the end of the world is at hand, and
that in its wake will appear a New World, inexhaustibly fertile, harmonious,
sanctified, and just."
The term "mal du siècle -- French for "century sickness" -- was
coined by the Vicomte François René de Chateaubriand to
describe the uncomfortable social and political climate as the 18th
century drew to a close.
Ruth S. Freitag of the Library of Congress has compiled a 232-source
bibliography on the subject of when, properly speaking, centuries roll
over. Almost all of her sources -- and the library itself -- agree that
the 20th century will not end until December 31, 2000.
"Undoubtedly, the turning of the millennium will be one of the largest
commercial events of our lifetime."
- Millennium Society co-chairperson Cathleen Magennis Wyatt
In 1912, Americans flocked to theaters to see a silent movie called
In the Year 2000. What audiences were so excited about, no one
knows. The film has vanished; not a single print remains.
In Edwin A. Abbott's bizarre metaphorical novel Flatland, first
published in 1884, all the characters inhabit an alternate two-dimensional
world. Until New Year's Eve, 1999, that is -- when the book's protagonist,
A. Square, has a revelation that allows him to perceive the world in
three dimensions. Prophetic?
"My plan for the millennium is to save rock-and-roll from my senseless
and unimaginative peers, and to look good while doing so."
- musician Marilyn Manson
Mine? I'm null.
(anagram for "millennium")
