USE A BLUDGEON (C)1998 Alan M. Schwartz Suppose you were Muammar Kadhaffi and still smarting from United States' President Reagan smart bombing your Arab ass. Or you are French and still smarting from a 500 lb bomb crashing through the front door of your Libyan embassy after you denied US forces the use of French air space for said political statement. Or you are Korean, Cuban, Vietnamese, Filipino, Mexican, Bosnian, Russian, Japanese, Iraqi... It is a long list. Suppose you wanted to kick sand in Uncle Sam's face, maybe kill a few million Americans as an afterthought, and survive to greet the dawn thereafter. Were you smart you would assault the Internal Revenue Service, from its idiots at the front desk to its whole separate private branch of the judiciary. You might target Foggy Bottom, the National Security Agency, or make the Pentagon Ground Zero. We conjecture you are dumb as dirt and aim to topple World Trade Center towers onto Manhattan real estate, with a nebulized cloud of anthrax spores for dessert. Set your watches for 0001 hrs 01 January 2000 when all obsolete Federal and state software, firmware (BIOS), and hardware (desktop computers, mainframes, and embedded microprocessors) hit the Y2K wall as calendars roll 2000 and silicon relives 1900. The FAA expects to be Year 2000 compliant by about 2012. Please get in line, as everybody who can raise a stick will be clubbing and stabbing American soldiers straining to read super-twist nematic liquid crystal displays on their oh so advanced weaponry. UN blue helmets are impeccable target markers. UN officers could not plot shooting fish in a barrel. REMFS back at headquarters have no interest in daily occurrences until they are gathered, statistically analyzed, and sculpted into Power Point presentations demanding more funding. There is a second window of opportunity on 29 February 2000. The Gregorian Calendar incorporates (365.242 days/year) a leap year for every year evenly divisible by four, except for centuries, except except for centuries evenly divisible by 400. A lot of digital calendars will warp purely wonky, choking on an unforeseen Sadie Hawkins Day because harried programmers omitted an "If Then" statement back in the ancient 1980s. When calendars roll triple zero like a villainous and sleazy Las Vegas roulette wheel, expect power, natural gas, water, sewage, telephone, and traffic control failures across this great nation. FDA-certified embedded microprocessor-controlled critical care everything in every health care facility will shut down with violated maintenance protocols. Automated assembly lines and CNC machining will freeze solid. Trains, planes, and trucks will be immobilized. Neither the Middle East nor Asia uses the Gregorian calendar. There will be no problems for belligerent states. A validating reality check manifests on 9 September 1999. 9999 is the null entry for old accounting and inventory systems, as "etaoinshrdlu" flagged Linotype output FUBAR. If 10 September 1999 is a putrid Wall Street day, you may come to certain conclusions auguring 112 days hence. Cotillion coming online! The US government will be caught impotent in its torn lace- trimmed black silk panties, statehouses will be dispensaries of chaos and panic, local police bureaucracies will degenerate into a pandemonium of guarding their own hides... Ruminate upon the Bill of Rights snippet granting US citizens the privilege to bear arms. America is a bastion of democracy, its people the most extensively armed paranoid mob short of an Israeli kibbutz abutting the Gaza Strip. Agonize less upon depleted uranium armor piercing rounds issuing from Puff the Magic Dragon's cousin than about being nibbled to death with .357 magnums, shotguns, and all the iron in which the National Rifle Association wallows. If you plan to visit for purposes of pillage, plunder, rape, and political hegemony, do not expect to have a nice day (except in districts voting a straight Democrat ticket). How much of your infrastructure was purchased or embezzled from our First World? Is it a bit old and creaky, sputtering as it runs your electric power grid, telephone system, or pumping stations? How much of your air-conditioned mystery machinery sports the IBM logo (and defective memory chips stacked and soldered two high, each pair summing to one working component?) We have 80% of all the software programmers in the world. How many do you have? 01 January 2000 is fast approaching. Do not call your travel counselor just yet. We plan to visit you. The Y2K glitch will disable Media communications planetwide, giving us a free hand to resurrect memories of the Philippine Resurrection wherein every dusky sum'bitch was a legitimate target. Uncle Sam is ready to party hardy. Have a nice New Year's Day.