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.