Y2K JELLY SALES SKYROCKET

18 years ago in the Horseshoe

(Computerland  —  New Market Products Press  —    January 1, 1999)

Data collected from the fourth quarter of 1998 shows Y2K jelly selling abnormally well according to lubricant brokers and store managers nationwide.

“We have people coming in here everyday with a generator under one arm and canned goods taped to their foreheads,” said Melvin Toolula, exotic lotions fellow at Lewinsky’s Hardware here. “It’s gotten so bad in our strip mall that we’ve considered paving a couple more acres of pasture for parking.”

Although it’s eleven plus months until D-Day when computers all across this great land will supposedly take a memory powder, people are already panicked. Most are frightened of being without electricity, food and water.

“Have you ever seen a dog that doesn’t have an itch to scratch?” asked Dr. Efram Pennywhistle of the Laudanum Institute in nearby Reaganville. “He is driven half mad. It’s the same with these daily reminders of what happens when blind reliance on technology takes the upper hand. Who cares if the whole system breaks down? Viva la Anarchy! Maybe it’s our chance to start again. It’s clear,” he spat, “that we haven’t done a very good job to date.”

Social scientists liken the Y2K fears to the bomb shelter phenomenon of the 50s where affluent Americans attempted to thwart the devastation of nuclear warfare by building well-stocked bunkers underground. At the time, the accepted theory was that the inhabitants of these insulated prisons would survive effects of radiation poisoning and general contamination, only to emerge in an undisclosed period of time and continue the human saga.

“The probability of nuclear warfare is greater today than in the 50s,” chimed in Toolulu from his perch in information potions, “but the fallout shelter fad is gone, pretty much. Suffer the fools, my brave Portia…”

Toolulu went on to describe people running out into the streets looking up at something bright in the sky, then he fell asleep.

Meanwhile Pennywhistle continues to live in a limestone cave near Spar City, said to be populated by hordes of stalactites and stalagmites.

“They don’t bother me if I take my medicine and fumigate regularly,” said Pennywhistle.

According to other unrelible sources in all likelihood there is a far greater chance that a rogue meteor will hit the earth before 2020. In addition many astronomers expect the sun to explode on December 31, 2016, causing chronic global warming, virtually bringing the igloo industry to its knees.

Then, as if out of a bad Japanese horror movie, polar bears will begin the long migration south in search of food, which, according to the present food chain is defined as you.

“It’s all conceivable,” stressed Pennywhistle. “Why just back in November the Cubs won the Series.”

– Ripple Van Winkle