Hey, It's 2024
In case you didn't know
Oh my gosh, dear reader, can you believe what just happened? It’s the Year of Our Lord 2024! This is really huge news, even though it’s only a number on a calendar that our ancestors made up a long time ago, and we all knew it was coming to the millisecond, and the only thing that has actually changed is the amount of trash that some poor sap needs to clean up in Times Square.
Every New Year’s Eve for as long as I can remember, I’ve hoped that the coming year would be better than the previous one. But 2023 was one of the few times it actually happened, at least for me personally. I’m finally making a living wage from my writing. It took over 20 years, and I’m working two jobs, and I’m so very tired, but I’m finally doing it.
Lots of bad stuff happened to other people all over the world in 2023, of course, but that’s nothing new. At least my specific circumstances have improved. At least things are better for me. And isn’t that what’s really important?
So I choose to keep that optimism going. Bad things will happen in 2024, and there’s nothing I can do about that. Let’s just hope none of it affects me directly!
Speaking of momentous New Year’s celebrations, I highly recommend Time Bomb Y2K, a documentary currently streaming on HBO, or HBO Max, or Max, or whatever we’re supposed to call it now:
It’s one of those documentaries with no narrator or talking heads. Just archival news footage from the years 1996-2000, carefully arranged to tell the story of a crazy thing that almost happened.
I vaguely remember living through that time, but I’d forgotten how freaking huge our computer monitors were. Can you believe those things?
You can do the work of that whole row of monitors on a single iPhone now. And if it falls on your head, you won’t die.
At the time, I remember scoffing at all the Y2K panic. “Durrrrrr, nothin’ happened, ya big sissies!” But of course, a lot of things had to happen in the years preceding Y2K to prevent something really bad. It took a lot of work reprogramming everything. It was one of the few instances in my lifetime of disaster being willingly averted.
And of course, we all assumed the worst was over. Smooth sailing, right? Then came the 2000 election fiasco, and 9/11, and Iraq, and Katrina, and Britney shaving her head, and the rest of it. You can avert chaos for only so long. It never really goes away, it just takes other forms.
I wonder what will happen in 975 years, when the millennium rolls over again? Humankind will have gone through several apocalypses by then, no doubt.1 So who knows if we’ll even still be using computers. Or calendars. Or language. A thousand years from now, everybody could be living in caves again.
Whew!
Also as of yesterday, the 1928 Steamboat Willie version of Mickey Mouse has entered the public domain. And I’m in the public. So now I can do this:
Take that, Disney lawyers!
A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller Jr., 1959.
And congrats on the living wage part. That’s a serious achievement. To do it through your writing is persistent and praiseworthy. So, congratulations, brother!
In terms of Mickey Mouse, only the original version from Steamboat Willie is in the public domain; I'm sure the Disney lawyers will go after anyone trying to create content with the more modern-looking Mickey (the shirtless one with the red pants); it was similar to what happened with Winnie the Pooh last year; you can do stuff with the original drawings, but can't do the one where Pooh is wearing the red shirt. The lawyers are gonna be pretty busy this year, for sure...