Tuesday, October 21, 2003

Laziness: We're three years into the new century, and we haven't settled on a term for the present decade.

It all worked so well in the past, during the 80s and 90s. At first we were so enamored that we were entering the 21st Century that we didn't need to call its first decade anything. After awhile, though, I suspect that we're going to have to come up with something.

The first decade of the 20th Century is often referred to as "the aughts". But don't expect that name to work in this day and age.

People have been talking about his since last millennium. But they assumed that the public would have settled on something by now. As far as I know, nobody has even tried to propose something yet.

What should it be? The zeroes, the ohs, the oh ohs, the uh ohs, the double ohs (or dublows).

Should we just get silly? "The dubya-ohs", if Bush gets reelected. "The Osamohs", if we don't catch Bin Laden for awhile. If Dean were president, "the Dean-ohs" would be catchy.

Or will we stick with the cumbersome, "the first decade of the 21st Century"?

And what are we going to call 2010 through 2012? It won't really be "the teens" yet. And when we are in the teens, are we really going to talk about it like it's some ultra-modern era. After bragging that "this is the 80s" and "this is the 90s", saying "this is the teens" doesn't sound very futuristic.