Stricken with a bout of millennial self-reflection

William Czappa

Well, as the holidays crank up and the year and the century wind down,

I find myself, as usual, waxing philosophical. I also find myself waxing

the car. Yes, just thinking how the new century will be now that I am

pushing 50 and a third of my life is over. It’s time to review my life,

take stock of my assets, purge my liabilities and, yes, take out the

centennial and millennial garbage, not to mention the cat.

Yeah, time to make some new year -- no, indeed -- “new century”

resolutions. To begin with, I think I have been too hard on my fellow

man, woman and waterfowl.

I will start by rethinking my personalized license plates and bumper

stickers, since today the rear end of the auto is the official

communication line of the real world. With that in mind, I will turn in

my plates that say, “WAY2CLS” and “BCK OFF” (for the license plate

reading-impaired: “way too close” and “back off”) and replace them with

one that says “PLATE,” and on my other vehicle, “C OTHER PLT.” Then, I

will try to park them next to each other as often as possible. On the

Pinto, though, I’ll get one that just says, “GOTALIGHT”?

And I will stop complaining about the messages people put on their

plates. I saw one the other day, “GBM213.” What was that all about? I

have no idea. I spent an hour trying to figure it out.

I will also remove those bumper stickers that say, “Gun aboard” and

“Have ya killed anyone today?” I will replace them with something more

positive, such as “I need to change lanes ... please” and “If you can

read this you have good vision.”

I will refrain from referring to political leaders as bloodsucking

varmints, NAFTA weasels or bumbling graft-taking geeks. I will remove

other words from my vocabulary, too, like “Armageddon,” “flap jacks,” “oh

my golly,” “clam dip” and “verbose,” especially in reference to women,

political candidates and Albanian Geese. I will replace them with funny

words, like “ointment,” “condiments,” “utensils” and “thistle.”

There are a few ideas, inventions, if you will, I have been working

on, too, that I think humanity might thank me to give up on. For

instance, the fish omelet. I don’t think the world is quite ready. I also

think the backyard commode is a bit premature. I just thought that

letting the sun shine, surrounded by plants and flowers, would be quite

nice on a summer day and could double as a dog watering bowl or bird

bath.

And I am finally going to give up on inventing a new letter for the

alphabet. It’s been a long time since we had a new letter. What was it,

anyway? “J”? So, I’ve been trying to see what it would look like and I

finally decided that whenever you pronounced it, you would have to move

your thumb to your nose. It would be that sound you make when you sniff.

It would look something like this: “)^” and here is the first word I made

with it! )^ugowamuorphis. And since every word needs a definition, to go

with it:

)^ug-o-wam-u-orphis, n. old wise one who makes up new letters, words

or gardening tools {from bill English