Ask Doctor Y2K

By Christopher Buckley

Q. What is Post-Millennial syndrome?

A. The feeling of letdown everyone will experience starting Jan. 1, along with a pounding headache, nausea, sensitivity to any sound louder than a mouse cough and wishing that the world had in fact come to an end just after midnight.

Q. Sounds harsh.

A. The headache and yearning for death will result from the 5 million bottles of champagne that Americans are expected to drink this New Year's Eve. PMS is a psychological affliction. The Germans, who go in for really long nouns, call it emptiness-from- having-spent-thousands-of-deutsche-marks-(dollars)-stockpiling-the-bunk er-(basement)-with-flashlight-batteries-and- spring-water-and-cans-of-tuna-for-no-reason. Heidegger would call it whatnextness, but he is dead.

Q. But won't most Americans be rejoicing that their PalmPilots didn't erase 700 names in their address books and that air-traffic-control computers at J.F.K. didn't instruct planes to land in Central Park?

A. Certainly, we must count our blessings. But for years we've been told day in and day out that the year 2000 teems with consequence of all sorts: numerical, technological, theological. So when we wake up and smell the skim latte and discover that nothing has really changed other than the start of a new tax year and that meanwhile we're stuck with 500 cans of Bumble Bee chunk white and enough batteries to power that annoying bunny from New York City to Juneau and back, there are bound to be existential consequences.

Q. For instance?

A. A resentment born of the suspicion that all along the media were up to their usual tricks, hyping a notional calamity to the max in order to make us buy more copies and tune into TV specials titled The Day the Food Ran Out. Then, too, followers of certain religious sects will no doubt find it puzzling, if not downright disappointing, that the new year didn't begin with a spectacular slapdown between the Antichrist and Godzilla. Of course, preachers can always say the Creator called them on their cell phones at 11:59 p.m. to say Armageddon was being postponed.The media may have a harder time explaining why they were so relentlessly hormonal about a year just because it had three zeroes in it. But the media usually just shrug and move briskly on to the next installment of the-end-of-civilization-as-we-know-it (Gotterdammerung).

Q. Such as?

A. The prospect of Donald Trump's becoming President.

Q. So Post-Millennial syndrome is the feeling of disappointment over having been worked up into a frenzy over nothing?

A. It's also deflation over not having anything left to look forward to other than the Presidents' Day mattress sale. We get only one year with triple zeroes. What are we going to do for an encore? Have ourselves cryogenically frozen for the next?

Q. Then what can we do to counteract the heartbreak of PMS?

A. People need to replace their old anxieties about the millennium with some exciting, fresh anxieties. Y2K2, for instance.

Q. Sounds good. What is it?

A. Yeltsin, the Russian President, isn't going to last forever, no matter how many Texas heart surgeons we send over there. And when he goes, oh boy. Given the Russian proclivity for the Strong Man, we're bound to end up with Ivan the Terrible, Part 2.

Q. Nuclear confrontation! Excellent! What else can we work ourselves into a lather over? The ozone hole?

A. Please. So some penguins get sunburned. I have one word of advice--frogs.

Q. Frogs?

A. Dying by the millions all over the world. Haven't you read? Scientists are stumped. Whole swamps going silent.

Q. Is that bad?

A. Bad? Good God, man, it's nothing less than potentially catastrophic. Frogs are a critical link in the global food chain. What do frogs eat?

Q. Insects?

A. And what eats frogs?

Q. The French?

A. Exactly. Without frogs, the French will be forced to eat insects. Which means they'll have to invade Italy for their frogs. And suddenly it's 1800 all over again. Europe going up in flames. How long will America be able to remain aloof?

Q. That is serious.

A. This is no mere computer glitch. This is the End, my friend. We are all going to die. You O.K.?

Q. My...chest...pain...

A. Look on the bright side. In just a few more weeks, no more articles about the millennium.