<nettime> Millenium Fever

[dmytrik@syntac.net (Dmytri Kleiner)]

[[moderator's note: well, The Day has passed here without a hiccup. Thanks
for coming to the Apocalpyse, please leave in an orderly fashion and
remember that tickets are now on sale for next year's gala
End-Of-The-World event! Book early, book often, to secure the best seats.
Thankyou, and happy new year from the nettime moderation team. SM]]

     -----------------------------------------------------------------

     Friday, December 31, 1999 6-7pm EST --> LISTEN to the New Year's 
     edition of IDIO-AUDIO Radio on WBCQ 7415 kHz SHORTWAVE. *>*>*>*>
     -----------------------------------------------------------------

	A n  I d i o s y n t a c t i x   M e m o r a n d u m

Millennium Fever
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Somewhere between sunset of the night before and sunrise on THE DAY,
everything will change. Undead religious heroes will resurrect. Aliens
will invade. Computer programs will crash and cause apocalyptic data
errors, banks will collapse, cultists worldwide will commit mass suicides
and other eccentric gestures.

THE DAY will bring apprehensions, turmoil, hope, frenzy, greed,
prostration, and -- as is the overwhelming custom of our age -- great
celebration and extravagant group debauchery. 

THE DAY is January 1, 2000 AD. The holiest of holy days. There is no
question this day will have great meaning and consequences. 

Many of the uninitiated believe THE DAY to be the beginning of the second
millennium since the birth of the offspring of a Jewish woman we now call
Mary and either a Roman soldier named Pantera or a meandering omnipotent
God of Abraham, depending who you believe. 

These spiritual peasants that are ignorant of the true grandeur and
Holiness of THE DAY seem to believe that THE DAY commemorates 2000 years
after the birth of Jesus Christ. I will lead you away from these errors
and help you realize the true significance, the true Holiness of THE DAY,
the greatest of days. 

First off, since these uninitiated ones celebrate the birthday of this
crucified hero on December 25th, it would seem reasonable that even the
most unthinking traditionalist would agree that at best THE DAY was 6 days
after the 2000th anniversary of the birth of their Lord.  These 6 days
represent the beginning of the Holy Erroneousness that gives THE DAY it's
power and glory. All praise the Holly Erroneousness for it holds the true
great meaning of THE DAY. 

The subject of the birthday of Christ is a highly contentious area.  Few
disagree that the traditional December birthday of Christ comes from the
pagan winter solstice and not the birth of Christ. The best guess as to
the actual day of his birth is March 13th, fixed by a lunar eclipse that
happened on the previous night, perhaps the legendary star of Bethlehem.
Thus, The Holy Erroneousness of 6 days grows another 8 months and 12 days.

Is THE DAY Two Thousand years, 8 months and 18 days after the birth of
Jesus? 

Not Quite. 

Before the year 1 AD was the year 1 BC, there was no "Year Zero" The
Arabic notion of Zero had not yet established itself in the west when
Charlemagne imposed the idea of dating events from the birth of our
remarkable demi-god bastard of Judea.

Therefor, because the first year was Year 1, the first year of any new
century or new millennia must also end in "1". So, in case you're
counting, THE DAY is not the first day of the new millennium, but rather
the first day of the last year of the current millennium. But, what the
heck, who's counting? 

Is THE DAY One-Thousand-Nine-Hundred-Ninety-Nine Years, 8 Months and 18
days after the birth of Jesus? 

Ummm. No. Uh-Uh. 

The Julian calendar's method of accounting for leap years put the years
out of date with the seasons. In 1580 Pope Gregory XIII deleted 10 days
from October, although this caused great riots in his time as hordes
demanded their 10 days back, this realigned the new Gregorian calendar
with the seasons and inflated our Holy Erroneousness another 10 days. 

Is THE DAY One-Thousand-Nine-Hundred-Ninety-Nine Years, 8 Months and 28
days after the birth of Jesus? 

Not exactly. 

The phrase "Anno Domini" (The year of the Lord) and it's dating was
propagated through England, Gaul and the known world by the
"Ecclesiastical History of Britain" which was completed by the Venerable
Bede in what we would now call the year 731 AD. Bede based his AD dates on
a set of Easter Tables that provided the date for Easter Sunday in each
year, the tables were compiled in the year we would now call 525 AD by a
Roman monk named Dionysius Exiguus

Dionysius was the first to measure events "from the Incarnation," 
unfortunately he left no explanation of how he figured out the date of
"the Incarnation" and all responsible historians believe that the cleric
Dionysius Exiguus made an error.

In terms of the mysteries of THE DAY and the Holy Erroneousness, it was
the greatest clerical error of all time. The Error of Errors.

Historians argue weather Christ was born in 2 BC, 4 BC, or even earlier,
but all worth noting agree that Dionysius' date was incorrect, the most
damning evidence being that the well documented Herod the Great, who is
clearly alive in the Bible's nativity stories, died no later than 1 BC, so
Christ must have been born before then.  The March 13th day based on the
lunar eclipse was in 4 BC, and is the most cited historical birth date. 

So whether this adds 2 years or 4 years to the Holy Erroneousness is not
clear, but what is clear is that THE DAY, that great day of days, is 2000
years after the anniversary of nothing in particular.

What is certain is that the true hero of this great celebration that is
before us is not Jesus Christ, but rather Dionysius Exiguus! And the GREAT
EVENT which is commemorated by THE DAY is not a birth but rather a
clerical error! 

Is THE DAY One-Thousand-Five-Hundred-Seventy-Five Years from the
anniversary of a great clerical error? 

Well, not quite, because it's unlikely that Dionysius composed his Easter
Tables on New Years Day, so the actual Error of Errors would have been a
few days after, One-Thousand-Five-Hundred-Seventy-Five Years before THE
DAY. 

What is without question is that whatever happened 730,000 trips around
the sun before THE DAY has long been forgotten. THE DAY is not about two
thousand years ago, THE DAY is about our ultimate transcendence into the
abstract. Our final escape from the mundanity of truth and our final and
permanent plunge into a world created by our own ideas, traditions and
delusions.

In the modern era were labels are more valuable than details, where
headlines matter more than stories, where perception is much more
meaningful than fact, what could be more wonderful than this day? 

Look to all the frenzy, all the extravagance, all the tragedy that will
come on THE DAY as great symbols, signs, omens, you must see these things
as conclusive proof of the unbounded Holiness of the Absurd. The
Sacredness of the Preposterous. 

Like proudly striking a flag into a landscape with no known coordinates,
we mark THE DAY as existing outside of any relationship with any other
point in time. An unrelated coordinate in on an uncharted map. Arbitrary
yet absolute. THE DAY will soon be upon us! 

Hallelujah! 

By Dmytri Kleiner, 1998 AD
dmytrik@syntac.net
http://www.syntac.net

----
This document is an Open Expression and can be forwarded, reproduced,
modified and redistributed in any manner by anyone who choses to,
providing that the resulting expression/distribution is also an Open
Expression under the terms of the Idiosyntactix Open Expression
License.

#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net