So it’s been a bit more than a week since I posted my last column. But I have a really good excuse: My dog ate it.

OK, I don’t have a dog. And my cat will only eat one certain brand of very expensive cat food that she has flown in from France.

The truth is, I entered my well-stocked secret underground Y2K bunker in mid December, fully expecting the world to end in just a matter of weeks. Boy was I disappointed. On the plus side, I now have a 4 year supply of really big cans of creamed corn.

All right, all right. I don’t have a secret underground Y2K bunker, and if I did, it would not contain any creamed corn, which is technically not even “food”. It would probably have a whole bunch of those absurdly long snack sausages they sell at K-Mart. These things are like a Slim Jim, only about 4 feet long (really!) and with a much higher fat content. You buy them in big coils, like a rope! To me, this seems like the perfect emergency ration to have around. Along with cold beer, of course.

In fact, my only real preparation for Y2K was brewing up a batch of home made beer. Don’t accuse me of not taking survival seriously!

The real reason I haven’t posted a column in a while is that I just got busy with other things. You know how it is; work, family, Christmas, New Year’s Eve, Dawson’s Creek, and some other stuff I’m not at liberty to discuss involving Area 51. I could have made time for writing this column, I guess, but that would have seemed more like work than fun. There is enough work in my life, thanks.

So here we are, in the year 2000. Cool, huh? It’s like we’re living in the future. We are right between “Space: 1999″ and “2001: A Space Odyssey”. Let’s call this year: “2000: Just Like 1990, Except With Britney Spears”

What does the future hold for the Modern Guy? Well, I probably won’t write this column on a weekly basis, but I will try to update it often. Hopefully, that will be a few times a month. Be sure to join the mailing list if you haven’t already, so I can notify you when a new column is up.

Maybe in future columns I will tell you all about some of the new “modern toys” I’ve been accumulating. Like the “home automation” kit I just ordered. Right now, if I want to turn off a light, I have to go through the complicated ordeal of flipping a switch. But once I figure out how to install all this stuff, turning off a light will be much simpler. I will just have to turn on my PC, wait for it to boot up, click on an icon, type some stuff in, click on some buttons, and viola! my computer crashes. It really is that easy!

by Joe Shockley, January 14, 2000