Anyone else noticed the extent to which, as we approach the fin de siecle, life has seemed to imitate art--and really bad art at that? It struck me first with Princess Di and all the preliminary handwringing over the role of the paparazzi in her death. Clearly a garish, overwrought enactment of the Corn King myth. Now of course there's the specter of Y2K, which conjures visions of an angry Old Testament god spilling out his wrath through the prime medium of the information age, in torrents of corrupted 1's and 0's--a scenario worthy of the most pretentious science fiction writer: Harlan Ellison, say.
Any day now, I expect to turn on the television and see Laura Oswald and John F. Kennedy Jr. on a special "Your Dad Killed My Dad!" edition of Jerry Springer, culminating in her taking a few potshots at him with her dad's rifle as John-John waves to the crowd from a go-cart traversing the back of the studio.
Incidentally, and on a more serious note, I wonder why there isn't more comment on the whole Y2K thing here on the list. I realize that it's easy to dismiss for exactly the reason I'm suggesting here, but I've been researching the subject in some depth with a colleague of mine, and it's no joke--even if it's awfully easy to joke about.