MMIX

So here we are, at the start of a bright new year; and here I am, thumping the keyboard like a sausage-fingered caveman, trying to hammer out my first blog post of 2009. It's also my first blog post in almost a month, but who's keeping track of these things, anyhow?

Something odd has recently occurred to me. Actually, it's occurred to me at regular intervals over the last eight or nine years, but now's as good a time as any to share it with others. That's probably not the best thing to do when something odd occurs to you, especially in the wee small hours of the morning, but at least this way I get to find out whether it's occurred to others, too. It may even may have occurred to you, in which case we could always pool our resources, split the counselling fees or form a Facebook group.

Anyhow, the oddity that's occurred to me is this: if, like me, your calendar of choice is the Gregorian calendar then you'll probably agree that we're fast approaching the end of the first decade of the 21st Century. Sure, depending on how much of a stickler or a party-pooper you were ten years' ago, you may have argued over whether the 21st Century kicked off in the year 2000 or 2001. You'll probably now agree, however, that we're fast approaching the Kubrick decade's closing overs and final furlongs. Isn't it odd, then - in this Year of Our Lord two thousand and nine - we've yet to agree on what this decade is actually called?

It was all so straightforward in the 20th Century. There was the Nineties, and before that, the Eighties. Prior to that we had the Seventies, Sixties, Fifties and so on. They were parcels of time, each conjuring up a specific cocktail of imagery and music and history and style. They were arbitrary labels, based on a highly capricious measurement of time that was steeped in Medieval folklore and riddled with sweeping inaccuracies and generalisations.

But at least they had names.

And these weren't names that were applied after the event. It wasn't like the way the French Revolution that became known as the French Revolution long after the Storming of the Bastille. People thought of the Nineties as the Nineties during the Nineties, and it was the same for all the other 20th Century decades. At the end of the 90s, for instance, certain musical fads could be described by media pundits as "early-90s" just as, at the end of the 80s, shoulder pads and designer stubble could be described by the fashionistas and those-what-give-a-shit as "very mid-80s."

So far as I can tell, however, we haven't settled on a name for this decade we're living in right now. I've heard a few attempts, mind you. "The Noughties" pops up now and then, but to me that sounds a bit too FHM for my tastes. "The Zeroes" is another one I've heard on occasion, but that not only contains unfortunate pessimistic conotations, but it also sounds like it should be an indie band (and a quick Google search confirms my suspicions...). For the most part, though, journalists, pundits and proper ordinary people seem to skirt around this issue like its a big temporal elephant in the room.

But I don't this to turn into one of those rants by middle aged bloggers who moan about what's wrong with things without offering any alternatives. At least not with this post. In the interests of bringing something to the table and opening up a debate on the subject here's my suggestion for a name tag for this decade: "The Norts". It's catchy, and it's free of the aforementiontioned connotations and the fact it will resonate with fans of the character Rogue Trooper from the great British comic 2000ad is an added bonus.

Of course, these labels are all based on the Gregorian calendar, which has always been my calendar of choice (from my experience, most people don't realise there's more than one calendar to choose from). If your calendar of choice isn't the Gregorian calendar then it probably isn't the first decade of the 20th Century for you. According to the nifty calendar converter I found here, today - 3rd January, 2009 - is:

7 Teveth 5769 according to the Hebrew Calendar
6 Muharram 1430 according to the Islamic Calendar
15 Kankin or 12.19.15.17.12 according to the Mayan calendar
Duodi, 12 Nivôse 217 according to the French Republican Calendar

And my favourite:

Pungenday, Chaos 3, Year of Our Lady of Discord 3174 according to the Discordian calendar.

Maybe I should think about switching brands.

Dystopian Myopia

I finally got around to watching the film Children of Men this evening. First impressions? Let's see: "Phew", "Fucking Hell" and "Wow". Those were my first impressions.

I've always been something of a connoisseur of dystopian fiction. I don't know where it began. Maybe it was while reading the classic comic series V For Vendetta at a formative age, or maybe it goes further back. Perhaps it was Judge Dredd in 2000AD, or maybe it was the "Days of Future Past" storyline in the The Uncanny X-Men comic series. This will mean nothing to anyone who wasn't raised on Marvel Comics, but I can still remember how that chilling tale of a dark future fried the circuits of my ten year-old brain. To this day I continue to suffer from an irrational fear of giant purple robots.

Or maybe it wasn't comics at all. Perhaps it was watching the "Mirror, Mirror" episode of Star Trek, the original series from the 1960's (not to be confused with, um, shit). That was the one where Kirk, Bones, Scotty & Uhura found themselves in a twisted parallel universe where the Enterprise was the flagship of a sadistic, totalitarian Empire, their crew mates were evil no-good-shit doppelgangers and Spock had a sinister looking goatee. This story had quite an impact on me, as anyone who's seen the current state of my facial hair will testify.

(I can also remember having some kind childhood epiphany whilst watching the cult 70s sci-fi flick Logan's Run, but I'm not altogether sure that was triggered by the film's bleak post-apocalyptic backdrop and chilling theme of state-enforced population control. It probably had more to do with seeing Jenny Agutter in a skimpy sci-fi skirt.)

As I reached my teens this interest in the genre was fuelled by films like Blade Runner, Fahrenheit 451, Brazil, Escape From New York and Orson Welles's adaptation of Kafka's The Trial. It was also nourished by comics like Alejandro Jodorowsky & Jean "Moebius" Giraud's Incal trilogy and by the novels of Philip K Dick. By the age of 17 I'd read Orwell's 1984 - still one of my favourite novels - for the first time, and have re-read it every other year ever since. In my teens I wrote my A-Level English extended essay on 1984, Huxley's Brave New World and Koestler's Darkness at Noon [which, strictly speaking, wasn't a dystopian novel as it wasn't set in a fictional regime]. At University I managed to indulge myself on dystopian classics like Yevgeny Zamyatin's We after wangling my way onto a course called The Literature of Totalitarianism, despite the fact I was studying History at the time. I wouldn't have got away with that in a dystopian regime, fictional or otherwise.

I even had a stab at creating my dystopian fiction with the small-press comic Stonebroke. It was about a post-apocalyptic bus driver and his one-man war against a corrupt taxi empire. The less said about that the better. Let's just say it was described in some quarters as "Mad Max meets On The Buses".

The reason why I'm telling you all of this now is because I watched the dystopian film Children of Men this evening. I'd like to think my "Phew", "Fucking Hell" and "Wow" were said with some authority.

Technorati Tags:children of men, judge dredd, x-men, star trek, logan's run, blade runner, jodorowsky
Generated By Technorati Tag Generator