Some people are scared by witches. Some people are scared by ghosts. Some people are scared by Republicans. Some people break into a cold sweat just looking at a Democrat. In the spirit of Halloween, today we contemplate some other truly scary things.
– Scariest news of the week: At the age of 77, John Glenn has once again blasted into space. This is horrifying to all of us who were alive for his first space flight in 1962. If the daring young man in the flying machine is now 77, how old does that make the rest of us? Older than we like to think–and that’s the scary part.
Even scarier: John Glenn at 77 is probably in better shape than almost everyone who was born in 1962.
Scariest of all: If you admit to people under 30 that you’re old enough to have been walking the earth during John Glenn’s original space flight, they’ll respond with a gasp, as if you’re a skeleton on a weekend pass from the grave.
– Another scary thing: The Y2K problem.
Even scarier: There are bizarre people who actually understand the Y2K problem. Normal people assume it’s a flaw in a new Nike athletic shoe.
Scarier still: There are people who actually throw the term Y2K into casual conversation. The rest of us are scratching our heads and wondering, “How do you say a word that has a number where a vowel ought to be?”
Stupidly scary: Some of us are so blissfully uneducated that we’d bet Y2K is a Shakespeare quote, as in “Y2K or not2 Y2K, that is the question.”
– Really creepy: All those jerky advertisers who disguise their junk mail as checks, credit card bills or frequent flier bonuses and mark their envelopes with phony come-ons like “Urgent” “Penalty for Late Reply” and “Important Tax Information Enclosed.”
Pathetically creepy: People like me fall for those tricks every time.
– Scary: How much time, energy and money has been devoted to the investigation of the president’s sex life.
Really scary: It’s not over.
– Super scary: The new TV season.
Supersuper scary: The people who made those flops got paid huge sums of money.
Scary and mysterious: The continued success of “Suddenly Susan.”
And one more chilling TV item: A recent survey from the Writers Guild of America reveals that even in this era that gives non-stop lip service to diversity, almost all the nation’s movies and TV shows are written by white men hardly old enough to grow chin hair. Seventy percent of the writers for TV and almost 80 percent of feature film writers were male. What’s more, while 73 percent of Guild writers under 30 were employed, not even a third of those over 50 had jobs.
The cheerful news: At least there’s one job old John Glenn could never get.
– Scary: The approach of another Chicago winter.
Terrifying: Not just any winter but a La Nina winter, La Nina being the icy, nail-spitting sister of the warm, cuddly El Nino.
– Scary: Long-distance phone-pricing plans. Why can’t someone make a plan that makes sense to those of us with average IQs?
Deeply scary: The long-distance companies don’t want us to understand. If we did, we might figure out we’re getting scammed.
– Scary: Spice.
Scarier: People so culturally unhip they don’t recognize the previous paragraph as a joke. OK, a lousy joke.
Much, much scarier: People who can name Scary and all the other Spice Girls, sing every word of every one of their songs and provide week-by-week reports of which overspiced girls are pregnant.
– Scary: A season without NBA basketball.
Scarier: Millionaire NBA players who expect us to feel sorry for them in their tussle with team owners.
Scariest: Billionaire NBA team owners who expect us to feel sorry for them in their tussle with the players.
– Scary: The volatility of the stock market.
Scarier: How many Americans have come to believe they can live off stocks instead of off good old-fashioned work.
– Sadly scary: Predictions that only four of every 10 registered voters will vote next Tuesday.
Sadly scary 2: The choice–or lack of a good choice–in too many of Tuesday’s races. Glenn Poshard vs. George Ryan? Where’s John Glenn when you need him?
