Every Town Is A Small Town ~Cashing in on the Bad Chips~ By Augustus Frobisher Guest Writer

For the businessman, I know of no better sales force than our modern-day wonder, the Internet. A decade or so ago, the Internet was unknown to the common man. Today, it is only the uncommon man who knows nothing of the Internet.

For those inclined toward entrepreneurship - particularly of the alarmist variety - the Internet couldn’t have blossomed at a better time than in this, the decade preceding the second millennium. It is precisely our swift descent upon the year 2000 that has inspired distress in some quarters and burgeoning fortunes in a host of others.

The coming crisis, of course, centers around the so-called millennium bug which, as the sands run out on 1999, is expected to rocket present day society back into the dark ages, that is, to a time when humans walked the streets without cellular phones pasted to their ears and the doors at the market had handles. Thus it will be once again - our penance for the sins of our fathers who a generation ago compressed an eight-digit date field down to six.

But every crisis has a silver lining - or a gold one, for the truly ambitious - and so it is for the legion of entrepreneurs who have come into bloom along with the millennium bug. Our modern snake-oil salesmen in his high-tech skin trumpets doom - You MUST prepare, for "they" the officials of government and business have dallied too long to rescue the future. By providence, our Internet salesman has JUST WHAT YOU NEED to survive the impending catastrophe. His heart is softened to your woes. He cares for you, he says, and your children, your dog, your cat and desires so fervently to avert your peril that he will provide food, raiment, cure-alls, and firearms to you - at limited-edition Rolls Royce rates.

Like a crowd of lemmings, man after man empties his bank account to buy up this freeze dried salvation, (for it hasn't occurred to him that the seller is too keenly interested in relieving him of the very cash which says won't be worth as much as newsprint when this year's calendar runs out), and each feels smugly secure and happy. Nor has it occurred to our modern-day Crusoe that his forbearers of just two or three generations ago canned, dried and stored provisions as a matter of course, and he could do the same, thereby preserving his cash in the event the expected roaring lion of armageddon turns out to be a pussycat.

Now, the opportunist isn't entirely to blame, he is merely filling the void for which man yearns. Since man's first breath he has positively groveled to be “taken”; he wants it, he begs for it. Witness how he will clobber his fellows nearly to death over such intrinsically worthless articles as this year's beanie baby, or last year's Tickle Me Elmo. Witness his politicians, if you require more proof.

When 2000 swallows the end of this century, and lights go out, at the least, we won't suffer for entertainment. There will always be man. -- Augustus Frobisher

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