Dave Barry's History of the Millennium (So Far) by Dave Barry Page A

Cubans attempting to travel from Cuba to Florida in a 1951 Chevrolet pickup truck. The Coast Guard arrests the Cubans and sinks the truck after a computer check shows that it has an expired registration. “Also,” states the Coast Guard, “they were not signaling lane changes.”
    Domestically, the big news is in California, where—in a catastrophe long predicted by geologists—a massive, violent tectonic shift opens a huge fault in the Earth’s crust, releasing a vast mutant swarming horde of gubernatorial candidates. “It’s terrible!” reports one rescue worker. “There’s porn stars, washed-up actors, strippers, fanatics, lunatics, and somebody named Cruz Bustamante.” Federal troops are ordered into the state, where they immediately become stuck in traffic.
    Disney World, in what turns out to be a hugely successful promotion, holds the first-ever “North Korean Troops Day.”
    In sports, Lance Armstrong wins a record-tying fifth Tour de France and celebrates, as is traditional, by having his bicycle seat surgically removed from his butt.
    In entertainment news, CNN, concerned about flagging viewer interest in the Laci Peterson format, switches to “All Kobe, All the Time.” The music industry, in what is seen as a last-ditch effort to halt the sharing of music files on the Internet, asks a federal judge to issue an injunction against “the possession or use of electricity.”
    Speaking of which, the big domestic story in…
    AUGUST
    â€¦begins on a quiet weekday morning in rural northern Ohio where eighty-three-year-old widow Eileen Freemonkle decides that, for a change, she will put two Pop-Tarts into her toaster instead of her usual one. This rogue action—never anticipated by the designers of the nation’s electrical power grid—sets off a chain of events that ultimately blacks out the entire Northeast. As rescue crews work overtime trying to keep people in the affected areas supplied with news about the developing Kobe Bryant situation, Congress swings into emergency action. Within hours, Democrats and Republicans have issued literally hundreds of press releases blaming each other. Power is finally restored several days later by power company workers, aided by bored North Korean troops.

    In Iraq, United States troops capture a cousin of Saddam Hussein known as “Chemical Ali”; a search of his person fails to uncover any weapons of mass destruction, but he is carrying a Bic pen that, as CIA analysts are quick to note, “could poke out somebody’s eye.”
    Mars makes its closest approach to Earth in human history, prompting Arnold Schwarzenegger to declare, to Jay Leno, that he is running for governor of California. In other political news, Howard Dean emerges as the leading Democratic presidential candidate thanks to a novel Internet fund-raising strategy in which he pretends to be a wealthy Nigerian businessman.
    In a controversial ruling, the Alabama Supreme Court orders a monument depicting the Ten Commandments removed from the judicial building after an audit shows that it actually has fourteen commandments, including two that say “Roll Tide!” In other religious news, Episcopal church leaders, in a highly controversial decision following bitter debate, confirm the church’s first openly Jewish bishop.
    In the arts, Madonna, demonstrating the courage, creativity, and talent that have made her name synonymous with the word “Madonna,” kisses Britney Spears. This results in a worldwide tidal wave of publicity, followed by the emergence, on both performers, of lip sores.
    And speaking of alarming, in…
    SEPTEMBER
    â€¦Palestinian and Israeli leaders finally recover the Road Map to Peace, only to discover that, while they were looking for it, the Lug Nuts of Mutual Interest came off the Front Left Wheel of Accommodation, causing the Sport Utility Vehicle of Progress to crash into