GREETINGS, SEEKER.

You have found us. Or your cousin forwarded you the link. Either way, sit down. Pull up a lawn chair. We have several.

It has been revealed unto the Order that at the stroke of midnight on the first night of the year 2000, every VCR in America will begin to blink 12:00 and will never, ever stop.

"But Lyle," you say, "my VCR already blinks 12:00. It has blinked 12:00 since the Reagan administration."

Yes. But after midnight it will be official.

We call this The Great Blinking, and we are ready for it. We have a compound. We have a stockpile. We have a hand-crank can opener that belonged to my Grandma Opal, and it has never once failed us. Read on, if you dare, and if you have about four minutes.

THE SEVEN PROPHECIES OF THE ROLLOVER
(as revealed to the High Keeper while mowing, summer of 1998)

I. Every VCR will blink 12:00. See above. This is the big one.

II. The microwave will forget what the Popcorn button means and just give you a sad beep.

III. Uncle Vern's fax machine will print out one page that says 01/01/00, think about it, decide that means 1900, and send Vern a bill for a hundred years of late fees.

IV. The digital clock on the bank sign on Kenosha Street will finally show the right temperature, for the first time since it went up, and people will be frightened.

V. The cable will go out right before the ball drops. (This one has nothing to do with Y2K. It happens every year at Mitch's.)

VI. Somebody at the party will say "Well, the world didn't end" at 12:01 and think they're the first one who thought of it. That person will be Mitch.

VII. Nothing else will happen whatsoever, and we will have to eat forty-seven cans of creamed corn anyway.

THE RULES OF THE ORDER

• Robes. The official robe of the Order is whatever bathrobe you already own. Mitch's has a Sooners logo on it. This has been ruled acceptable.
• Dues. One can of food per member per week, brought to the Thursday meeting. Anything but lima beans.
• Meetings. Thursdays at 7:00 in the driveway, weather permitting, garage if not. We rotate the stockpile, which means we eat the oldest cans. Irma Nussbaum brings lemon bars. Attendance is very good.
• Chanting. We do not chant. We count cans out loud, which sounds about the same from the street.
• The Holy Relic. Grandma Opal's hand-crank can opener. It lives in the kitchen drawer to the left of the stove. Do not put it in the dishwasher.
• Worship. None. Renee says we are not a religion, we are "a bunch of grown men sitting in lawn chairs," and her ruling is final.

THE FAITHFUL

JOIN THE ORDER

Membership is open to anyone within walking distance of my driveway who owns a bathrobe. Out-of-towners can be Honorary Members: send me an e-mail telling me what your VCR clock says right now, and I'll put you on the list. We have Honorary Members in eleven states and one in Manitoba, whose VCR is apparently set correctly, which we find suspicious.

We have a strict no-weirdos policy. Mitch barely passed.

OK, SERIOUSLY FOR ONE MINUTE

In real life I write COBOL for a bank downtown. Since March of 1998 I have personally gone through something like forty thousand lines of code changing two-digit years into four-digit years, and so have a lot of other tired people with pocket protectors. Our systems passed their tests this summer. I'm honestly not worried about the rollover. I started the Order because I spent all day reading about Y2K and needed to laugh about it at night.

That said, keeping a few days of canned food, water and flashlight batteries in the house is good sense in Oklahoma any year, between ice storms and tornado season. So stock up a little, and then relax. And set your VCR clock while you still can.