January 1, 1999

Honestly, could you have predicted on January 1, 1998 that it would be the year when a president would be impeached because of a stained dress? I mean, honestly? Bombing Saddam, yes; keeping the strangulating slipknot around Cuba's and Iraq's necks, no doubt; failing to solve the health-care crisis, social security and the like, absolutely; but a dress? Numbing...

At the least, 1999 should turn out to be a more predictable vintage. It will start with more of the same, move on to the Y2K syndrome and end with a consumer-packaged millennium. Sex, fear and money, the three musketeers of presumed human nature, when mixed, create power and invent enemies. So, expect a few surgical strikes here and there.

Then, we'll be left with an additional 365 days to ponder the meaning of it all and to wait for the actual beginning of the next century. And the new millennium, you may wonder... Factually, you're already living in it. It came with a whisper sometime around 1994 or 1995 (Jesus was born in the year 5 or 6 B.C.).

Who knows, perhaps the dress will be preserved for posterity and exhibited in a special postmodern hall at the Smithsonian Institution in D.C.