At first blush, I was intrigued by the anomaly that happened recently. I was certainly not alone. The blogging world was abuzz—isn't it always? The perils of a thrice-daily publishing schedule, I suppose—with anticipation about the time when a timestamp would read "01:02:03 04/05/06"
It was the temporal version of the astrologer's planetary alignment. Oooo, that's never going to happen again was a common refrain (one that I shared briefly). Never mind the obvious observation that it's a feature of our own making since every aspect of that timestamp is arbitrary though conventional. Never mind that it'll happen again in a hundred years. Some wags noted that it'll happen again in Europe since they write their timestamps differently.
On second thought, I was left with a sense of ennui. You know, so what? It really doesn't make any sort of difference and it's not even that interesting of a phenomenon. What was mildly interesting is how the meme—ugh, I hate that word—propagated quickly and everyone and his brother was talking about it. And that sort of superficial, nugatory factoid is exactly why I can't stand people in general. The virtual ink spilled in such vapidity was alarming.
Come on, people, find something better to write about.*
* And yes, I am quite aware of the irony of that statement. Rants about pop culture and the blogging world carry an exemption since they're meta-commentary.
[UPDATE: Here's more "special dates" if you're into that sort of thing, YSLE.]
