I think that on Jan. 1, 2000, we are all going to look back on 1999 and say, “What a bunch of jackasses we were.” All year long we’re going to be worrying about whether or not the Y2K problem will be the start of Armageddon or just some minor inconvenience.

No matter how many experts come out and tell us nothing will happen, the old bugaboo paranoia lives in the medulla oblongata of each of us, and it says “Be afraid.”

The feds are busy printing money as we speak because they know everybody and their dog is going to empty their bank accounts just in case bank records suddenly evaporate or miscalculate interest.

I think of myself as a fairly rational person, but I gotta tell you I don’t want to be the one guy who decided to risk it and lost everything.

My money is tied up in gold commemorative coins buried beneath an old oak tree somewhere in the hills of Pottawattamie County.

The only map is in my head.

My old man always keeps a few metric tons of chili on hand, but I’m not sure if that’s in case of the collapse of the global economy or whether he just really likes the stuff. So, as a family, we’re set.

I have always been of a “Mad Max” fan. I think it was the shoulder pads. What a romantic vision of the end of the world. How could a young boys fancy NOT turn to Armageddon when it looked so cool?

Part of me kind of hopes the end of the world is nigh. Especially when I read the new batch of Quick-Es.

In the words of that great American orator, Frederick Douglas, “Y’all are some sick puppies.”

Millennium cults often base their ideologies around the world ending when it has become so wicked and corrupt that it collapses under the weight of its own perversion.

There will be signs and portents that only the wise will be able to see and interpret. Many of those signs will go unnoticed, however, because I will erase them before they can be printed.

Some people love the Quick-Es, and some people love to hate them. For that I apologize. I am more sorry than you could ever know.

I get desensitized reading 70 or 80 submissions a day.

Trying to choose the eight or nine Quick-Es which are printable is like trying to pick out cubes of cherry Jell-O from a bowl of strawberry Jell-O. It’s hard to tell one from the other.

Rest assured, some of the Quick-Es that get flushed would make Charles Manson heave huge, gasping gutfuls of dread and disgust at the depths to which mankind has descended. A soul explosion of epic proportions.

Every time someone falls down or gets injured on this campus, 30 independently-motivated raconteurs rush to the nearest computer lab to log on and transmit virtually identical rubs against the victim.

Last semester, some girl fell out of her loft and had to be rushed to the emergency room. We barely had time to find out whether or not her injuries were fatal before the putrid flood of snotty, ridiculing jibes began.

I imagined a stampede of sociopaths dropping everything at the notion of being the first ones to say, “Gee, I’ve been drunk ,but I’ve never been so drunk I fell out of my loft before! [chortle chuckle guffaw]”

The only thing more pathetic than the “bottom-of-the-barrel,” “no-way-in-hell-will-I-run-this” Quick-E is the “individual” who insists on his right to have his pathetic nonsense printed like it was a god-given right.

Last week, I was approached in a men’s toilet by one upstanding citizen who felt his constitutional rights had been violated because his magnum opus hadn’t seen the light of day.

It couldn’t be run because of the vulgarity, but it was lame, regardless. It had been directed at me so, of course, he felt I was “silencing his voice.”

Now, setting aside the absolute violation of manly decorum which occurred when Johnboy decided to air his complaints in a toilet, thereby breaking centuries of masculine tradition and committing a breach of etiquette the Marquis de Sade would have been hard-pressed to justify, but … where was I going with this?

Oh, I remember: There IS no justification for EVER approaching another man in a toilet while he is trying to do his business unless you are cruising for a piece, and even then you should be more discrete.

All men would agree there are just some rules you don’t violate. You don’t screw with a guy’s wheels. You don’t have sex with your best friend’s sister. And you don’t talk to strangers in the john.

Here’s a tip for you saucy, Oscar Wilde wannabes if you want to see print.

Don’t talk about: putting things in anyone’s ass, kicking anyone’s ass, what is up someone’s ass, sperm, penises, testicles, vaginas or anuses in any of their more colorful euphemistic forms.

If you can’t say it without swearing, then don’t say it. If you can’t say it in under five sentences, don’t send it. If it isn’t quick, it isn’t a Quick-E.

If someone made you mad, stole your coat, committed the terrible crime of boring you during a lecture or talking during one, then find another way to express yourself.

And on a more personal note, don’t mock and ridicule the misfortunate. That kind of comedy is cheap and for the small-minded.

If you want to prove how smart, tough and witty you are, try striking upwards sometime. Take your shots at the power-holders.

You don’t count coups by striking the easy, weak targets.

You count coups when you get a good shot at someone who could crack your chestnuts like Christmas Eve.

This plea is all vanity, of course.

So if the world dies screaming, I will take comfort in knowing that Quick-Es will too.

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Greg Jerrett is a graduate student in English from Council Bluffs. He is opinion editor of the Daily. He’s never seen a man who could beat the snake before.