M.A.D.
(Millennial Affective Disorder)
by Robert L. Tufford

Already feeling a tad uncertain about the new era? You may be suffering from Millennial Affective Disorder.

Below are ten questions about possible problem areas in the culture of the new millennium. Choose the answer which best matches your present condition and jot down the number of points for that answer.

In the scoring section at the end, you will find our analysis along with suggestions for amelioration of your conflicted state.

1. WTO / IMF
a. I couldn’t care less what those bozos do. (1 point)
b. Obsessing about WTO / IMF has forced me to double my daily intake of Ritalin. (2 points)
c. I still haven’t fully recovered from the pepper spray in Seattle. (3 points)
d. My next vacation will be in Colombia, where I will work to undercut the global operation of Starbucks by organizing the coffee growers and convincing them it is more profitable if they switch back to the production and marketing of cocaine. (4 points)

2. Fantasia 2000
a. As a matter of cineastic principle, I refuse to set foot in any film venue where the screen is higher than a mid-rise office building. (1 point)
b. Shostakovich? And a love story about a wooden doll?? With Bette Midler doing the intro??? (2 points)
c. 1939 : Leopold Stokowski = 2000 : James Levine. Need I say more? I mean, compare Stokie's aristocratic Old World profile and that of plumpish Maestro Levine. (3 points)
d. I know the swamp of mass culture is capable of producing the occasional little short-lived orchid (the Beatles, Mae West, etc.), but this glop of low-rent animation, circumcized Beethoven, and whales dancing to Respighi bodes ill, ill, ill for the entire Third Millennium. (4 points)

3. Gore / Bush
a. Decisions, decisions. What’ll it be: pert Tipper or languid Laura? (1 point)
b. Beware any Texas millionaire who speaks Spanish. You think he really has the best interests of the campesinos at heart? (2 points)
c. Let’s see now. Tennessee first gave us Andrew Jackson and then 170 years later, Albert Gore. Texas first gave us Davy Crockett and then 170 years later, George W. Bush. Something is terribly wrong with this picture. (3 points)
d. I am totally unable to imagine any woman—or man—who for any amount less than $100,000 would be willing to perform fellatio on either Gore or Bush. At least Our Boy Bill had enough whatever to get it free. (4 points)

4. Weather.
a. I’m really enjoying July in January (and vice-veersa). The more global warming the better, as far as I am concerned. (1 point)
b. My Malibu pad only slid 50 feet down the hill last year. We are enjoying the new view, though the fact that the Pacific Coast Highway slid 100 feet is somewhat of a nuisance. (2 points)
c. One minute I was calculating the Bass family’s taxes, the next thing I knew, the exterior wall of my 35th-floor office in downtown Fort Worth was gone, and I expected to see Dorothy’s house go tumbling past at any minute. (3 points)
d. My therapist says I am in total denial, but I see no connection between my wife’s and my matching Lincoln Navigators, my air-conditioned 8,000-square-foot house, and alleged ozone holes in Antarctica ferchrisake. (4 points)

5. Microsoft
a. No matter what has happened on NASDAQ, my 100,000 shares of Microsoft are still worth more than your 100,000 shares of Ben and Jerry’s. (1 point)
b. You don’t really think things would be any different if Steve Jobs had won and Bill Gates had lost, do you? (2 points)
c. How far have we come? 2,500 years ago Asia produced a philosophy that offered a way toward a light brighter than 10,000 suns. Now, here I sit with nothing to contemplate but endless blue screen error messages. (3 points)
d. Let’s see. If Bill Gates spends $60 million on a house but gives $20 billion to world charity… wait, I’m a little confused. OK. Start again. $60 million for his house. $20 billion for charity. But he’s still got $80 billion left in pocket change. OK, OK, I got it: America’s a great country because… Oops, I thought I had it, but I’ve lost it again. (4 points)

6. Gay Rights.
a. Marvelous. I say, live and let live, just as long as they don’t talk about it around me. (1 point)
b. They are such talented re-gentrifiers that I really don’t worry, well, not often, about what they do in bed. (2 points)
c. Isn’t that an oxymoron? (3 points)
d. I can’t sleep nights for thinking about how we’ve created a country where some people think it’s OK for boys to kiss each other. (4 points)

7. NRA
a. My children have never even seen a real gun. I’ve sheltered them completely from such violence. (1 point)
b. We limit our children to an absolute maximum of 40 hours of video per week. They get to choose whether it’s Quake, or TV, or movies. (2 points)
c. I keep my gun collection under lock and key, except when I take the family out weekends to pop a few squirrels and sparrows. (3 points)
d. Columbine, Shmolumbine. That’s just the price you pay to have a vigilant citizenry that’ll keep those jack-booted thugs from Washington away from your door. (4 points)

8. Tobacco.
a. Thank goodness it’s almost illegal now. Next I plan to revive our town’s long defunct chapter of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. (1 point)
b. I avert my eyes and blush every time I walk past the obscene racks of cigarettes behind the cashier at my local drugstore. I’m pushing a city ordinance to force them to wrap the loathsome objects in plain brown paper. (2 points)
c. My congressman, at my urging, has introduced a bill to construct stocks (you know, like the Pilgrims used, that wooden thing that locks your head and hands in place) in every town in America. Any person caught smoking in public or in private will have to spend six hours on public display. (3 points)
d. I have started a covert campaign to organize the tobacco farmers of North Carolina and Virginia, convincing them that there’s more money to be made from switching to the production and marketing of cocaine. (4 points)

9. Religion.
a. I'm Episcopal, thank you. (1 point)
b. I don't understand how anyone can fail to welcome Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ into their heart, but I'm willing to live and let live. (2 points)
c. If I'd of been in Waco with my collection of Glocks, Uzi's, etc., I'd of showed the Feds a thing or two about marksmanship. (3 points)
d. I not only tithe my money to Pat Robertson, I tithe my time and spend 16.8 hours each week preaching the Gospel Truth outside my town's most popular gay bar. (4 points)

10. Biotech.
a. I'm so delighted with the new veggies. My refrigerator light burned out last week, and I discovered I don't need to replace it. The glow from the genetically altered egg plant is all the light I need.
b. God already experimented one time with asexual human reproduction and look where it got us. (2 points)
c. I just paid Texas A&M $100,000 to clone my recently deceased Lab. (3 points)
d. It's bad enough that I open the newspaper and see ads for "penile enhancement surgery." Next thing you know, women are gonna be getting penis transplants. (4 points)

Scoring

34-40 points (Extremely MAD): You are living at an impossibly high level of tension vis à vis your culture. You should cancel your subscription to Vanity Fair immediately and spend as much time as possible with the Wall Street Journal editorial page. Remember: you are not alone in your MADness.

27-33 points (Pretty MAD): While you may have benefited, perhaps even a lot, economically from the exploitative inequalities of our millennial culture, it’s clear that you are still having some small twinges of conscience. A month in a $1000-per-day resort on Bali would go a long way toward eradicating those last troublesome vestiges of social concern.

20-26 points (Somewhat MAD): We assume your drug of choice is alcohol, as it is the one which is most efficacious in producing the only mildly uncomfortable level of indifference to the world’s suffering indicated by your score. For the occasional really difficult day or week, all you need do is increase your dosage.

19 or fewer points (Hardly MAD at all): Lucky you. Your slight level of discomfiture reveals a person who generally knows how to "go with the flow," no matter what this or that millennium brings. Though we suspect you may already be a user, we would remind you of the easy answer if you feel you need that extra little added boost to your level of blandness. See our final tip, below.

A Final Tip for All Our Test-takers:
When you get right down to it, there are three simple rules for proper adjustment to the new millennium: Prozac, Prozac, and Prozac.

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