The cruise missile ceasefire betwixt the miniskirted It-girls and the cyborg toyboys was worth cool megabucks to the power-dressing eggheads down in the Big Apple. It wasn’t some peacenik, hippy love-in, by any means, but the avant garde was held in check by psychedelics discretely popped into sugary lattes and acid-laced microchips, respectively.

It was a Mickey Mouse way to dumb down a population once content with the occasional spliff and DNA-swapping sex up, but racism had gotten well out of hand and realpolitik had to ad-lib for the sake of the gene pool. Plus, it was extra sexy (in a Trekkie sort of way).

Now if the pissed off adversaries could only be convinced that the F-word might be preferable to Molotov cocktails as a way to keep a semblance of peace, the lumpenproletariat and Watergate wizard could be having it large, alike.

Written for submission to the BBC’s 101 Years in 101 Words in October, 2004.

[Photo by Nathan Rupert]