Okay, let’s figure this shit out once and for all.

If my calendar is correct (and I have no reason to distrust it), in 133 days it will be 2010.  We’ll be leaving this decade behind us and entering the… Teens?  And we’ll be leaving the… the what? The Aughts? The Ohs?  Seriously guys.  133 days left and we still haven’t figured out what to call this decade!? We should be ashamed of ourselves!  We’ve had how long now to collectively think something up?  Nine years, 232 days, that’s how long.  Pathetic.  2000, 2001, 2002: it was okay that we hadn’t collectively agreed upon a decade name yet.  We were young and reckless, and the decade seemed to be stretching out in front of us forever.  We still had lots of time.  But then as 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2006 rolled around, it was probably time to start sniffing some grindstone fumes.  Light a fire under our asses.  Get a move on.  After 2007 there was just no excuse.  We were officially slackers.  It’s like we’ve all been hanging out at Hempfest for the past ten years and forgot to order the pizza.

Seriously, quit yapping about health care and Michael Jackson and focus: this is important, damn it.*  Without a name, our ten years on this hunk of rock will be without an underlying identity in our collective consciousness.  Think of the Fifties, and you recall a decade entirely in black and white, with every woman a Donna Reed and every man a Dick Van Dyke. The Sixties were all about peace, love, and indiscriminant fucking in the mud during Vietnam protests.**  The Thirties kinda sucked, although apples and pencils were plentiful and the Scraping-Execs-Off-The-Sidewalk industry saw its biggest boom in years.  And if you’ve ever had the dubious honor of receiving an invitation to an Eighties Dance Party, you know what the unfortunate decade was all about.  Some decades, like the Gay Nineties or the Roaring Twenties, even do the hard work for you.  Not only do these decades come with decisive names, they also come with decisive modifiers.

But when you think of the years 1900-1909, what do you think of? Hmm? Nothing. Nada. Diddly squat. We can't allow the same fate to befall us.  All we need is one word, one simple word, that will call to future generations’ minds thoughts of September 11^th, Dubya, Iraq, Barack Hussein Obama, Al Gore, The Human Genome Project, Katrina, Google, Facebook, Blogs, Twitter, iPhones, Ugg Boots, Lord of the Rings, Asian Tsunamis, Tea Parties, Joe the Plumber, Sarah Palin, Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, Jon and Kate, Miley Cyrus, Rod Blagojevich, Robert Novak, Plamegate, Nipplegate, Macacagate, Nannygate, Rathergate, Troopergate, Henry Louis Gates, and the arrival of our alien overlords (slated for later this year).***  It may not all be pretty, but it all happened, god damn it, and we can’t forget it.  And we certainly can’t let something like not knowing what to call the decade stop us.

What’s more astounding is that no one really seems to be working on it.  It’s not like we even have to do a lot of work or anything: I mean, surely this same issue came up a hundred years ago, right? Although, to be fair, none of us were alive to remember what was decided on back then, and the few of us who were alive, well, let’s just say they’re not the ripest apples in the ol’ memory fruit basket, if you catch my drift.  No, we’re probably going to have to come up with something on our own.  But how hard can that be?  Why have we been dragging our feet on this? I would have thought for sure that media outlets would be throwing some names up against the wall to see what sticks.  ESPN: “The Red Sox are undeniably the greatest baseball team of the Aughts.” Any takers? No? Okay.  How about MTV: “And here, to perform live, is the hottest group of the Zeros: The Jonas Brothers!!” Anyone? FOX News, why don't you take a stab at it: “Is this Democratic congress the worst congress of the Ohs, or the worst congress of all time? We report, you decide!” See, try some shit out!

Right now we have the luxury of pussyfooting around the issue, avoiding mention of the decade.  Right now we can get away with things like, "Z107: the hottest music of the Seventies, Eighties, Nineties, and today!" Not for much longer.  In 1989 you could confidently make a declaration like: “Warrant will go down in history as the best band of the Eighties.”**** In 1994, after you shaved the mullet and stopped sniffing glue, you could concede that “yes, I was wrong about Warrant being the best band of the Eighties.”  You could say that.  If you wanted to make a similarly myopic prediction today, you’d end up saying something like, “The death of Anna Nicole Smith will be remembered as the watershed moment of… this decade.” Oh really?  So how are you going to walk that back in 2014?  "I was wrong about Anna Nicole Smith's death being the watershed moment of... of..." You can’t! Now you’re stuck with it.

With 133 days left on the clock, we need a blue ribbon commission to sit down and hammer this out.  If you've made it this far, you're officially on the commission. Congratulations!  So, distinguished colleague, what are we calling this decade?

^{*Okay, okay, you can keep yapping about health care.} 

^{**Unless you were a square.  What, you didn’t fuck in the mud in the Sixties?}

^{***We didn’t start the fire, it was always burnin’ since the world was turnin’…}

^{****Who was that person?}