What to call the passing decade?...

[L. Kafka]

I find it somewhat interesting that considering how subpar the past ten years have been (outright awful for many) that the U.S. media has not come up with a moniker for the past decade. One media outlet, maybe Newsweek, was the only publication that I noticed that commented on a lack of decade nomenclature so far.

In the past we had the "Silly Fifties" where two major powers designed doomsday machines in contest fashion. Some social observers commented that the Sixties was really only half a decade, that the first half belonged to the Fifties, whereas the second half became the full blown beginning of the Stoner Generation and that the Seventies was a full decade of intoxication and sexual promiscuity. I would have to personally second that take.

The Eighties seemed not so much as a time of wine and roses like that of the Seventies, but rather one of snow and Ronbo, as in cocaine and Reagan. I don't know about Europe, but if one didn't encounter people doing cocaine in the Eighties, one must not have attended any Christmas parties.

Before this decade we had the Gay Nineties in which many us were euphoric to see our investments receive 30-plus % returns. The second half of the Nineties made it the best decade ever for making money, thus making it gay in the original sense of the word.

I suggest that this decade be called the Naughty Oughts, ought for the recurring zeros in each year, and naughty for the global economic recession that was brought on by paying "futures" too much, banking on borrowed money to pave the way to the future. It was also naughty for the acts of violence worldwide and for two dubious wars that Washington got into as a suppose remedy to global terrorism...

[phylo_roadking]

???

I thought it was already pretty well known in the international press as the "Noughties"??? Certainly in the UK...

[L. Kafka]

We Yanks don't often use terms like "naughty," you see. I'm thinking of "naught" as in both "nil" and "sinful." Did I make a double entredre without even thinking about it? I wonder.

The passing decade could also be called Decade Zero for all that it was worth. That or for, at least Americans, the decade of the Double Mint Wars. Remember the old chewing gum ad for Double Mint gum? Mint in this case not as in herb, but in two wars that were "minted" in Washington.

In the U.K. might they call such an affair a "double nastiness," perhaps?

[phylo_roadking]

In the UK we tend to reckon these things on a yealy basis, rather than decade - hence the Queen's "Anus Horribilis"

[L. Kafka]

Prince Charles is what now, 62? Time to tell mum to get off the throne some he can build up some historic brownie points...