Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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Unie-fication no simple task By Martha Wright Staff Writer Ryan Guerra, an advertising major at USC, wants the world to know that he’s a unie-ich. Unie-ich, of course, merely is a term to describe proponents of Guerra’s original name for the first decade of the next millennium: The Unies. “Everyone’s stuck on the millenni um,” Guerra said. “After the first year, we’ll need to have a way to talk about the decade as whole.” Guerra was clobbered by inspiration when he saw an article describing the name less decades of years ending in 00-09 and 10-19. Instead of offering a solu tion to this quandary, the article merely asked the question. It was then that Guerra found his calling. In “like three minutes,” a phrase was bom. “When I look at life and look at what Fm supposed to do, this has just been something that’s been perfect,” Guerra said. “I know what I want to do. I want to name the decade.” Guerra, a bartender at Hops in Harbison, has traveled to the ends of the Earth to shout his noble truth — or at least he’s been to New York City. Earlier this year, Guerra printed up T-shirts and handed them out on the streets — he even got one,in the hands of MTV’s Carson Daly. Daly said he would pass- it on to the wardrobe people. Guerra hustled to get his term trademarked in South Carolina, and a national registry of The Unies” is forthcoming. Guerra trademarked The Decies” to refer to years 2010 2019. It’s been a long haul for The Unies” to join the ranks of other “The past’s name kind of sucks.” Ryan Guerra Creator of the term "unies” famous neologisms, but like “normal cy,” “glasnost” and “mad props,” Guerra hopes the phrase will wrangle its way into the vernacular. Other suggestions for the new decade’s name leave him cold. The Two-Thousands? “That’s the whole new millennium. This is just 10 years.” Double Zeroes? “Okay, that’s only the first year.” 2Ks? “A spin-off on Y2K. All that is is a different way to say 2000.” The Millennios? “Sounds like Cheerios.” The Aughts? “That means it’s all zeros, when there’s only one zero. How are numbers zero?” The Nothings? “It can’t be noth ing. Something’s going to happen, and some number will be there.” “The Noughts” is the major com petitor for “The Unies” in the race to name the decade. According to Guerra, Oxford University Press pop ularized “The Noughts” because that’s reportedly what people called the first decade of the 1900s. But with Guerra, this historical claim doesn’t wash. “Personally, I don’t want to give anyone in the past recognition,” said Guerra. “The past’s name kind of sucks.” Guerra has marketed his maxim to advertising firms, who showed interest. Some asked for $1,000 a month to help it get off the ground, but Guerra declined, saying his catch phrase shouldn’t be a cash phrase. “I don’t know how important it is to make money or to just to name the decade,” Guerra said. “I would choose to name the decade.” He doesn’t deny that there’s a sell ing point about it, however. On his Unies Webshrine (http://www.the unies.com), there’s a place to order T shirts. “The Unies” could become the phrase for more than delineating time. Guerra touts the use of “The Unies” to describe low temperatures, - low bank accounts and low grades. But could the craze swell out of con trol? “I really don’t know the poten tial,” Guerra said. “All I know is Fm busting my butt doing it.” So far, “The Unies” has attracted a lot of local attention. Guerra has been interviewed on TV twice, on the radio twice and in The State once. In the fight for unie-fication, Guerra has acknowledged that he can’t do it alone — acceptance in national media markets is the final step in Unies assimilation. Guerra said that, while “The Unies” is slow to obtain widespread popularity, reactions have been over whelmingly positive. “It’s nice when people see the vision or my tenacity or just the potential,” he said. “I know some thing’s going to happen because I want it so bad, I can just see it. [The Unies] has so much life to it. I just think it’s awesome.” Samba M. Mwasi contributed to this article. USC film archivists set reel boon Associated Press From the Civil War to World War II and from baseball to influenza, archivists at USC are learning about the past one reel at a time. Before being eclipsed by television news in the 1960s, newsreels were for decades America’s visual chroniclers of popular history, covering every thing from beauty pageants to wars. In 1980, 20th Century Fox donated the newsreel collection from filmmak er Movietone to the university, and historians and information systems specialists have been examining the films ever since. Among their findings: -Eyewitness accounts of the 1861 assault on Fort Sumter and Abraham Lincoln’s assassination four years later. -Rare footage of aviator Charles Lindbergh a year before he made his trans-Atlantic flight in the “Spirit of St. Louis.” -Several hours of outtakes from World War ITs famous D-Day inva sion. “Every week, they find some thing,” said George Terry, vice provost and dean of the university’s libraries and information systems. One film shows a young woman interviewing her grandmother, Mrs. W.R Becker of Atlanta, who saw the cannon shots at Fort Sumter that started the Civil War. “She was a witness to the bom bardment of Fort Sumter,” said Andrew Murdoch, a film curator who found the footage. The collection, housed at Fort Jackson, also includes a wealth of war footage, including two horns of film from the D-Day invasion and footage of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Newsfilm coordinator Ben Singleton calls the Pearl Harbor film the “jewel in the crown” of wartime clips, noting that Movietone was the only filmmaker at Pearl Harbor dur ing the Japanese attack on Dec. 7, 1941. In recent years, the university’s film archive and the handful of others like it have found an important niche. Nina Seavey, a filmmaker and teacher at George Washington University, said the old movies are feeding a growing demand for histor ical programming. “For decades, nobody thought it was of any value — it was just old stuff,” said Seavey, who directs the Center for History in the Media at George Washington. “Only within the last five years, historical documen taries have become something people have a hunger for.” The most popular piece of film in the collection — used by filmmakers some 30 times — is a clip showing one temporary effect of the flu epidemic in Chicago in 1919-20. The film shows people greeting each other with a salute instead of a handshake because people feared shaking hands might help spread the disease, Murdoch said. Internet reflects | modern society Most users consider the Internet to be a functional tool that provides simpli fied access to information. This is, of course, true, but there are other aspects of the Web that are also informative in addition to its intended use. The Internet JATE AUSTIN is an mtngu- Web Guy ing sociologi- _ cal entity, too. It is a unique extension of our selves, a milieu of our interests and workplaces. A study of modem culture could easily begin with “World Wide Web.” The cause for this is easy to ascertain; use of the Internet is very inexpensive. As Web pages are simply electron patterns stored on a computer to be viewed by anyone interested, they are also very inex pensive to create and maintain. This inexpensive nature of Web pages distorts the real-world eco nomic rules that apply to our non virtual world. In short, the Internet closes the cultural gap between classes and walks of life. Computer hardware is getting more and more inexpensive to purchase, making Internet access more available. I hear people complain about things on the Internet that are inappropriate, and I see petitions floating around to boycott certain sites, but I welcome the diverse nature of the Internet. The Internet is an extension of ourselves; nearly every facet of our culture is repre sented in it somehow. Naturally, the corporate world has a noticeably common presence, but that’s simply because a lot of the Internet is spon sored by corporate dollars. Almost every interest has at least one site dedicated to it. In fact, the Internet can be visualized as a virtual society. All the recesses of the Internet where software, music and even movies are circulated in violation of copyright law comprise this virtual society’s crime. Of course, the pornography has a real world counterpart, as do the parental controls that are freely available to enforce the age limita tions. There are very few activities in the reality we are all accustomed to that don’t exist on the Internet in some form. The Web’s extension of our daily activities also magnifies them. Consider the ease with which a con sumer can shop online, or the speed at which transactions can occur. Our activities on the Internet hap pen at a much more rapid pace and over longer distances than we are accustomed to. As a sociological tool, the Internet can be quite insightful into the behavior of people in our con temporary world. As Robert Heinlein said, “Machines are humans because they are made in our image. They share both our virtues and our faults - magnified!” Wordsmiths, Doodlers, Shutterbugs, Opinion-Holders, Sports Nuts, Movie Haters, Movie Lovers, CD Critics, News Hounds ..• We need you all. Check us out at Russell House 333. II D 11 D (you -ntiNK sr ppttinp it sphe^-ppp^) _\ SIZ£P WIU- MAKf VF fOf $HAKJNP? / fI PPPLP ttv\V£- PPTT£N rw£\ 1 THINK NPT!!!^/ [ OF.PPKS INSTPAP Pf PN£- If ]-\ V IP PNt-r PPNf TP NA6I. y / o FTr mpstvp woftpp n-asp ro patT ^PNOP6*lt MONPr TO SPIN6* MP ^ uriN6* on Mr saot tot a wwpp isnt sap so^ $2o, Wmb^M ^ ANP IT PIPNT £V£N HVET \ NABI BioMedical Center 215 Assembly St., Columbia SC 29201 254-2280 •'+~