The need for a Decade name

Michael Jackson through the decades

This is a glimpse of Michael Jackson through the decades. I'm using these images to illustrate the need to decide on a name for this decade. 

I created this dedication to Michael Jackson nearly 7 years ago trying to illustrate his image through the decades. It is now ironic that this illustrates his music career. He came on the seen in the 70's with the Jackson 5. Then his solo career in the 80's, 90's and 00's. Not realizing he would die at the end of the 00's (pronounce Unies).

As I hear media reports, all I hear is about the different decades. Every reporter is speaking about the Seventies, Eighties and Nineties. Last night watching MTV, I heard Sway, an MTV VJ, state, "70's, 80's, 90's and even today. This was strange because I meet Sway in 2004 in Miami Beach during the election. He heard the story about the 00's and 10's. We couldn't believe he said today.

Michael Jackson died near the end of the 00's or Unies!!!

Britney Spears through the decades

A few years ago, it seemed like every other commercial was quantum leaping through history. There was a campaign by Pepsi using Britney Spears  and showing here through the different decades. The television commercial was cool and they had a print campaign too.

This video used the print ad that Pepsi created and I adapted it to fit the unies. The original campaign used years instead of decade names. I tried to recreating the font as closely to what the original campaign's font scheme. You can hardly tell. 

Take a quick peek and see how I used Pepsi's ad campaign for the Unies. 

Closing out the '90s; ringing in The Unies

by Neil White

Who says today's college students have absolutely no initiative? OK, we do, but that's completely beside the point.

Then there's USC advertising student Ryan Guerra. He has taken it upon himself to invent a name for the first decade of the new millennium, since there's o accepted shorthand way to characterize it, such as we currently do with the '90s.

Guerra's suggestion?

The Unies. 

That's his way to group the numbers between 0-9, which he claims to have hit upon after much trial and error.

(Apparently, he rejected Jethro Bodine's suggestion of The Naughts.)

Now, he's doing his best to publicize his creation. He has a Web site (www.theunies.com).

He's handing out new releases. He's even selling shirts with logos of The Unies, which, for all of you folks dying to know how to pronounce it so you can begin slipping it into converstion, rhymes with "loonies."

Guerra told us he has gotten used to people treating him like he's wacky for his persistence in pushing this concept. But he doesn't care. In fact, he's certain The Unies can become part of the pop culture lingo, with national recognition sure to follow.

He also envisions it catching on in other ways, such as parents saying their kids are in their unies or meteorologists saying the temperature has dipped into the unies.

"This is a great moment for me. I am making history," he quotes himself on his Web site. "I have always been waiting for an opportunity like this."

(With a modest outlook like that, we're a little surprised he didn't just name the decade "The Guerra's.")

Personally, we prefer The Naughts. But then, like Jethro, we have an IQ in the unies.

First time Unies referenced.

PC jockeys need to simmer down about adoration for breasts.

Dear Phil,
I always read the Gamecock and enjoy its sometimes sarcastic, very controversial columns. I often read yours, and thought that you were a very talented writer with good ideas before today. The article you wrote about WOST classes makes me sick. I'm sure that you're going to be getting many e-mails from very angry females, so I won't berate you on your ignorance, crudeness and stupidity. You were trying to get a reaction, and you got it. The talented writers of today who want their writings to get attentin do not get it be belittling females and their studies. Maybe you should grow up and use your writing "talent" for something that's worth reading. As a whole, I'm disappointed with The Gamecock staff for even printing such a lame article written by a horny boy trying to get a reaction from his readers. You make me sick, and I will never read your articles again, and I'm extemely disappointed with the entire Gamecock staff.
(I won't include this your lady's name for her privacy)
First-year student, Moore School of Business.
That's an e-mail I received about my last column, in which I declared an undying adoration for the boobies. I got a lot of response about that column - some good, some bad.
I try to compliment women on something, and they get as mad and bitter as a Clemson fan at the Humanitarian Bowl. Just look at the other column on this page. It's from a women's studies professor who calls me a "boy" and thinks I'm as sexist as Sir Mix-A-Lot.
Even one of my good friends told me I wasn't PC enough in my column. "Don't be sexist. Broads hate that," he said to me. (Don't hate me for that; I'm just the messenger.)
My anonymous WOST informant, whose code name is "Jugs," told me about how my breast column was bashed in her class. This double agent I've got working on my side said her fellow students knew someone in the class had revealed the secrets of the WOST breastfondoling assignment to the chauvinist scoundrel Phil Watson. My informant listened to the conversation and hear her fellow sudents spitting out vile lies about the origins of my last column. Rumors spread like wildfire. Some of the angry women's studiers said I wrote the column two weeks before it went to press. Jugs, knowing the rumors were untrue, played it cool like 007 and didn't correct the angry feminists. That could have blown her cover.
It sure is easy to offen people in the Unies (evidently, that's what some people are calling this decade - there you go, Ryan). Unless you're making fun of white males, everybody gets mad at you.
But I don't bash people in my columns, with one notable exception earlier in this semester. When I wrote my breast column, I wasn't trying to bash WOST. But people these days are overly sensitive about in a joking manner, even if it's not a direct insult to the sensitive issue, they go nuts and release the hounds on you.
My breast column didn't offend everybody. I think I have the silent majority on my side. Many people, male and female, told me they liked the column. So take that, you humorless, breast-lover hating, overly sensitive PC jockeys. Someone needs to give you all a sense of humor for Christmas. Or maybe baking some cookies or playing with you breast and writing a detailed journal about it will put you in the Christmas spirit.

Coca-Cola USA says "NO!"

Can you believe Coca-Cola declined to catch on with this phenomenon back in June 20, 2000? It was Jeffrey T. Dunn, Sr. Vice President CCNA Marketing, who wrote back declining an interest in the Naming the Decade campaign. 

I guess some things are ahead of their time. 

Uni-fication No Simple Task

by Martha Wright

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 Guerr's original name for the first decade of the next millennium: The Unies.

"Everyone's stuck on the millennium," Guerra said. "After the first year, we'll need to have a way to talk about the decade as a whole." Guerra was clobbered by inspiration when he saw an article describing the nameless decades of years ending in 00-09 and 10-19. Instead of offering a solution to this quandary, the article merely asked the quesiton.

It was then that Guerra found his calling. In "like three minutes," a phrase was born.

"When I look at life and look at what I'm supposed to do, this has just been something tha't 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 treademarked "The Decies" to refer to years 2010-2019.

It's been a long haul for "The Unies" to join the ranks of other famous neologisms, but like "normalcy," "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 nothing. Something's going to happen, and some number will be there."

"The Noughts" is the major competitor for "The Unies" in the race to name the decade. According to Guerra, Oxford University Press popularized "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 selling point about it, however. On his Unies Webshrine (http://www.theunies.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 control? "I really don't know the potential," Guerra said. "All I know is I'm 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 havebeen overwhelmingly positive. 

"It's nice when people see the vision or my tenacity or just the potential," he said. "I know something's going to happen becuase I want it so bad, I can just see it. [The Unies] has so much life to it. I just think it's awesome."

The Naming the Decade Returns

It has been many years since I began naming the decade, the unies. To be accurate, it started in 1999 on University of South Carolina's campus cafeteria. It seems like just yesterday, that I sat at the table eating a sandwich and reading the USA Today where I would come across the life changing article. 

The article describes how there was a missing word to describe this decade, the years between 2000-2009. Within two minutes, I thought of my own word to describe this decade, the unies. My word tackled the problem of naming the decade by looking at the numbers between zero and nine. Single digits? The only word that really meant 0 throgh 9 was the single digits. But even then the single digits wouldn't fly to far.

I instantly thought of a word that meant something to me. I always suffered from a uni-brow - a pair of eyebrows that meets or nearly meets over the nose. There I go, within seconds I seemed to have the unies at the answer!

Heck, it made sense. Uni - means one like unicycle and unicorn. Uni was also a prefix that meant to come together to make one like university is a bunch of colleges and uniformity. 

So within two minutes this goofy little word would begin to direct my life in many different ways.