So what else do we call the first decade of the new millenium?

Does anyone feel like the "Ought Generation" yet?

And how do we pronounce it, like "aught" or "out"?

No hurry, we have almost a year to decide.

Good question...at least eight of those years were pretty bad, so I wonder about "ought" or "aught". Some may interpret the sound of the word as some sort of gastro-intestinal editorial of the "W" years. All political sarcasm aside, I do wonder what or how we will refer to those years. Is anyone still around from when we faced a similar issue back in 1900 through 1909? I wonder what they said back then?

We-e-ell, there were the Roaring 20's, the Gay (18)90's, the Depressing 30's...

How about the Boz-0's (Bozos) in honor of the great leadership from the White House for the lion's share of the decade?

It's an interesting question. How do you define a decade? As Puschkin wrote, you have the Gay 90s, the Roaring 20s, and the 30s defined by the Great Depression. Let's continue:

1940s: The War Years
1950s: The Eisenhower Years; Complacency (?); Economic Boom
1960s: The Sixties: A decade marked by Civil Rights, Vietnam, Women's Liberation, the Sexual Revolution, the beginning of Gay Liberation
1970s: The Me Generation; Munich; Gas Crisis; Watergate; Disco; the Bicentennial; Iran Hostage Crisis
1980s: Reagan Years; AIDS Crisis; Fall of Communism; Tiananmen Square; The Us Generation (?)

!990s: Clinton Years; I'm at a loss as to how to define it. This is the decade where you had ethnic cleansing in the Balkans and Central Africa and a world trying to find its bearings due to the end of the Cold War and a world beginning to feel the effects of globalization. But how do you define it culturally. Does Kurt Cobain represent the Zeitgeist?

However defined, the twentieth century in certain ways ended 9/11/01. I do not believe that everything changed on 9/11, but our sense of security did. But I also wonder whether the advent of instant messaging, cell phones, and texting represent an increasing sense of how fleeting and disjointed our lives are? Why have a meaningful conversation or a meaningful relationship, when you can amass hundreds of "friends" on MySpace or Facebook? Why give something thought, when all you have to do is twitter the trivial and meaningless? Why write a critical essay under my own name, when all I have to do is post it on a Discussion Forum under a nom de plume and Avatar of how I'd like to represent myself? Ask me how to define the Oughts in 2020!

In honor of Bush and to paraphrase Homer Simpson, how about the D00'hs?