Phase One, Day 36: Oh Dear

The week seems to have slipped past me again. I had some posts planned, but ended up fussing over a poster dedicated to Clarendon typeface and bouncing up and down anytime I remembered that Mark Doty -- Mark Frickin' Doty! -- is coming to UB tonight.

When I rule the world, I think one of the first things that is going to have to change is how time works. I understand the Time Monks* need to spool and unravel things faster or slower sometimes, but I think they have lost touch with the best ways to judge which time needs to pass quickly or slowly. Too much yak butter in their tea, I suppose.

When I rule the world, we need to start having more long weekends. We need to restrict Indian Summer to the first two weeks of September, and not drag it out all month, because otherwise we need to waste precious October days doing the kind of autumn prepwork that belonged to the previous month. October should be made of cloudless, sweet blue skies and fire trees, evenings that smell like rotting leaves and smoke, with those weird, burgundy-purple leaves on the trees waving back and forth. I need my wine air, and it hasn't happened yet.

Probably I need to get some minions on the whole climate control thing to help make this happen. There is still one problem left to address, and that is the matter of solstices. I don't see any sort of logical reason to starting seasons based on solstices. You end up with summer ending halfway through September, which only encourages sloppy autumn shifting, and then winter doesn't get going officially until December is almost over. What kind of nonsense is that? I propose we neaten things out and organize the seasons and months the way God intended:

December 1-February 28 (or 29, as the case may be--more on that later): WINTER
March 1-May 31: SPRING
June 1-August 31: SUMMER
September 1-November 30: AUTUMN

There. Done.

Another interesting possibility, to avoid having all the "thirty days hath September" mnemonic shenanigans, is to adopt an old Aztec (maybe Mayan -- I confuse the two at times) calendar device. That is, twelve months of thirty days apiece, leaving five or six "useless days" at the end of the year. You get the solid, predictable, even-number months to plan in, and almost a week at the end of the year made of nonsense. Businesses turn a blind eye to the useless days, they won't count against vacation time. It's a chance to sleep off the last of the holiday food, throw a party and eat more holiday food if you like, pray, make predictions about the upcoming year, whatever. It's calendar-sanctioned free time. Maybe it's just because it's been raining bathtubs and midterms are stressing me out, but I could use some useless days about now.




*to learn more about this honorable sect, check out Terry Pratchett's Thief of Time.