A History Lesson

    In many western cultures the date of April 1st is celebrated in a strangely weird and mysteriously odd way as well as being peculiarly unusual. Although this day is not an official holiday, it is most notable for tricksters playing pranks and practical jokes on each other and also pulling off misleading hoaxes and deceptive ruses. This is no joke. Seriously.

    One might ask why we are doing this and what the origin is of this widely practiced custom. If one does, one is stuffed in a broom closet and being called a fuddy-duddy. Now that we got rid of one, I will tell you.

    According to many historians there are a variety of possible historical origins. Professor Joseph Boskik, a notorious jokester of the Boston University has put forward a theory that the practice began in ancient Rome, during the reign of Emperor Constantine. A group of court jesters and fools, better known as the US Congress, declared to the Emperor that they could run the Roman Empire better then he did. Constantine then allowed one of the jesters named Dave Barry to become Emperor for a day, and the jester decreed that the day should be filled with absurdity.

    Then there is a reference in the story The Nun’s Priest’s Tale, part of Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. The story recounts the adventures of two fools, a fox and a rooster who go to Hollywood and make it big. All this takes place “Thritty days and two” from the beginning of March, which of course is April 1st. Hollywood having more then its fair share of fools seems to confirm the historical accuracy of this story.

    In 1564 King Charles IX of France decreed that January 1st would be the start of the New Year, instead of on April 1st as was the custom in that time. Some of the French people did not hear of this decree and celebrated New Year on April 1st anyway, having parties, dropping balls on Times Square and generally getting stupefyingly drunk on wine with too much antifreeze in it. These people were widely ridiculed and called poisson d’avril (poisoned April) and dead fish were placed on their backs. I would try to explain that, but I can’t.

    I have discovered the real origin. It lies in the Netherlands, where in 1572 much of the country was under the rule of Spain’s King Phillip II. Many Dutch rebels, also called Geuzen (meaning beggars), managed to seize the small but strategically important town of Den Briel from the Spanish Duke of Alba, the commander of the Spanish army. That is why Alba lost his glasses (Bril being the Dutch word for glasses), and the Dutch celebrate this with humor on April 1st when many Dutch children are singing 1 April, kikker in je bil, die d’r nooit meer uit wil (April 1st, frog in your butt that won’t come out). I would try to explain that, but I can’t. Still, this is no joke. Seriously.

 

    A History Lesson

    Every 1460 days or so, we add in another day, just for kicks it seems. It is commonly called February 29th, or leap day. Uncommonly it is called the bissextile day (read that word again, just so you don’t confuse it with another similar sounding word). A year, in which such a day occurs, is called a leap year or an intercalary year (which sounds like…anyway, let’s move on).

    February 29th occurs every year which is evenly divisible by four, with the exception of the century years, ending in two zeroes, which are not divisible by 400. Leap seconds are added on average every 18 months. Rumor has it one scientist suggested years divisible by 4000 should not be leap years either, but he was lynched by an angry math-challenged mob.

    The leap day has a long history starting way back with the Julian calendar which was introduced by Julius Caesar in 45 BC, just before he had a salad. In the Julian calendar the day following February 23rd, known as Terminalia for the worship of the god Terminus, was to be doubled. That day and the day after were to be regarded as one day. And February 24th was called ‘bis sextum’ which means twice 6th (make sense to anyone?). This single day would have 48 hours, instead of the normal 24. Clock makers protested, but were ignored when they missed their appointment.

    The leap day moved to February 29th in the modern Gregorian calendar, when it was introduced by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582. The Pope wasn’t quite happy with the old Julian calendar because it’s year was too long, and the day on which Easter was celebrated kept changing too much. Basically, the Pope wanted the holidays to come sooner. A noble thought, that. 

    In addition the Pope decided to drop 10 days from the calendar. The last day of the Julian calendar was to be October 4th 1582, and the next day, the first day of the Gregorian calendar was to be October 15th, 1582. This caused massive amounts of sleep deprivation all around Europe. Historians say it was done to make the seasons occur at the right times, although I suspect the Pope wanted to spend 10 days in bed with his mistress. 

    The purpose for the leap day is so we may celebrate New Year's with the Earth at approximately the same position as last time. Even though we are too drunk to notice what position we are in anyway. Unfortunately, all this leaping about doesn’t quite do it. To add to the confusion, scientists introduced the leap second. These occur on average every 18 months. It is unknown when the next leap second will occur. Although they have confirmed it will not be in 2008, which is unfortunate because I could use the extra sleep.

    All this calendaring seems pretty arbitrary to me. So, why do we not change the calendar to have 73 weeks of 5 days each, with a 4 day weekend and add in an extra holiday whenever we feel like it? I’d suggest it, but I am afraid to be lynched by an angry math-challenged mob.

 

    Don’t call me, I’ll call you.

    Not so long ago, in the house I lived in as a kid, we had a telephone. It was simple phone, with a rotary dial, if you remember what that is. If you wanted to talk to me, you could come over to my house, or call me on the phone, or write me a letter. Those were happy times, back in my long lost merrily squandered youth. Aaah…memories, light the corners of my mind… Uh, where was I? Oh yeah…

    I remember how excited the whole family got when my father brought home a second phone for the upstairs. It was an old phone he had pilfered from the company where they had just replaced all phones with newer models. Now we could transfer calls between the downstairs and upstairs. We kids just loved playing with this marvel of modern technology. I remember calling a friend from the downstairs phone, just so I could transfer the call upstairs and impress him. He was not impressed.

    Now, just half a generation later, I have a home address and a postbox address. I have a cordless home phone with four handsets, business phone with wireless headset, and a brand new Nokia cell phone, all with follow-mode, caller-id, call-waiting, voice mail and numerous other features I haven’t figured out yet and probably never will. I have a two-way pager with over 800 pager numbers programmed into it. I can receive faxes at home and at work. I have high-speed internet, over a dozen different email addresses, three instant messaging ids, and four Bluetooth devices. Voice-Over-IP, and inter-continental video conferencing are nothing new to me. Oh…and I have a blog. And I am not nearly as connected as many other people in this high-tech day and age.

    The costs of long distance calls nowadays are significantly less then when I played with that upstairs phone. Can you imagine paying $7 (with inflation that would be over 25 current day dollars) per minute for an overseas call with several seconds lag time, and a sound quality so bad that most of the call consists of “What? Can you repeat that? Hello, can you hear me?”

    These days, many people suffer from what is called connectivity overload. We are all too easily reached at any time day or night. Often times we find people wanting our attention when we are knee deep in a task that requires serious focus. Taking a few moments to say “I am busy, can we talk later?” is enough to lose that focus. As a result our productivity declines. Our attention span gets shorter by the day. And hair loss reaches epic proportions (my bald spot is getting decidedly pronounced).

    In a 2007 survey by PEW Internet, almost half of all Americans who only occasionally use modern electronic gadgetry stated that the pervasive connectivity is burdensome and they feel hassled by it. It is estimated that the US economy in 2006 suffered 650 billion dollars in lost productivity because of connectivity overload. 

    In addition we are raising our children in this environment. From their early years on they have access to high speed internet, their own cell phones, mp3 players blaring music at all hours of the day and the TV showing mindless advertising blurbs while they are trying to do their homework. Multi-tasking is a way of life for our children, not an achievement reached at later age, such as for my generation. I can’t help but wonder how this new generation is going to turn out.

    While multi-tasking is supposed to improve our productivity, our brains aren’t really up to it. I am sure mine isn’t. Is it any wonder I screen calls on all my phones, employ spam filters on all email addresses, have a firewall on my internet connection, set myself ‘away’ on instant messaging, and purposefully let the battery on my pager drain so I can say “Oops, sorry you couldn’t reach me." 

    I saw a rotary phone on sale the other day, marked as Vintage and priced outrageously. Do you think they’ll accept cell phones as a trade-in?
 

Perhaps a Haiku would work better?

There once was a politician from Nantucket,
who went to Washington with a bucket.
He tried to clean up,
but quickly gave up,
and said "You know these politicians can't even write proper limericks."

 

Why are we doing this anyway?

    I am going to assume most of my readers are not totally oblivious to today’s date and the fact it is generally recognized as Valentine’s Day. For the rest of you, you are either single, or you will be shortly, unless you get your butt in gear and go buy some chocolates and the pitiful remains of whatever passes for flowers after all other desperate shoppers got there before you.

    So, why are we doing this? What compels us to spend our hard earned money in a vain attempt to prove to our significant other that we love them by buying them overpriced flowers that will turn into brown muck before the end of the week? We do it because it is tradition, it is expected of us and if we don’t, we find ourselves sleeping on the couch. 

    Who do we blame for this tradition?

    Some say Valentine’s Day is named after Valentine of Rome and Valentine of Terni. Although it is possible they were actually the same person. Either way, they are both dead. And death is not very romantic so that can’t have anything to do with it.

    Another possibility is fertility festivals celebrated in ancient times around mid-February. To begin such a festival, a priest would gather all the villagers and sacrifice a goat. The boys of the village would then take strips of goat hide and slap the girls they liked. I am not sure about you, but I would not want to date any woman whose idea of romance is being slapped with bloody goat hide.

    Then there is the English poet Geoffrey Chaucer. Apparently back in 1382 he wrote these lines:
    For this was on seynt Volantynys day 
    Whan euery bryd comyth there to chese his make.
If I attempt to translate that to modern English, it seems to have something to do with birds making cheese on Valentine’s Day. We move on.

    In the early 1800’s a bookstore owned by the Howland family in Worcester, Massachusetts started making and selling embossed paper lace Valentine’s Day cards. In the middle of the 20th century people started exchanging gifts, candy and flowers as well. And in the 1980’s the diamond industry pushed jewelry as a way of saying “I Love You”.

    And there we have it people. Stores selling cards, flowers, candy and jewelry are to blame for Valentine’s Day. It’s all about getting their greedy little fingers on the money.

    I’d suggest boycotting them, but I don’t want to sleep on the couch tonight.

    So, I wish a Happy Valentine’s Day to my readers. I love you all.
 
  

Monkeys, all of them.

    I imagine corporate management to be like a gaggle of monkeys. And despite the ubiquity of bald spots, I imagine them like hairy monkeys. They are all sitting in this fruit tree, with the executives on top.

    The fruit in the tree gets sweeter the higher you go, and of course all monkeys are trying to get to the sweetest fruit. The monkeys on the lower branches are competing with each other to gain the upper hand and get on a higher branch. But the ones higher up aren’t stupid and are pushing the climbing monkeys down.

    Of course the monkeys on the higher branches are in danger, for if they fall, they fall far and hard. Occasionally a branch of the tree breaks off and a whole bunch of them fall. And sometimes a monkey thinks there may be sweeter fruit elsewhere and he jumps from one tree to another.

    The monkeys at the bottom are relatively safe, they don’t have far to fall. But they have to endure all the crap coming down from above.

    I feel like having a banana.