K-man's Millenium Calendar

I know, we all just hate to change something we're already used to, for something new that might cause us problems. So we get stuck in the mud whenever it comes to tampering with anything 'holy' that we take for granted, like the hours in a day or the feet in a mile. It's only natural to resist, fiercely, any suggestion of change. Look at what happened with the Metric System. It looked foreign to us, so we didn't want anything to do with it. Somehow, they did manage to sneak (on to everything!) those weird little 'bar code' lines that only laser beams can understand. They just went ahead and did it without asking anybody, so that's how that got through.

But right now-facing the year 2000--the world is standing on the very brink of disaster and if we don't do something fast, there's no telling what's going to happen to the quality of life. It may already be too late. Enormous changes have shaken the very bearings of our own nation in recent years, and for this reason our present calendar is hopelessly out of date! (That's one of our little 'calendar jokes'). But, any puns aside, today all of us live in a high-pressure world, and by the end of the week we're all pent up and ready for therapy. The suicide rate and general craziness is going up and out of sight. Practically the only thing anyone lives for, anymore, to abate the head-crunching brutality of daily living, is the 3-day weekend. We keep pushing for more and more of them, but face it, there are only so many things we can celebrate, and most of them are starting to get muddled up, in my mind anyway. Arbor Day, Armistice Day, Good Friday, Presidents' Day, The Discovery of Non-Stick Cookware Day, etc.

Many people I know live from one 3-day weekend to the next, more or less glossing over the intervening periods. If you tell then it's gonna be 6 more weeks till the next 3-day weekend, the pathetic groan they let loose sounds like some little furry rodent caught in the teeth of a steel trap. Often, that particular wailing is contagious and will sort of echo down the hallways, from water-cooler to water-cooler, as others pass along the sad news.

The obvious solution is to have a 3-day weekend every week. The average person, today, needs a 3-day weekend just to repair themselves from the rigors of working all week. Back in the olden days things weren't so hectic. (People did die sooner, but from smallpox, not aggravation). In fact, the 6-day work week was common, with only a 1-day weekend. It makes my head hurt to even think about it. Later the 5&1/2 day week was all the rage. I once worked at a place for 5&1/2 days a week. Went in on Saturday from 8 am to noon. I tried to blot that out from my consciousness, so when I got back home, around 12:30 PM, I'd pretend that I'd never gone to work at all that day. I'd get into my jammies, get into bed, then get out again after about half an hour and make believe that I'd just slept late.

It all gets back to God's work week. He makes the sun, the stars, solar system, little bunnies and the whole works in 6 days. Then the Big Guy rests on the 7th day. O.K., that's fine for Him, but what's He do on the day after that? Go back to work again? Make another Universe or something? I doubt that. Besides, what's He been doing ever since then, huh? Or, for that matter, what did He do before that? Sure, He did a lot of work during that week, but what's 6 days work out of zillions of years? "He rested on the 7th day" - maybe that's how a week came to have 7 days? It's just like that king whose finger was used for the length of an inch. Anyway, that's just to show you how arbitrary everything is. So now we think a 5-day work week is the "normal" thing. But still, the 2-day weekend isn't long enough. By the second day of the weekend I'm just starting to relax, then I suddenly get panicky, thinking about how I've got to go back to work the next day. Some businesses have tried a 4-day work week, with a 10-hour work day. All's I can say about that system is: DON'T GO FOR IT! It's a crock! It actually works out to more like 12 or 13 hours when you figure in lunch time and time to-and-from the job. It'll kill you, and you end up spending the whole 3-day weekend catching up on lost sleep.

The problem is, you can't have your tuna-on-whole-wheat and eat it too. Employers want a 5-day work week, and they are very stubborn about that. Even if they would cut it, the employee would end up with less pay. It's all because of the '40-hour week' thing. It's a biblical number - like when it rained for 40 days and 40 nights, or when Moses and the Jews wandered in the desert for 40 years, or that life begins at 40. But, the workers of today want, and really need, a 3-day weekend to counteract all the crapolla they have to put up with during the previous 40 hours. The answer is to do the impossible, to give them both what they want: Give the employers their 40-hour, 5-day work week, and also give the employees their 3-day weekend, every single week of the year! The answer, of course, is the invention of a brand new week: the 8-day week! What could be simpler or more logical? It contains 5 work days and 3 days for goofing off. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Nueday.

Fig. 1: January to November

Mon	Tues	Wed	Thurs	Fri	Sat	Sun	Nue
1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8
9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16
17	18	19	20	21	22	23	24
25	26	27	28	29	30	31	32

Fig. 2

December 6th is always Christmas Day. (There are 14 days in Leap Years). The days of December don't have names, only numbers. For example, the Day before Christmas is referred to as "December 5th" not "Friday."

1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13

With a modern calendar life will be much happier, much simpler, and the whole world will be much better off, generally. We won't have to remember which months have 30 or 31 days, since all of them will have 32 days. You'll never have to wonder very much about the date, since a Monday, for example, will always be the 1st, 9th, 17th, or 25th. The same idea goes for the rest of the days, once you get the hang of it.

At this point, for those of you who are non-technically oriented, this is the end of the article. You should now write to your congresspersons and demand that they pass a law to change the calendar. But, in the meantime, the power of the people is to act now and to begin to use the modern calendar immediately! Simply photocopy (use the machine at work) the attached calendar pages, staple them onto the bottom of a nice color picture, and hang it on your kitchen wall and begin living by it. If all of us do this, this plan will work. Then, just imagine how happy we will all be, come next weekend!

OK, now for you readers with a more technical bent, we'll touch on the "astro-physical" part. As you probably know, the year has to have 365 days in it because that's how long it takes for the earth to go around the sun. It actually takes a bit longer, so that's why we have Leap Year, with 366 days, every 4 years. If we don't have 365 days in a year, eventually it would be snowing in August, which is OK with me, but it would be confusing for a lot of folks. So, let's look at what we've got so far:

January through November (11 months) X 32 days = 352 days

This leaves us 13 days for December (14 days every 4 years), which is absolutely perfect! Here's why this is the best thing that could ever have happened: December is a very spacey month because of Christmas and New Year, right? We've had Halloween and Thanksgiving and all that stuff is fine and won't be changed one bit. Everyone goes nuts in December, and if they were really truthful about it they would admit that very little real work gets done. All month long people are shopping, baking cookies, going to parties, wrapping presents, and the last thing they're thinking about is work. Besides, we're all leaving work early, or calling in "sick," not to mention the companies that are letting their people off early anyway. Anyone who's ever tried to get anything terribly serious done in the last two weeks of December knows it's nearly impossible!

So why don't we just stop kidding ourselves and just give everyone those 13 days off, in December? Or, short of that, we could just let companies and workers negotiate their own days off during the 13 days (14 in Leap Year) of December. We'd actually get more done this way than the goofy way it is done now.

Christmas Day would always be December 6th; New Year's Day would always be January 1st. Of course, Christmas Eve would be December 5th, and New Year's Eve would be December 13th, except in Leap Years when it would be on December 14th.

There is one other, enormous advantage to this: Shopping would be greatly simplified. Instead of starting Christmas shopping weeks or months before Christmas, we would all agree to wait until December 1st to begin our shopping. This would give everyone 5 days to do their shopping, which is plenty-if we have those 5 days off. Stores would also agree not to begin their big sales until December 1st. Doing all out shopping in December would make us feel better about it because December has a more "Christmassy" feel to it than November. This way everything would be fresher and more separate and distinctive. I hate it when all the Thanksgiving and Santa Claus stuff gets all blurred up.

Also, by a general agreement, they would not start showing It's a Wonderful Life or Miracle on 34th Street until December 1st so that the impact would be much greater, along with the shopping and other Christmas activities. Everyone knows that December is "Christmas month," so let's really make it that way. Let's make it the way it always should have been, and let's give everyone the time to enjoy it properly. Let's unite together, as a People, and do this now!

Ivy's Seinfeld Page