bending time to make a clown out of us all

how to use your calendar for fun and conspiracy-theorising

The Gregorian Calendar, accepted by most countries and cultures as the international standard, repeats itself every 28 years (7 days of the week, which are thrown off by the leap year every 4 years, so 4x7 is 28 - see, math can be fun, or not).

So, curiously, we note things like this:

2001 (first year of the new millenium)
two towers (the World Trade Centre) fall in a flaming cloud to the ground.

1973 (28 years earlier)
the World Trade Centre is dedicated

1945 (28 years earlier)
Hiroshima and Nagasaki - twin towers of flaming cloud into the sky.

1917 (28 years earlier)
US enters WWI

and I says, hmmmmm. What does time, the calendar, military might and global trade have in common?

ask the Plutocrats - they know more that's been buried than they let on.

...stay tuned for further misadventurous underpinnings...

--PentWhistle

NASA has gone and done it.

from the files of "What were they thinking."

On January 19, NASA launched the New Horizons probe to Pluto, which will arrive in 2015.

Is it wise to send Plutonium to Pluto???

--PentWhistle

what's with the ides of march anyway, Jules?

Or, haven't we all been here before?

I seem to remember something from my youth, my younger days - waxing poetic back to the tail end of Winter in the glorious year of 2003, in which the US media[tm] propagated the attention on the planet Mars with constant updates as to what the NASA remote-controlled toy was up to.

Mars, the Roman god of War, his name echoing from the box, from every station. The Prez himself, the man with the top of the pyramidal wedge, declared his intent to spend more time and money in trying to reach him.

Mars, by the way, has two moons, his two Dogs of War (remember Richard III? Their names are Fear and Dread (notable synonyms to terror, one may note, if one wishes to note such a ones as these).

Then, in March (the month named after Mars), on the 20th day, the beginning of Aries, the US began its "major combat operations" in the cradle of civilisation, and continued to salt the earth, by peppering it with depleted uranium munitions.

Ares is the Greek god of war, the astrological period is ruled by the planet mars.

and here we are again, the drums sounding about a country in the cradle of civilisation declared an enemy, and preparations begin as we approach March in the year 2006.

I understand that NASA currently has a probe orbiting Mars.

I'm sure we'll get to hear much about it.

--PentWhistle

in Celebration of Lethargy

In which resurrected clownishness arouses suspicions from the Plutocratic minions.

Whatever that might suppose to mean.

This, the season, the greatest of momenta, as we swirl through the last gasps of Winter's whispy zephyrs towards the inescapable genuflecting that is Vernal bloom.

And amidst all of this, we remember the third anniversary of the madness turned to sadness in lands far away - because we refuse to stop driving everywhere, and wrapping our world in acres upon hectares of plastic doodads, gewgaws, knick-knacks and the shiny, as if this, somehow, would preserve the world as we know it.

It is to laugh.

May we ever celebrate our apathy. As lifestyle, it's the way to go. If you're going to slouch your way to inevitable demise, then do so with vigour and alacrity. It's what everyone's doing in the BIG CITY. You know the one I mean.

[wink wink]

If you're going to spend more time sitting down than breathing, then invest in a chair that will suit your lifestyle of deliberate somnolescence, and cushion your seated ends in decadent comfort. Vibrating, heating, massaging, reclining, with armrest, headrest, footrest. Ahhhh. Step one, it's already begun. Kick back, and enjoy the...

If you're going to spend more time sitting down, you may as well entertain your newly, proudly slothful lifestyle of the famously rich. What better way than by celebrating the human tradition of telling tales of learning and wonder around the campfire, with a eighty-one inch, HDTV? Yes, stories aplenty, and at a low low price, if you rent-to-own, or lease, or pay by some lay--away or other. You know the drill. Mmmm. Reclining, absorbing, then...

If you're going to spend more time sitting down and watching television, you'll need to alter your diet to suit your newest, settledest self. This demands a strict adherence to a diet of processed foods, factory-farm direct products and by-products, the fizzly, swizzly swill of the softest of soft drinks, you know the one I mean. No cheating. If you require sustenance between snacks, eat peanut butter, and plenty of it.

With a bit of foresight, the batteries in the universal remote controls can be replaced at a moment's notice should any system's failure dredge your attention out of the fog of prime-time mayhem to the deepest need to switch the story away to something else, something less audacious and smart with a fresh new twist on something or other.

This lifestyle is not for the faint of heart. It requires a strong healthy heart to continue to pump the accumulating fatty goodness through increasingly brittle, narrowing vessels just to make it through to middle age (if you live to be over a hundred).

However, it has its rewards.

You need barely ever use your own body's power again, with the exception of occasional trips to the bathroom (bedpans and catheters nonwithstanding, one must wash to keep from dying, which defeats the purpose of all this enjoyment of life in one's buttock-vibrating wonder hammock).

Ahhhhh.

Now, if you should have to move a distasteful distance (out of the house, for example), there is the celebration of self, known popularly as the automobile, with which one may travel as if coursing down an asphalt river into the drowsy surf, drifting gently on theta waves, watching the world pass by, only punctuated in passing by ubiquitous advertising instead of constant interruption.

With this, one may celebrate inertia while still moving about town, and all thanks to a little internal combustion. To work, for one must still pay for all of this. In such a case, you must use this prefabricated idea, as it will save you from formulating one of your own as has not be seen on TV: demand ergonomic standardisation, then you can get the really really cushy chairs, that recline, decline, incline and so forth.

Then, you can stare longingly into that beautiful monitor, sitting in your ergonomically buttock-massaging chair, in celebration of the Socratic dialogue, while typing furtively and frantically in a chat room.

Then, the wondrousness of the return to the comfort of one's home.

because, for some reason or other, the oil that all those bones are crushed for is somehow different from the gasoline in our tanks.

Ours is more refined.

--PentWhistle