Sunday, February 6, 2022

Today in meaningless, arbitrary constructs:

As it happens, the blame for a lot of
things wrong in the world right now
can be laid at the feet of dumbs.
I'd like to reclaim my time here...specifically the last two years. Today is, and I'll pretend you didn't forget--again--my birthday. Which, I'm sure the card's in the mail, but whatever, this will be the third in a row spent cowering in isolation because dumbs couldn't be bothered to take the pandemic seriously. Obviously in February of 2020 we were still in that pandemic honeymoon phase, where we figured it would probably blow over, so I'm willing to write that one off, but there are at least two solid years wasted dealing with this so I'd like to make a proposal: we all get to shave two years off our ages. 

Not as easy as say, getting one's hands
on a firearms, but still, pretty easy.
And I'm not just saying this because of my ever-increasing oldness--although that is why I'm saying this, it's just not the only reason--I'm saying this for all of our collective oldness. Sure, there will probably be a few whiners, say, people who turn twenty-one this year, but for the vast majority of us, each passing year is little more than reminder of our own mortality. Sure the kids on the cusp of legal drinking age might be upset, but they'll thank us someday when they're old. And besides, was it really that hard to get your hands on booze at nineteen or twenty?

"Sure, we could use sequential numbers,
but what if--and hear me out--we went
with a repeating cycle of animals?"
-Some astrologer, circa 1400 BC
Age, like they say, is just a number and time but an arbitrary construct without which everything would happen at once. And it's not like the calendar we use hasn't been tinkered with extensively over the centuries. Julius Caesar added two months to the calendar before getting shanked by the Senate on an unrelated matter involving a power-grab. Then over time that calendar got so out of synch with the seasons that in 1582 the Pope just added like ten days. Also, it's not the only calendar. It's the fifth of Rajab 1443 on the Islamic calendar and Adar I the fifth 5782 on the Hebrew. Oh, and it's Chinese New Year, so Happy Year of the Tiger everyone!

My point is that if everyone in the MCU can just pick up where they left off after Thanos's finger snap, we can agree that I get to roll the odometer back a bit. C'mon, it's been a rough pandemic, let's treat ourselves.
Pictured: the evolution of the universe over fourteen billion years, from the Big Bang to now.
Not pictured: anyone who's going to miss a couple years on some meaningless calendar.

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