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Word of the Every So Often

disemelevator: (verb) to get off of an elevator. The term was first, and perhaps only, used by Phillip K. Dick in his novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, which, of course became the movie Blade Runner. Here’s the challenge: Actually use this word in a conversation, such as... When you disemelevator on the third floor, take a right and the Office for Obscure Words will be on your left.

The Almost Daily

It’s National Ride Your Horse to a Bar Day. And why not? Here in Portland, as with maybe many cities, you can still see embedded in the curbs the rings people once used to tie up their horses. And some of those rings are outside of bars. The only thing you need is a horse. But do be aware of local laws. In some places you can get a DUI for being drunk on a horse. Not in Oregon, though, but you still might get busted for public intoxication, or even animal cruelty. So, yeah. I’m going to walk. Unfortunately, there isn’t an official day for that. There are though, plenty of unofficial days for walking to a bar. Like... every day. Or, as Drew Carey once said: “Don’t like your job? There’s a support group for that. It’s called everybody, and we meet every night after work down at the bar.”

Cartoon of the Week

“Let me get this straight. After we have sex, you’re going to eat me... but we are having sex...?”

STUFF

April Fools’ Day, and its Best Buddy, New Year’s Day

The original Julian calendar was supposedly invented by Julius Caesar in 45 BCE. Oh, come on! Like Julius Caesar tinkered with the calendar as a hobby. “Why, yes, Antonius, I’ve always fancied myself a calendaror.” More than likely, one of his royal subjects came up with it and probably didn’t even get a raise. But that guy… that guy was good. He had leap days all over the place and an entire week for celebrating the New Year. On top of that, his calendar was fairly accurate. It was off from the real solar calendar – how long the earth takes to make a lap – by just 11½ minutes a year. (Snowden) It’s going to take a while to be noticed. But eventually, it’s going to be noticed.

In 1582, Pope Gregory, also a noted calendaror, noticed. He became aware that there was a ten day discrepancy between the Julian calendar and solar calendar. So he whipped up a new calendar, which is something that a Pope can do, and in the process got rid of those ten days and cleaned up the whole leap year thing, bringing in the “divisible by four hundred rule.” Most European countries were still afraid of the Pope, so they went along, but England wasn’t, so they didn’t… not for another 200 years when it just got embracing to always be eleven days behind the rest of Europe. And there you have the Gregorian calendar, which most of the Western World still uses to this day. (Snowden)

But we’re not there, yet. When Pope Gregory rearranged the calendar, along with skipping over 10 days, he seriously screwed with the New Year. Previously, folks had celebrated an entire week from March 25 to April 1, which is pretty much Spring. Gregory got rid of the week-long celebration and moved New Year’s Day to the god-forsaken month of January – right smack in the middle of Winter. (April Fool’s Day History) I wonder how he got that through Congress?

Mind you, this is in 1582. It’s not like you get on the evening news and remind everybody to turn their calendars ahead at 2:00 a.m. this Sunday morning. It took many years for some people to get the word. And then there were the holdouts who refused to change. (April Fool’s Day History) What business does the government have in telling us what time it is, anyway?

Originating in France, which somehow seems appropriate, the folks who were just a little slower at picking up this whole calendar thing, those who still thought April 1st was New Year’s Day, were labeled “fools.” And, by golly, if you got somebody who is that dumb, let’s see what other dumb things the Yokel is willing to do! So they would send them on silly errands. They would invite them to non-existent parties. In short, they would pull pranks on them. And when they ran out of legitimate fools to pull pranks on, they just started pulling pranks on each other. And who doesn’t like a holiday devoted to pulling pranks? April Fools’ Day quickly spread throughout Europe. In fact, the famous “Kick Me” sign made famous at the Dwight D. Eisenhower Junior High School in Denver, Colorado, originated as part of Scotland’s solemn observance of April Fool’s Day. (April Fool’s Day History)

So there you have it. April Fools’ Day is not based on some earlier religious High Holy Day. It’s not the solemn observation of some senseless war that nobody remembers. It doesn’t mark anybody’s or anything’s liberation or independence. It doesn’t mark the birth or death of anybody famous. And it wasn’t even made up by greeting card companies or jewelers to increase their sales. It is simply a holiday devoted to making other people look silly so you can laugh at them. And it has spread around the globe. That, in itself, should say a lot about humanity.

Work Cited

“April Fool’s Day History.” 2011. April Fools! 28 Mar. 2012. http://www.april-fools.us/history-april-fools.htm

Snowden, Ben. “The Curious History of the Gregorian Calendar: Eleven Days that Never Were.” 2007. Infoplease. 28 Mar. 2012. http://www.infoplease.com/spot/gregorian1.html

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