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Actually, the interruption of the week (the
day-switch at Nonday) is why I like the calendar, and it has served its
purpose well. About half of my family are aggressive Seventh-Day Adventists,
you see. Their main mission in life is to "get everybody to go to church on
the Seventh Day, the day God rested." I am sure that if they die on any day
but The Seventh Day, they'll have a heart attack over it. My response used
to be that I was born on Tuesday, so that (for me) Saturday is not the
Seventh Day (I would rather rest EVERY DAY), but that failed to convince
them, somehow. Now, they leave me alone so I'll stop talking about my
NATURAL CALENDAR, for fear I'll convert somebody else back to my sinful
ways.
They don't care that the calendar we use is
of Catholic origin, even though they argue that everything else Catholic is
man-made lies. They insist the Egyptians invented it, so it has to be true
even though that makes it Arabian, therefore of Muslim origin, and even more
questionable than the Catholics. There is more to it than that, involving
things that are Jewish, but you've already read more than you wanted to
know.
The problem I see with all calendars is, the
originator of any of them has to decide what is important, to whom it's
important, and whom not to worry about offending (?) because Mother Nature
did not synchronize our spot in the Solar System for any purposes but Her
own. Therefore, something is going to get out of kilter, or else complicated
great lengths must be resorted to. Even in the simple calendar of THIS
WORLD, Nonday misses Winter Solstice 2 years of every four.
All most people care about is:
A] When's the weekend going to get here?
B] When is payday going to get here? and
C] How long has it been since the last time
we had sex? Women are more concerned with C] than men, and also have the
period thing they worry about. Bankers want to keep track of their interest
rates, and care not one whit about where the sun and moon will be. Lawyers
only want to know when's their day in court (and, when is payday?). And,
Grandmas like some handy method for keeping track of birthdays and such.
'most everybody likes something that won't cause them to have to think too
hard. Computers wouldn't care about calendars at all, if it weren't for
people . . .
I predict: We will never have a
thirteen-month calendar because everybody's too worried we're returning to
the ways of witchcraft. Maybe, after all, it should have something to do
with the sun's position in the galaxy, or even the galaxy's position in the
universe. We don't know enough to go much beyond that, though.
A calendar that not only cycles according to
the years, but also women's periodicity can't be all that important in
comparison to that. You guys will just have to find some other way to keep
track of those times when a date will get you nothing more than female
companionship. After all, that's what love is about, right? |
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It's not only months and years that
we've messed up, who
can think clearly when they have to divide a 24 hour day into 1440 minutes
and know when they're too early for their date? How did who come up with
minutes and hours anyways? Good grief, don't we have better stuff to waste
arithmetic on?
A kid I worked with asked me once about the time. "It's twenty-five after
seven," I told him. "What time's that?" he demanded to know, acting
irritated. "Seven twenty-five," I answered. "Oh," he said, and gave me a
look like he wondered why I hadn't said that in the first place!
The clock looks complicated at first glance,
but it's no harder to use than our current calamity. The outside numbers
still represent our current way of doing time. The two inner circles
represent Internet Time, Swatch style, AtheistLloyd modified. Since our old
fashioned clock makes two swings around the dial to make it through a day,
the inner two circles represent 0-500 beats for morning, and 500-1000 beats
for afternoons. It gets strange to use at first because the meridian is at
Biel, Switzerland, and it's midnite there when 5 P.M. rolls around at my
house—and all the clocks read the same time world-wide. I would suggest to
them that each 'beat' could be further divided into 100 'ticks' to further
refine the measurement of time, which would make each 'tick' have the
feel of a second in our current method.
Click the graphic for a visit to their
site, and download your Internet Swatch Clock. It's kind of a kick to have
on your screen, and gives visitors a reason to strike up a conversation.
And, it's free! Otherwise, read on. |
