On National Days
Today is apparently National Teacher Day; the motto of this year's National Teacher Day is, "Thank a teacher for making public schools great!" No word on whom to thank for making the public schools suck, which they do from time to time on this planet, or on whether one is permitted to thank teachers in private or parochial schools.
I think that all of these National Days are a form of pollution -- calendrical pollution. Nobody is talking about the work it will take to clean up the calendar of all of these National Days. There does not even seem to be any master registry of all the Days, Weeks, Months, and even Years of the Whatever. The Romans reached a point when there were more days of public observance than ordinary days; I have no doubt that we have more designated days of observance than the calendar year has.
Someone should propose National Repeal a National Day Day. It wouldn't turn the tide against calendar pollution, but it might be a start. Better yet, we could enact a system of tradeable pollution credits -- any interest group which wishes to push for its own National Day must first buy the National Day of another interest group. Calendar-greens could buy up and retire National Days to help clean up the calendar ("think annually, act diurnally!").
Better still would be the naming rights. "National Candied Orange Peel Day, sponsored by IBM." "National Vanilla Ice Cream Day Powered By GM". Think how much your average lobbyist could make buying and reselling days -- "I've got April 3 here! April 3! Do I hear 50 dollars? 50 dollars!"
Okay, that's dumb. But dumb in comparison to what?
I think that all of these National Days are a form of pollution -- calendrical pollution. Nobody is talking about the work it will take to clean up the calendar of all of these National Days. There does not even seem to be any master registry of all the Days, Weeks, Months, and even Years of the Whatever. The Romans reached a point when there were more days of public observance than ordinary days; I have no doubt that we have more designated days of observance than the calendar year has.
Someone should propose National Repeal a National Day Day. It wouldn't turn the tide against calendar pollution, but it might be a start. Better yet, we could enact a system of tradeable pollution credits -- any interest group which wishes to push for its own National Day must first buy the National Day of another interest group. Calendar-greens could buy up and retire National Days to help clean up the calendar ("think annually, act diurnally!").
Better still would be the naming rights. "National Candied Orange Peel Day, sponsored by IBM." "National Vanilla Ice Cream Day Powered By GM". Think how much your average lobbyist could make buying and reselling days -- "I've got April 3 here! April 3! Do I hear 50 dollars? 50 dollars!"
Okay, that's dumb. But dumb in comparison to what?