(Or maybe Year 0?)
The epoch for a variety of calendars is the moment at which a new religion was born. For example, the Islamic calendar starts at the year that Muhammad and followers moved to Medina. The Buddhist calendar starts the day in which the Buddha attained parinibbāna. The Zoroastrian calendar starts from the birth of Zoroaster. Our calendar starts at the year in which Jesus was born.
As measured by whether heresy and infidels will be tolerated, the most important and popular religion in the U.S. right now is the Church of Shutdown. Shouldn’t this then be Year 1, AS (“After Shutdown”)? Or maybe Year 0, AC (“After Corona”)? Or Year 1, ME (“Mask Era”)?
Important holidays in the new calendar:
- Anthony Fauci‘s birthday: tree with decorations, gifts under the tree, songs about the birth of our savior Fauci
- NYC Shutdown day (March 22): instead of crowding into Manhattan stores, as was actually done in Year 1, people celebrate by buying a year’s worth of toilet paper, while wearing a mask, from the safety of their Internet-equipped bunker
- Anders Tegnell‘s birthday: somber day of mourning, cut and paste liturgy from Yom Kippur
- Elon Musk’s birthday: just to make the Tesla zealots happy
Readers: what should the other holidays be?
(Bottom photo: Carhenge)
Every year is year zero now. No set holidays too much work canceling them when the thing celebrated becomes problematic. Holidays will be made up on short notice- like free shopping riot night- for injustice and inequality everywhere. First person to stop clapping gets ten years in the gulag.
More seriously, there seems to be a reluctance among public leaders (and others?) to recognise or admit that another potentially lethal virus will emerge at any future moment. And perhaps also to accept that this is most likely to happen in those parts of the inhabited world where humans and wildlife come into intimate (i.e. culinary) contact.
> Readers: what should the other holidays be?
June 14, Donald Trump’s birthday. Should be celebrated with fireworks at Mt Rushmore starting in 2024, after the slave-era presidents are replaced a magnificent carving of The Donald himself.
Phil, I think 7/21 should be a Holiday, because that is the day the Chief Epidemiologist of the US, Donald J. Trump, said ““Get a mask. Whether you like a mask or not, they have an impact. And we need everything we can get.” We can call it “Mask Day” and similar to Flag Day, we can review how best to wear masks.
Kwanzaa
Hanal Pixan
Hate Week
I agree with Comrade Duch about Hanal Pixan but we should go much further. Since we now exclusively worship the pagan gods and goddesses we must implement ritual sacrifice. The Mayans practiced it all the way through the Spanish conquest in the 17th century, and because they believed death was just another form of life, we should follow suit, honor indigenous cultures and atone for Spanish colonialism by reserving one full week out of the year in which we randomly select 1% of some definable population and livestream their sacrifices. We should begin with politicians.
Every year we sacrifice a Senator, four or five members of the House of Representatives, and go all the way down through the elected political hierarchy including town and municipal officials, Selectmen, school board members, mayors, etc., etc.
We should employ the Mayan methods:
“A number of methods were employed by the Maya, the most common being decapitation and heart extraction. Additional forms of sacrifice included ritually shooting the victim with arrows, hurling sacrifices into a deep sinkhole, entombing alive to accompany a noble burial, tying the sacrifice into a ball for a ritual reenactment of the Mesoamerican ballgame and disembowelment.”
Heart extraction was particularly elaborate and ceremonial:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sacrifice_in_Maya_culture#Heart_removal
There are signs that such sacrifices will be welcomed among our people: the Hells Angels recently assassinated the leader of the Bronx chapter of the Pagans for shooting up their new headquarters – which was formerly an American Legion post.
https://dnyuz.com/2020/07/22/hells-angels-accused-of-killing-leader-of-rival-biker-gang/
“We were hoping they would be good neighbors,” the district manager, Matthew Cruz, said.” They will be, after the score is settled.
Churches are being vandalized and burned, statues and monuments are being toppled nationwide, and the Hells Angels and Pagans are shooting it out in what used to be outposts of the American Legion. The time has come for pagan sacrifice.
For the squeamish among us who might think ritual sacrifice is a step too far, I point out this past weekend’s retaliatory gangland shooting at a Chicago funeral. You’re not even safe when you’re already dead:
https://abc7chicago.com/chicago-shooting-funeral-home-auburn-gresham-news/6328593/
Putting a price on life:
“Father Michael Pfleger of St. Sabina church is offering a $15,000 reward; $1,000 for each of the people who were shot.”
The police can’t protect anyone:
“Some activists said police were warned about a potential shooting at the funeral. Police said they did have some intelligence, so they had two squad cars at the funeral home and a tactical team in the area, but it didn’t prevent the shooting.”
Chicago cannot count undocumented immigrants but it understands the gang demographic very well:
“Brown, trying to put some perspective on the challenge facing police, said the city has 117,000 gang members, 55 major gangs, 747 smaller factions and 2,500 subsets of those factions.”
No safe places:
“Andrea Brookins, funeral director, said, “It used to be that safe places were churches and funeral homes — those were safe havens.”
https://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/2020/7/23/21334416/funeral-home-mass-shooting-rhodes-rayner-brookins-taylor
10 year old kids are carjacking people at gunpoint, moving in waves throughout entire neighborhoods:
https://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/2020/7/20/21327232/calumet-heights-carjacking-alyssa-blanchard-trinity-hospital
Creative and innovative thinking! While I don’t actually favor this proposal, it was amusing to read.
@Mic: Of course it was meant to be morbid humor, but also look at it this way: Chicago has 12,500 or so uniformed police officers who are tasked with protecting and serving all its citizens, doing everything from writing parking tickets and catching jaywalkers to sitting in cruisers near funeral homes as the gangs shoot it out. Mayor Lightfoot was a federal prosecutor at one point in her illustrious career and she knows there are 117,000 gang members, divided among 55 major gangs, 747 factions and 2500 subfactions. They don’t seem to have any problem with recruitment, retention, funding or training. This is a supposedly civilized city in the middle of America. The gangbangers outnumber the cops by about 10:1, and if they ever decided to call an intergang truce, they wouldn’t have any problem completely taking over the city, and after that they could divide up the spoils.
Obviously, the most important thing the Democrats should do once they achieve victory in the next election is to defund the police, disarm the rest of the American public, and let the gangs really work together unimpeded.
Next year will be Bidenian year 1, so he doesn’t have to remember what year it is. Maybe the Bidenian calender will have random orderings of months.
The Science Festival. It should last several days and worshippers should light up one candle after sunset for each of the prominent epidemiologists who built infection models.
Flatten The Curve Day. People make symbolic acts (such as never leaving their bedrooms, even to go to a bathroom) aimed at reminding everyone how, together, we can slow down the spread of the disease.
Andrew Cuomo’s Birthday to celebrate passionate leadership.