Back to the index
August 10, 2002
Today's Globe had a front page story about the little country
of Turkmenistan. It's nestled in there between Russia and
India along with a lot of other quiet little Stan countries
like Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. Today Turkmenistan is the
newsmaker, it seems that President Niyazov, self proclaimed
president for life, has decreed an extensive calendar reform.
The names of the days of the week and the months are all
changed. He's even named January after himself.
This is a wonderful act of political innovation, and illustrates
what politicians are best at and most useful for. Some of
you will remember that I once decided to run for parliament
under the Rhino banner with calandar reform as the principal
plank in my political platform. If elected I promised to
change the 29th of February to the 31st of June. It makes
more sense to have an extra day of summer than an extra
day of winter. This is true political leadership in the
Canadian tradition.
President Niyazov has been an inspiration for me today,
and I've decided to mount a petition to rename our Canadian
months and days of the week as well. It's the sort of thing
I'm sure I can sell to our political leaders.
My former life's companion was Janet, so I'll name the
first month after her, I'll call it January. Our population
is becoming more and more aged so the second month will
be named in honour of their feeble condition, I'll call
it February. The brave Canadian troops just returned from
Afghanistan should get better recognition, so the third
month, March, is for them. The next two will be for two
wonderful women who enriched my life, April and May. I'm
sure you can see where this is going so I'll not dwell further
on details.
The days of the week will have the same approach, but I
want to mention in particular the last of our five working
days, I'm going to name it Freday, after my editor, kindly
old Mr. Ennis. I sent a note to tell him, and got an appreciative
reply, but he got the vowel wrong. OK! OK! He's the editor,
and he may be spelling challenged but I'm not going to cross
him, he could edit me out of existence. If he wants it to
be Friday, just leave it alone.
I know there will be those who will say, "You went
to all this effort and sent out hundreds of messages, but
in the end nothing's changed. What's the point?" Those
poor misguided people, they just don't understand politics.
Bluebox ©2002 Don Cox
Website ©2001-2003 OttawaWEB
