More on the calendarfight front

For years I have written and spoken at length about the paralyzingly wrong-headed approach taken by the world's calendar makers when it comes to the name of our tenth month: October. I can barely bring myself to type the name without my jaw dropping from the sheer nonsense of it. Think about it: does an octagon have ten sides? Does an octopus have ten legs? Just in case you are one of the criminally insane and dangerously retarded observers of the Gregorian calendar system, I will spell it out for you: the answer is NO.

Octofascists will of course tell you that it doesn't matter. "October retained its name when January and February were added, and it's been in use for centuries," they'll say. To them I say, fuck you. You do not own my time and I refuse to slavishly follow a twisted ideology in which 8=10. Take that to its logical extreme and we are left with nothing less than the Orwellian horror of 4=5:

In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality, was tacitly denied by their philosophy. The heresy of heresies was common sense. And what was terrifying was not that they would kill you for thinking otherwise, but that they might be right. For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable—what then? [George Orwell was a friend of mine -CD]

And in my recent research I've found that that's not even the worst of it. Not only would Octofascists tell you that four equals five, but that nine equals eleven ("November") and ten equals twelve ("December")!

The veil has been lifted, people. Open your eyes to the truth, if you're brave enough.

Google Calendar to Customers: Eat Shit and Die

Google's calendar application is pretty darned popular, and some may even say useful, but when you dig a litte deeper, the picture becomes much, much darker. In fact, it's one of the most restrictive and ridiculous web apps I have ever seen, in which you must cede control of the very concept of the sequence in which months occur to an irrational and ridiculously outdated naming system. This puts Google in league with a thousands of other drooling halfwits, such as Microsoft, At-A-Glance, The International Bureau of Weights and Measures, NASA, Yahoo, Timex, Casio, Mead, Franklin Covey, Pope Gregory XIII, and everyone else who continues to live under the retarded illusion that it makes sense to -- get this -- refer to the tenth month as "October". It would be laughable if it wasn't so tragic.

I use calendars a lot. Every day, in fact. But I won't be using Google's. No sir. Not until they end their ridiculous charade and let me use my own names for the months of the year. Remember: It's your time, not theirs.

When I tried to ask Google why they were being so soul-shatteringly retarded, I recieved this snippy email in reply:

Thank you for contacting the Google Calendar team. We are sorry you are having problems with the service. However, there are certain parts of the Google Calendar application that are not customizable, and this includes standard names and labels for time-based data, such as the days of the week, months, phases of the moon, and national holidays.

It's as if they want to commit suicide. They won't feel so high and mighty when users realize they don't have to tolerate these draconian, fascistic rules, and start abondoning Google in droves. You heard it here first.

Corky @ Home This Weekend, 5/31-6/1

This weekend I'll be at home. You are all are welcome to stop by and stay as long as you want. I'll be on my brand-spankin-new OLPC laptop (Nicholas Negroponte is a personal friend of mine) doing cyber-research for my latest article, provisionally titled Why Isn't October Called Dectober? A Demand For Smarter Calendars in the Cyber Age. Again, please come over, even if you only have a few minutes. If you need directions, please textcast me a cybermail.