Too many Sundays
Quintupled on May 30, 2021.
I wailed in despair the moment I learned that August and October would do the same to me as May was about to do today.
Five Sundays. Five Sundays in a single month. It was just too much. It was unheard of. And it was so unfair. Unfair to squeeze out all this bloggish argle-barglery from my overworked and underpaid brain. Unfair to demand that my birdlike fingers type it all out. Unfair to slaughter all the electrons that would be needed to upload the HTML, click the social media buttons, and tweet out the tweets. And it was most unfair to my poor suffering readers, to subject them to a fifth psychological experiment this month.
I’m not going to do it, I tell you. I’m going to go back in my hole in the ground, or my I’ve-been-hornswoggled corner, or just hide under the couch. I’m going to pretend this week simply never happened, you hear me? There’ll be no new mumblery posted here chronicling my doings and happenings-to this Sunday. None. None!
Enough is enough. Down with the Gregorian calendar and its mishmash of misshapen months! Down with the seven-day week and the 31-day month! (And the 30-day month and those creepy 28-day months, too!) If I had my way, I would tear up every calendar in the world and replace every one with a single sheet of paper with a single box on it with a single “1” in it. There’s your calendar! It’s one day long! It’s always January 1st! And it’s always Monday!
“No more Mr. Nice-Pnårp! Now the socks come off!”
To Hell with your months, Gregorian calendar! And your years! And your weeks! To Hell with your fortnights and your sennights! Now it’s January 1st forever! January 2nd will never come! January 3rd and 4th and 5th and all the rest are surely dead!
To Hell with your infernal “week” days, too! Tuesday is gone forever! Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday—you can just forget about those! Saturday, Sunday, and Spoonday are but a memory now! Except for those weird 28-day months—the ones where the days of the week are all named after Abe Vigoda’s body parts—now only Monday remains! Monday it shall be—forever! Monday, today and tomorrow and forever! Monday—ooh, another dash’ll do—Monday—Monday forever!
Akkkthphh!!
A little birdie tells me that today is the 7th day of the 21st week of the year. Who counts weeks, though? What the hecklegroober does that even mean? Why does it even matter? From now on it shall always be the 1st day of the 1st week of the year.
It’s also the 150th day of the year. And the 2,459,364th Julian day. But who’s counting? Let’s reset all those to the first, too!
It has been 8,120 days since I squiffled out, “The stars scream at me, but why?” That was 22 years, two months, 1½ more fortnights, and two more days ago. Or: 1,160 whole weeks.
It has been 5,971 days since I cursed inflatable hotdogs. That was 16 years, four months, and another sennight ago. Or: 426½ whole fortnights.
It has been 3,353 days since I ordered a coffee at the Drunken Donuts on Uranium-238 Drive where, when I insisted on onions in my coffee, the young, be-sandaled cashier transformed into a giant, hideous, tentacled she-beast intent on devouring me alive with her rows and rows of sharp, razor-like teeth set inside a hideous, aquiline beak. I barely made it out alive. (And my coffee didn’t.) That nightmare took place nine years, two months, and five days ago. Too many fortnights and twice as many weeks.
And it has been 2,122 days since I was involved in that rat-teasing accident in McGillicuddy Plaza that led to a worldwide underdog shortage. That was five years, nine months, then a fortnight, and a sennight, and one additional day ago.
And the Great Noöclasm of 2186 is now a mere 164 years, nine months, plus a ha’fortnight and five days away: 60,188 days if you’re counting. (And who isn’t?)
With all of these calendrical numbers distractingly rattling around in my otherwise full brainpan, I resolved to spend the rest of Sunday №5 in a soporific stupor commonly known as “sleep.” I retired to my fourth-floor bedchamber, glass of goat-nipple wine in hand, and dozed off after the first sip. Baa-aa-a-a. Zzzz…
Numbers plagued me in my slumber. I dreamed of them, large and larger, towering over me, over the world: Some with their individual digits extending into the clouds, others composed of such multitudes of digits it would take a lifetime to recite them all. The enormous 4, a deep blood-red, was the most malevolent, peering down at me from high above, with magenta 5 and cerulean 2 at his baneful side. Dour black 7 stood staunchly taciturn, while 6, bedecked in merry orange, was the only thing that attenuated my dread. Gray 1 loomed ominously—sending a nameless chill down my spine. Brilliant white 0 shone through the clouds, radiant and rotating like a wheel in the sky, nearly blinding me.
Leaden commas began raining from Heaven, each with a trio of wriggling digits attached to both sides. Bulbous decimal points, flying exponents, and Knuth’s up-arrows bubbled up from infernal Hell. Millions and milliards were followed by billions and billiards. Transcendental numbers spiraled onward forever—they hated me, and I hated them. π and e and φ all piled on. π was my old friend, but he had apparently betrayed me and joined forces with these other irrationals. ∞ held back, but only because there wasn’t enough room in the Universe for her. Just when a particularly unreasonable √2 had entwined herself around my neck intent on squeezing the life out of me, another nameless dread seized me even tighter: The Sneŗtman, inscrutable in his innumerable ways, had come calling once again. I awoke—
I leapt from my bed, out my window (which was closed), and landed on the lawn below (which was hard). But I didn’t stop: After a bone-crunching impact, my Pnårpy corpse kept going, through the solid ground as if it wasn’t even there. I descended into Hell as numerators swarmed around my head and their detached denominators tried to poke me to death with their now-useless fraction bars.
“Oh, sneŗt—!” I wailed. The bars on my bedroom windows—the men in white coats had so graciously installed them for me!—were supposed to prevent me from leaping from the fourth floor again, but it seemed that in my hypnopompic and synesthetic mania, I had willed the bars to turn into jelly, and they obeyed. Down through the soil I continued to pass, through crust and mantle, deeper into the Earth, mobbed by increasingly suppurthine kinds of numbers: Practical numbers were followed by smugly perfect numbers, who in turn were followed by pernicious numbers, perfidious numbers, odious numbers, and finally outright evil numbers.
Deep beneath the ground, I finally came to a halt when I hit the ground—hard. What bones had remained uncrunched crunched just then. 7 loomed over me, and then subterrene blackness. Fate, with 3 and 4 at her side, was still laughing.
I snapped awake, only to find myself covered in parasitic numbers—crawling and slithering all over me, trying to exsanguinate me through every pore. Leeches and ticks and fleas and worms, writhing and wriggling and biting… all made of numbers. I shrieked like a crazed moose and snapped awake to find myself still safely ensconced in my bedroom, curled up in a fetal position on the ceiling.
I fell back to the bed and murped in frustration. “Oh, sneŗt—!”