Bug Off

Hello World, Happy The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend! There's a burgeoning movement afoot to treat the late civil rights leader's commemoration day as an opportunity for community service, so if that's part of your plans for the occasion, I'm happy to send you off to your good deeds with a hey-nonny-nonny and a ha-cha-cha to boot. The world can certainly use more good deeds and community service, heaven knows, and a long holiday weekend in honor of someone who fought the good fight and did not rest on his laurels, would be just what the doctor ordered, I shouldn't wonder. Meanwhile, for the superstitious among us (and you know who you are) we can't pass by this time of the month with no mention of Friday the 13th dropping in on us uninvited, and hopefully it was not a troublesome day for everyone, in spite of its inauspicious reputation. On the positive side, we only have to get through this one and the one in October for the whole year, and let's face it, at least they're predictable way ahead of time, and don't sneak up on anybody unawares like earthquakes - although truth to tell, that smacks of damning with faint praise more than anything else. The fact of the matter is that you need to have a month that starts on a Sunday to have Friday the 13th, so even a cursory glance at the calendar will quickly identify which months to watch out for. In an ideal situation, you want a year like 2011 that wasn't a Leap Year, with January 1st on a Saturday, and had only one month that started on a Sunday the entire year. This also happened in 2014, when the year started on a Thursday and there was only one Friday the 13th from beginning to end. Apparently there's no combination of Leap or non-Leap Years, plus starting day of the week for the year, that will completely eliminate the unwelcome day from the calendar altogether, because in every year, no matter how you slice it, there has to be at least one month that starts on a Sunday, and often, there's two or even - God forbid! - three of them. This is what I would definitely refer to as "too much of a bad thing," and I ought to know. In other local news recently, I was busy in the church office on New Year's Day after worship, when one of our helpful worker bees collected the Advent wreath from the Sacristy (since Advent was officially over by Christmas Eve) and carried it upstairs to the storage closet in the balcony, with all of its many and varied chains clanking sonorously all the way. I told her she sounded like the spirit of Jacob Marley from the Charles Dickens classic "A Christmas Carol," which I thought was not only brilliantly clever, but seasonally appropriate besides - although admittedly, it did lose much of its comic effect when I had to shout it up the stairs after her, and repeat it twice to make myself heard. Indeed, she seemed to have no recollection of Jacob Marley from any point in her life, which a person might think would be impossible, but my explanations were met with quizzical looks all around, and the legendary example that set Ebenezer Scrooge on his journey of redemption was apparently no acquaintance of hers. This really managed to sap all of the humor out of the witticism in spite of its merits, and it suffered quite the same fate as poor old Marley, left to die alone and unmourned. Personally, I thought it was hilarious - although our old friends the dinosaurs will tell you that I am all too easily amused, and I can't say that they're too far off the mark there. Bah humbug! And speaking of things that don't turn out the way we might have hoped, every year we stay at home to welcome in The New Year, declaring positively that the New Year's Eve programming can't possibly get any worse, and every year, they prove us wrong, with even more terrible shows that count down to midnight, when the ball drops, the noise-makers erupt, and the fireworks explode all over the sky. It seems that no matter what channel you watch (and our cable service has hundreds in its vast arsenal) they manage to have the most boring hosts, the most uninteresting entertainers, the most tedious guests, the most uninspired musical performances, and above all, the most hackneyed interviews with every old nobody who will stand still long enough for them to stick a microphone in their faces. And if all that's not bad enough, the worst of it is that the shows seem to be about 90% commercials, and no matter how much you change channels between them, all you end up watching is cars, beer, insurance, more cars, Bob's furniture, and prescription medications with alarming side effects that make me sick just thinking about them. This year, finally, I thought we had really turned a page on the old way of doing things, and planned to observe the holiday countdown with our local public television station, with an enticing entry in the TV listings Best Bets called "New Year's Eve with the New York Philharmonic." I had a (perhaps delusional) idea that we could enjoy some beautiful and beloved classical music for a while with no interruptions, and then switch over to one of those network shows at the last minute for the actual ball drop and all the hoopla in Times Square, that is the very definition of the holiday itself. Not so fast! First of all, the PBS show started at 9:00 PM, and ended around 10:30, thanks not, which was not going to get us up to midnight, and not by a long shot. We used our TiVo to record it, and then start watching it around 11:00 PM, planning on using it to lead up to the big moment with some high-brow entertainment and none of the drawbacks. Unfortunately, the evil minions at the Philharmonic decided to play some of the most horrible modern music in their repertoire, rather than a snappy selection of classical favorites more suitable for the occasion, and we spent more time with our fingers on the fast-forward button than we did actually listening to anything they were doing. We bailed on them just before midnight to get our usual fill of commercials for cars, beer, insurance, more cars, Bob's furniture, and dubious prescription medications - and once again, thanks ever so much not. So that certainly didn't pan out as well as might have been hoped, and our effort to hit on a winning New Year's Eve strategy remains a work in progress. Garcon, more 1812 Overture, with a chaser of William Tell, if you please! For anyone who still believes that modern science will provide the solution to all of our problems, I'm afraid I may have some very bad news. It's still only January, so we can't even chalk this up to an early April Fool's prank, but recently USA Today reported on the work of British scientists studying high-altitude insect migration, and what they discovered was pip-pip, tally ho, and a bit of all right, as they say. Here it is in their own words (and apparently without irony) and as Dave Barry always says, "I'm not making this up" - ============================== " ... the results from a decade-long study found literally trillions of insects zoom over southern England each year. It's the first study to pinpoint the precise number of bugs that buzz over a region." =============================== Excuse me??? Since when is "literally trillions" considered pinpointing a precise number of anything, in any place, at any time, in any way, and by anybody who actually understands what numbers mean??? It makes me wonder how these British scientists would feel if they walked into a store, and asked the sales staff the price of an item they wanted to buy, only to be informed that it's "literally dozens of dollars, as well as a handful of change," instead of an actual price of the product. Or asking for the current time and temperature, and being told, "It's literally hundreds of minutes, and several actual degrees outside - so watch out." I'm guessing that if they suffered an urgent call of nature, a response to their quest for the nearest bathroom, that it could be in "literally trillions" of locations, would not get their vote as the most useful information in the world of science or otherwise, not to mention, the pinpoint accuracy that they might have desired at the moment of crisis, I dare say. Alas, these are sad times that we live in, where "literally trillions" is considered pinpointing a precise number of something, and all we can do is shake our heads - although around here, weeping and gnashing of teeth might not be out of order either, in fact, I can almost guarantee it. By golly, where is that 1812 Overture with those darned cannons when you really need it??? Elle