The Ides

It has come to our attention that a historic travesty of epic proportions is about to be corrected -- and not a minute too soon.

A Dark-Ages manuscript-copying error in an Irish monastery in approximately 800 AD led to the erroneous spelling of the dismal month in which we find ourselves. It is not March. We inhabit the month of Narch.

An understandable flub, I'll admit. Handwriting in that unenviable era was notoriously sloppy, and many of the world's current travails stem from simple mistranslations and poorly proofread Biblical verses. The injunction in Leviticus against the eating of shellfish was originally a prohibition against the carnal knowledge of barnyard animals. The monk responsible for this error had an irrational hatred of fried clams (and who doesn't, eh?), and read far too much into the original Hebraic. (This should not be taken as an exhortation to run out and boink the nearest goat. That is, and always will be, wrong. Verbal permission must always be obtained beforehand, and goats capable of issuing such consent are mighty thin on the ground. "Na-a-a-a" means "na-a-a-a.")

Now we find ourselves in the difficult position of attempting to convince the world to change a million million calendars -- rather like standing athwart history and yelling "It's Narch!" But I'm convinced we few, we happy few, can get the job done.

The first task is to socialize the idea. The upcoming NCAA basketball tournament must be referred to, wherever possible, as "Narch Nadness." The actor who, in a community production of "Julius Caesar," enjoins Caesar to "beware the Ides of Narch," wins plaudits from our righteous movement. One must be careful, though. Repetition of "Narching to Pretoria" and "steal a narch" only muddies the waters and sows confusion.

In other news, did that Jon Stewart cat administer a can of whoop-ass on Jim Cramer or what? Amiright? Woooo!