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Wheel

1/19/17
Winter turns to summertime
this alone is real
still I find that I'm inclined
to reinvent the wheel
punk parades and porn arcades
wait to make a deal
but al they do is sucker you
and reinvent the wheel

And like the swallows and Macarthur I return
just to see how many replays I can earn
and I'm amazed at all the stuff that I learn
the umpteenth time around
—Thaddeus Spae "Wheel"

We stand on the brink of a momentous era in American history, a time of revival, of renewal, of regeneration, a time fated to be remembered as one that made America great again.

But not just yet—first we have to get through the Fumptruck administration. A heavy slog, that.

Seriously, though, since when was it written anywhere that time could stand still? It's been a truism so trite as to become relevant again and again that Stuff Happens. Human history is one long river of spilt milk and tears, shigata ga nai, Anjin-san. Wipe your eyes and zip your flies and reinvent the wheel. This too shall pass, and return.

I'm here to testify on this one.

It's long been my personal sport to wrangle together a yearly calender for a cheap bulk Yule gift, themed with quotes or jokes or bogus headlines. I'm suing Facebook for plagiarism next month. Sometimes, when things get dire enough, I'll even attempt to be relevant. Such was the case in 2006, the bloody depths of the Georgie Porgie era (remember him? amazing how time turns pillowheads into statesmen, just by comparison). Battered by half a decade of political idiocy and war, my spirits had achieved an ebb far too subterranean to call "low," crawling through uncanny stygian delvings unknown to those happy souls requited to walk the sunlit world. But it was just in that nader of exogenous depression that I decided to explore the Lighter Side Of Revolution, as it were, making a stab at reinventing resistance in ways that didn't involve, as I so eloquently and subtly put it, "blowing shit up." Oopsie, ended a sentence with a preposition there. My bad.

The result was a calendar entitled "Fighting Fire With Marshmallows," a joke I excised cleanly and with minimal blood loss from Robin Williams in Toys, much in the same manner as the studio did. In spite of my best efforts, it came out pretty well. All my friends liked it, anyway. What the heck, it was free.

That fall, the midterms performed a concise, surgical ass-strike on the Ruling Junta and an unknown senator named Barack Obama started coming out of the woodwork in a major way. It was a Big Change Moment and everyone could feel it, especially the power boys with that cold cold breeze blowing up their skirts. It was the dawn of hope.

Yeah, well, enough of that happy horseshit, we're back in the pits again. If ever there was a need to fight the power without losing your mind, this is it. And with that thought, I dug deep deep into the entrails of Spae and resurrected The Marshmallow One from dusty archivitude.

And guess what?

As you undoubtedly know if you tweeze out on such matters, there are only 14 possible calendars for our yearly system, 7 for each day of the week that January 1st falls on and 7 more for leap years. No more, no less. Some perniciously frugal people find it amusing to recycle old calendars.

So imagine my surprise (go ahead, I'll wait) when I dragged forth the 2006 calendar and discovered that it and 2017 were ------


-----------(wait for it) -------


                 --------------- (isn't this exciting?) -------


EXACTLY THE SAME!!!!!
WOW WOW WOW SOME COINKYDINK HUH HUH HUH?

Actually, huh. 1 in 14 is pretty long odds. I wouldn't bet on that dog. And if the synchronicity can stretch that far, who's to say we're not in for a whole lot better time than the dark dreams of the Internet would have us think? And even if not, even if the Fumptruck Interregnum is destined to sell the national parks to Exxon and deregulate the execution industry and trample humanity under the iron heel of a fabulous designer jackboot, it's a ton better to travel hopefully than to arrive.

So herewith,

The 2006 2017 Chickadee Gulch Calendar of Destiny

Straight version

Printable version

And if you're really interested, the original posting from 2006: http://thaddeusgazette.com/archives/tgbp/archives/old/106/tg106.html#010206

And if you're really really interested, here's the song I keep quoting from: Wheel

Notes on the downloads: If all you want is something to read on your tablet, the Straight Version calendar works great. But if you want to sacrifice leaves of sacred paper and replicate your own personal copy, use the Printable Version file as follows: Print the whole document, even pages only. Then, print the odd pages so that page 1 appears upside down on the back of 2, 3 upside down on 4 and so forth. Depending on how your printer handles paper, you may wind up reversing the pagination to make your calendar work right. Fold the entire schmere in half so the cover is out, saddle stitch the spine and just like downtown. Only with better parking.

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