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In future, if every office and business you try to contact is closed for the day, check and see whether it’s Yom Kippur before you start devising elaborate theories. It’s much less alarming that way.
A while back, I started collecting Closed for Holiday messages from my employer's Tokyo office:
"Japan office will be closed on Monday, Sept 16th for Respect-for-senior-citizens-Day."
(The rest of the year, feel free to raz granny all you want.)
"Please note that the Japan office will be closed on Monaday, 14th for Health Sports Day."
(The Smoking Marathon is on the 15th.)
"Please note that the Japan office will be closed on Monday, 4th for Culture Day."
(Please put away your tentacle-rape manga for the duration.)
"Please note that the Japan office will be closed on Monday, Dec 23rd for The Emperor's Birthday."
(Cheers!)
"Please note that the Japan office will be closed on Monday, January 13th for the Coming-of-Age Day."
(Celebrated by learning how to cram onto a bullet train.)
"Please note that our office will be closed on Tuesday, February 11th for the National Foundation Day."
(Followed by National Drywall Week.)
"Please note that the Japan office will be closed on Friday, March 21st for Spring Equinox Day."
(Egg balancing optional.)
Damn, Stefan, I'm wanting to turn Japanese, turn Japanese now.
My personal holiday proposal is that we should all take a week off around Independence Day. As a non-believer, I'd like to celebrate my civic religion.
I suppose everyone has seen Ed Cone's proposal.
As I said on my weblog, if I had to choose, I think I'd go for Ed's idea over mine.
May one ask what the "elaborate theories" were?
:-)
Silly, Brad. They were silly.
They weren't as bad as my occasional fits of believing that I don't actually understand English; but they were nothing I'd care to repeat.
Stefan, my favorite fact about Japanese holidays is that every year on Patrick's birthday, 02 January, they celebrate National Go Back to Work Day. Which is more or less what we do; but they have the panache to make it official.
Adamsj, that would be a good holiday, especially if That Man refrained from shooting off his mouth the way he did 9/11 before last.
I laughed when I read this ... sorry! Given I'm the person who at different times became briefly convinced that, flying in the face of everything I believe to be true, aliens really had landed in Washington and, at another time, on my local seafront, I shouldn't.
Of course, there's the UK Christmas holiday, which begins on Dec 24th and then goes on, and on, and on ... after next Christmas, nothing will start working properly until 5/1/04, and it will take another week for people to wake up again, which is a pain if you're a freelancer. We need National Go Back To Work Day here, I feel.
Aha -- but Maureen, if you're a writer you will be working over the vacation period!
Because everyone you write for will try to clear their desk before they go home for a long holiday. With the inevitable result that all the edits, proofs, and galleys turn up in one horrible pre-Christmas mailbag around the 20th, with terse notes demanding their return to an office on the other side of the world no later than the fifth day of the new year.
Happy Newtonmass! (Scribble, scribble.)
Come on, now. Writers, work? They just hang out in bars and coffee shops all day. At some point in the afternoon, they bang out some work for an hour or two, and send it to their editors. Who used to have a rough job, but are pretty much featherbedding what with spellcheckers. And the editors get to barhop in NYC and London and other cool cities, on expense accounts.
Jeez. If I ever get tired of *real* work, I'll just become a writer. Or an editor. Or maybe a teacher - that's another easy 'job', just whip a few dozen adolescents into order, and fill their eager heads with my knowledge and wisdom.
(grumble, grumble, grumble,.... :)
In the film The Lost Weekend, the alcoholic protagonist is at one point trying to get to a pawn shop to pawn something to get money for booze. It's Yom Kippur, and he tries several Jewish-owned pawn shops, but they're all closed. Finally he finds one run by an Irishman, but it's closed too. For some reason the owner is around, and our guy asks him why he closed on Yom Kipper if he's not Jewish? Answer: "We have a deal with the Jewish shops. We stay closed on Yom Kipper and they stay closed on St. Patrick's Day."