It’s official, I looked it up, US Code Annotated 1902.002 §167 ¶182. If New Years Day falls on a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday then any New Year’s Resolutions you’ve made do not have to be honored until Monday. The statute doesn’t say anything about when you have to go back to work or anything like that but at least you don’t have to start your resolutions in the middle of the week.
Interestingly, in Rickmanbergstien from 1838 till 1987 the New Year always officially started on a Tuesday. In 1837 Rickmanbergstien planned to attack Allonsbergstien on New Years Day. A spy was captured in the Royal Rickmanbergstien Palace and it was feared that the date of the attack had been passed to Allonsbergstien. To keep from having to print new orders, the current Regent of Rickmanburgstien was notoriosly cheap, but still not have the attack spoiled by the Allonsbergstienians knowing what day it was coming New Years Day was just moved to Tuesday. While this did save the day as far as the attack on Allonsbergstien was conserned, Rickmanbergstien kicked their butt, the tribute extracted from Allonsbergstien never came close to paying for the lost trade caused by the date mismatch between Rickmanbergstien and the rest of the world The practice was regarded by the rest of the world as one of those qaint, charming, stupid things that the little city-states of Eupore does, but after Baron Buckminster von Hookes the last of the great Rickmanbergstien calendar makers died the practice had to be discontinued as having custom calendars printed for all Rickmanbergstienians would have consumed thirteen percent of the city state’s budget.
Well the holidays are all over now (well they will be at the end of the day at least) and everything can go back to as close to normal as it gets. The next couple of months are going to be a little crazy. I’ve got three business trips coming up; Memphis, San Francisco and Indy, and likely weekend trips to Lexington and Atlanta. I’ll get to drive to Indy and Memphis, but I’ll be flying to San Francisco. I’d love to drive to San Francisco but it just ain’t practical. Anyway that’s me till the end of February.
I’ve been watching a lot of stuff on DVD since Christmas, got the Jeeves and Wooster and Blackadder complete box sets for Christmas, thanks Mom. I’ve just barely cracked into them so far. I’ve been distracted by a little four dollar treat from the Great Escape. It’s one of those multi disc el-cheap-o packages of mostly public domain movies. This one has twenty movies that have some, sometimes quite slight, connection to racing, or cars. They are all B level or worse films but they are all pretty interesting for one reason or another. The older ones have plots of varying levels of ridiculousness and tons of stock footage, one even has some glorious clips of European Grand Prix racing. The real jewels though are three movies made in the seventies. One biopic of Richard Petty starring Richard Petty, he’s not bad actually, and the dad from The Christmas Story playing Lee Petty, There’s some fun car chases with vintage iron and seventies NASCAR racing. Then there is the sublimely bad, a movie about a couple of dope smugglers and one about the most unlikely California Highway patrolman turned repo men you can imagine. They make Cannonball run look like Citizen Kane. What’s cool about them though is that they got made at all. You can just imagine the filmmakers hitting up their families and friends for money and maxing out credit cards to finish the things. The scripts and acting are pitiful but they still manage to put up some interesting car chases.
Then there is another movie that I just got my hands on Monday. I couldn’t watch it Monday night, I had to watch something to review for Cinegeek Monday night so I didn’t get to watch it till Tuesday, but I’ve seen it three times since then and I didn’t get in till about two am last night. It’s Gran Torino Clint Eastwood’s latest movie. It is amazing. A perfect movie. When you get a chance you have to see it. I’m not saying anything else about it so I don’t ruin it for you, if that that’s possible, but it is fantastic.
Well I got just enough time to get this posted and then get cleaned up to meet some friends for lunch so I’ll cut this off for now.
Happy New Year everybody.