Happy Canadian New Year!

Canada, the ice-covered nation north of America, is today celebrating the beginning of the Canadian calendar following last night's Canadian New Year's Eve festivities (watching an extra hour of CBC). The Canadian year is based on the the Franco-Pagan calendar, which consists of a single yearlong long month called Tundrafroid, begins on what we call March 17. For reasons researchers have not yet ascertained, the Canadians only celebrate the holiday every three years.

Canada lost track of what year they are on some time during the 1970s, and subsequently adopted the numbering system used by the civilized world. 2007-09 are the years of the hog, celebrating the Golden Swine — the third most important figure in Canadian mythology after Shiva the Ice Goddess and Wayne Gretzky.

Thankfully, three out of four U.S. businesses close their doors every three years to allow their staff to celebrate Canadian New Year's Day as a paid holiday. If you're one of the 22 percent of Americans working today, call in sick and celebrate.

Like all holidays, Canadian New Year's Day has a set of traditions typically followed during its celebration. They pay tribute to various aspects of Canadian culture and are probably symbolic of something in Canada. Don't get bogged down in the history of the day though; instead, focus on getting the traditions right and enjoying yourself.

Most Canadians start the day with a traditional New Year's breakfast consisting of a large Tim Hortons coffee, three slabs of back bacon and a full stack of pancakes, or as the Canadians call them, "Johnny Cakes." The pancakes should be topped with maple syrup. Do not draw little maple leafs on the pancakes with the syrup; it will result in your local professional hockey team not making the playoffs.

After breakfast, you should make a point of doing all of the following throughout the day, in no particular order. Most of the following traditional Canadian New Year's activities have their roots in the Canadian Church. Again, don't get hung up on such details.

Erect the Altar to the Great One
This is done by placing a Wayne Gretzky McFarlane figurine on a pedestal. Only a Team Canada or Oilers edition should be used. Anoint yourself with a teaspoon of Gretzky Oil then burn a stick of maple incense and count backwards from 99. Snub the incense and use it to draw a 99 on your forehead.

Grow a beard (men only)
This is typically done during breakfast, but you can always do it later in the day if you forget.

Old school video hockey mini-tourney
Play three games of Ice Hockey on the NES (PC / Mac). Play as Canada and defeat Sweden, Czechoslovakia and the United States. If you lose a match, start over. Most Canadians play with two fat guys, one skinny guy and one normal guy for a balanced squad. If you favor speed or brawn you can certainly alter the mix, but be careful, the skinny guys are easily knocked down and the fat guys are incredibly slow.

Kill a bear
It is considered cheating in Canada to use a gun while hunting, so you must use a different weapon. Killing the beast with your hands, wits or a combination of the two is most in the spirit of the holiday, but arrows and throwing axes are also acceptable. If there are not bears wandering around your home as is common in Canada, you can also draw yourself killing a bear, as I have done here. Either way, be sure to have at least four cans of Labatt Blue first. Killing a bear without a head full of Canadian beer is nearly impossible, and drawing yourself in the act feels silly without it.

Throughout the day you should be drinking Labatts Blue and playing traditional Canadian holiday music. Although most radio stations will be playing Canadian holiday fare already, you should play your own tunes. Listen to the following albums on Canadian New Year's Day:

• Nomeansno - Why Do They Call Me Mr. Happy?
• Neil Young - Harvest
• Steppenwolf - Steppenwolf The Second
• The Guess Who - American Woman
• Arcade Fire - Funeral
• Bachman-Turner Overdrive - Bachman-Turner Overdrive II
• D.O.A. - Hardcore '81
• Skinny Puppy - VIVISectVI

Do not, under any circumstances, listen to Rush - 2112. Ever. However, 20 seconds of Geddy Lee air bass is permissible on Canadian New Year. Use them wisely.

There is no traditional holiday dress for Canadian New Year's Day other than the standard tuque. Do not remove the tuque for the entirety of the holiday, except to shower. Do not shower on Canadian New Year's Day. Here, Jose Theodore celebrates with his tuque.

Do these things and you will have an authentic Canadian New Year's Day to remember.

Five letters, four spellings

One of the things I do at work is process vouchers that people purchase. The instructions say to fill in the blanks on the voucher and return the "original letter to Alex Headrick’s attention." Somewhere after reading that line and addressing the envelope, people often get confused.

Wednesday, I received five letters, on which my name was spelled:

1. Alex Headrick
   
2. Alex Headricks
   
3. Alex Headrixs (twice; also appeared on registered mail slip on back)
   
4. Alex Hendricks
   
5. Alex Headrick

Only 40 percent of people can correctly reproduce an eight-letter name? I can understand number two, because of the instruction to send it to "Alex Headrick's" attention. People often include the apostrophe in the address as in "To: Alex Headrick's." But how did the x's and n's get involved? Why are people trying to spell my name phoenitically when they're just copying it from the letter to the envelope? They have to copy the address too, so I doubt they are sealing the envelope and trying to do it by memory.

Notes on "A National Acrobat" by Black Sabbath

4 minutes, 35 seconds: The point where song rocks the hardest
4 minutes, 51 seconds: The point where song inexplicably starts sucking
5 minutes, 20 seconds: The point where song starts rocking again, just not as hard as before

Bill O'Reilly vs. Reverend Ricky

Peter just caught something awesome. On The O'Reilly Factor, one of the critical letters he responded to was written by "Rev. Ricky Gervais" of "Slough, England."

Bill responded to it, saying "blah blah blah blah, reverend, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.

Why this is funny:

• Ricky Gervais
• The Office
  
• Slough, England
  

I swear I don't know about any dead chicks

Sad Easter Tradition Continues: Dead Chicks In Mail
From WESH 2 News in Winter Park, Fla.

Excerpts:

The Humane Society is asking people to not send live animals as Easter presents through the mail. ...

"You have to have a place to have them, you have to be responsible enough to feed and water them every day. It's not something you can just jump into and not know much about," Alex Headrick said. ...

A spokeswoman for the postal service in Central Florida said she hasn't heard of any incidents of dead chicks in the area, but said it never hurts to take every precaution possible.

Bad with shapes

I’m in the air over one of the presently aptly named flyover states. According to the free map channel, it’s Nebraska, near Omaha. On the ground are nothing but mountains and squares with little bits of forest and tree speckled throughout. A few squiggly roads cross over the lines to keep it from becoming some a big hypnotic pattern.

The uniformity of the squares strikes me. I mean, these are gigantic plots of land judging by my altitude and the size of the houses, but they’re all perfect squares … sharp right angles and all the same size.

How do they do that? Does someone drive a cart from one plot to the next with a giant roll of bright yellow tape and a bed full of stakes marking it all off? How long would that take? These squares go on for miles … as far as I can see. I suppose there are tools they use that I don’t know about, and they probably use trigonometry.

I’m impressed the plotters are so good at it because I would have a miserable time trying to get one giant square all even, let alone hundreds. If you gave me a sticky note and asked me to draw 36 identical squares in a grid, I couldn’t do it. If I could do it as six lines and then six more and I had a ruler, it’d come out alright, but even then it’d be a bit lopsided. If I had to draw each square one by one you’d get a lot of trapezoids and other non-square shapes. And as soon as one’s off, all the rest are; they won’t fit together after that.

That’s why I couldn’t build a bridge, either. I’d do my best to cut all the pieces to the right sizes, and maybe I’d get close, but inevitably a few’d be off. Then trying to fit it all together, one wouldn’t fit, and then none of the others would, and if I’d been gluing the pieces as I went, I’d be screwed and have to start over. You can’t just force it in and let it be crooked when it comes to bridges … it’d fall apart and everyone’d fall into the river and probably get hurt. I’d get thrown in jail for my negligence and that’d be the end of me.