Spring Has Sprung! – by Philip

Good news! Spring will arrive officially at 7:44AM on Friday, March 20, signaling the rebirth of plantlife and men’s fancies all over the northern hemisphere. You Aussies can suck it. Being a big believer in self-determinism, I am using this opportunity to force myself back into a happy new state of mind, leaving behind what has apparently been the winter of my and Douglas’s discontent on the blog recently. So get ready to spring forward, everybody – a new season has arrived! Or, you know, it will arrive at 7:44 on Friday morning.

Scientists will tell you that the Vernal Equinox is that most special of Druidic days when the length of the night equals the length of the day. But we laymen know better than to take those nerdy scientists at their word. I mean, what has science ever done for us, right? We know that the true meaning of spring is that it infuses mankind with an artificial sense of optimism, which is exactly what we need right now. I say “artificial” even though spring is technically a very natural phenomenon, because the sense of optimism it brings is not based on what I like to refer to as “reality.”

But that doesn’t matter, because optimism doesn’t need this “reality” thing to be effective. Besides, I said that I was going to break out of the doldrums around here and I’m sticking to that promise no matter what I really believe. Even with the world economy faring as poorly as it is right now, a shared belief that things will get better soon could be, in and of itself, effective enough to start helping us right now. For instance, if everyone has a sudden renewed faith in the stock market, then it’s entirely possible that this could bring up my portfolio to the point that I will actually be able to send my children to college someday. See? Just because the day and night will be the same length on Friday, two more kids will be off of the streets. Nice going, Spring!



But that’s not all the Vernal Equinox can do. A report came out today saying that birth rates have already started to decline because of the flagging economy, mirroring the decline in births that accompanied the Great Depression. If we’re going to have a whole new crop of consumers to keep our economy moving through this crisis and beyond, then we will need to start making more babies. That’s where Spring comes in.

As I mentioned before, Spring is apparently the time of year that turns men’s thoughts to those of fancy. I’m not sure how it will help us bolster our waning population if men started choosing the duvets with lace ruffles, but apparently it does. I personally can’t imagine how men’s thoughts could turn any more to fancy than they already are. Don’t men think about sex every seven seconds on normal days? What will change about that on Friday morning? Do we spring forward to five or six seconds? Either way, we’re still outpacing the ladies by a pretty fair margin so I'm not sure that will help anything.

But regardless of how it happens, Spring is such a nice harbinger of renewal and rebirth that we can’t help but feel a little bit of optimism when we hear the bees buzzing and the birds singing. Hey, maybe that’s what causes the fancy thing! Are bees fancy? Anyhoo, let’s hope that this Friday, at 7:44 in the AM, we will begin our new period of morning in America, or some other Reaganesque platitude. But just in case nothing big and exciting happens on Friday, I’m keeping my cranky pants nearby. You have until the end of the day, Spring.

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