To summarize it: trick or treat and bobbing for apples are both invented by tooth fairies. They are in shortage of teeth, so they invented activities that are damaging to people’s teeth to make them fall of sooner. And they picked Halloween because this is the time of the year during which the power of the magical creatures are the strongest so they can harvest faster.

Kelvin Kaos last blog post..Ugly Muppet Toy Pageant 2008

So I lied. )

I guess I could also say “made ya look!”

But hey, you said make up a holiday with it’s own history and all.

t.sterlings last blog post..how i can’t wait to not leave the house

Basically, if you haven’t already guessed, we all cease to speak for an entire day and the impending silence seperate the weak-willed from the strong-willed.

If a person cannot speak for a single day then they are to be deemed the nervous type: unable to control their impulses. If you are capable of silence; you’ll find comfort in a book.

No, you may not watch movies or television. The point is to shroud the entire area celebrating this holiday in deafening silence. To not say anything but to think everything. Communication will have to be on paper or makeshift sign language, if you must communicate at all.

This holiday should give people a chance to calm their anxieties and delve deeper into their own mind. Rather than blurting out throwaway answers to small talk or pretentious musings, a person should be able to realize what they truly think and how they actually feel about whatever it is they are encountering this quiet day.

Hopefully, this holiday will enlighten the majority of the people partaking in it. Those who don’t partake, or who do not manage to get through the entire day without cracking will lose one paycheck. It is our hope that the missing paycheck will cause a large enough stir that the person willfully opts to take it easy and relax in the calmness of not speaking at every nervous impulse. To not worry. To cease anxiety. To relax.

There is not historical reason as to why we should celebrate this. Then again, there was a beginning for everything. So, let this year be the first chapter in the long book of yearly silence!

Shane Shearers last blog post..To Live Blog

However, I recently read about a new holiday called Pool Day that they are trying to pass as a national holiday. It was first started by a man in Nebraska around August of 1889. Since it was so hot, he needed a break and decided to stay home in his pool. This was a small town and his employer left the factory he managed to find him at his home in his pool. He eventually was fired for this action and it didn’t sit well with his former co-workers. Labor laws weren’t in place at this time yet either, so holidays were scarce as well as anyone taking vacations if they could afford them. Anyway, each year, a few of his co-workers would protest his termination by not showing up to work. They too were fired and tradition died out rather quickly with most people since times were hard enough as it was. Anyway, some people were stil lable to get away with and began calling it the Holiday Day, when the employees would take a day off in August just to stay home, or hop in a pool somewhere.

As time passed, this day of relaxation stayed “underground” if you will, since congress passed Labor Day for the very reason of giving paid workers a day off. Many were grateful for that, but some still held on to celebrating what slowly came back to being called Pool Day. Some decided to give it an official time of the month, the last Friday in August. This coincides with many people’s vacations, either that is the last day, or the first. The few that are aware of Pool Day will deliberately not show up on that day in memory of what Pool Day is all about.

These same people have also started customs of throwing pool parties either at someone’s house or a community park that local companies sometimes sponsor, depending on the location. Due to semi-”sports” like poker, some have started to include pool tables in these times, and bring them outside by the pool to play. Finger foods and cake is usually served, like a cookout in the backyard.

Some politicians celebrate Pool Day, our current president included. But like I said, there are talks of this day becoming a national holiday for the past 10 years, and it’s possibly 2009 might see it for the first time since our new president-elect celebrated it for the first time last year.

t.sterlings last blog post..how i can’t wait to not leave the house