School ze fools · 9:20am Apr 1st, 2014
Let's see, it's a quick morning for me as I wait out the last few moments before heading away for a two day stint. So in the meantime, talk of fools.
The idea of April Fools' day actually goes back hundreds of years, and while the internet can give you the details the gist is this: The old agrarian calender traditionally had spring as the start of the year, not as we have it now, a chosen date in the middle of winter.
When the Gregorian calendar was imposed many people, particularily the very same rural and agrarian peoples for whom the seasonally relevant calender of yesteryear was much more relevant, resisted its imposition.
As an attempt to undermine support for the old calendar, its new year's date, generally taken to be April 1st, was called the Fools' day, because (to paraphrase) "they are fools that do not move with the times."
Like many others, the original meaning of this tradition has largely been mutated, but April 1st yet survives as a minor holiday not despite the attempts to excise it, but precisely because it incorporated them; thus becoming what we know now, the day on which to be warily suspect as to the validity of any posted thing.
Other foolery: I'm donating blood! Or at least, attempting to. There's a stature that they're not allowed more than four jabs so as to prevent veinal damage; they don't have the best track record in getting my veins. If you have ever eaten of the given cookie and drank the proferred juice when they haven't actually managed to take any blood from you...it's one of the most acutely embarrassing feelings I know of.
I know that pain, man. When I went in for knee surgery in...gosh, 2008? 9? They ended up fishing around in my arm for my vein before they could put me under.
Last time I tried to give blood, I almost passed out from the experience. I used to be fine with needles, but those two things within six months just killed it for me.