Animals in Heat ?

One of my favorite movies is 1000 clowns and in it Jason Robards makes this speech:


My favorite romantic tragedy

Murray Burns: Five months ago I was on the subway on my way to work, was sitting on the express same as every morning looking out the window watching the local stops go by in the dark with an empty head and my arms folded, not feeling great, not feeling rotten, just not feeling. And for a minute I couldn’t remember, I didn’t know, unless I really concentrated, whether it was a Tuesday or a Thursday or a… for a minute it could have been any day.

[Stands up]
Murray Burns: I gotta know what day it is. I gotta know what’s the name of the game and what the rules are without anyone else telling me. You gotta own your own days and name ‘em, each one of ‘em, every one of ‘em, or else the years go right by and none of them belong to you. And that ain’t just for weekends, kiddo.

I am not this ambitious, not yet.  I can’t be bothered to name every day.  But i can certainly name every month, starting with the default of the English translations of the curious Czech month names which serve me perfectly well until i think of something unique to name the month.  Something inspired by world events, or the name of a Child born that month, or some delicious local food which we are harvesting.  I have used it for desired political forecasts and as is the case for all non-magical fortune tellers, i often guess wrong.

For about 20 years, since i was first inspired by Erik Piper (who had two “k”s in Erikk, before the recession hit) to adopt this practice i have been signing upwards of 95% of my non-marketing emails with my name, where i am and the date.  Like this

Paxus at Twin Oaks

11 Animals in Heat 2012

It is not unusual for me to be in correspondence with people for months – media people, folks interested in community, activists, and for me to use a different cryptic month name each month for some time before they ask me what is going on with them.  They almost always ask in September or March.

These months are, respectively, Animals in Heat and Pregnant Animals.  And there is something about animal reproductive schedules that really gets readers curious and breaks them out of their apathy of inquiry and gets them to finally say “Hey, where does ‘Pregnant Animals’ come from?”


All the days seemed the same, so she just gave up