I love Chris' "shag a dog story" solution to the copyright hebrew calendar
problem. I was hoping Peter and Amos could sort this one out for us, but the
apollonians appear to be streaking ahead of the pack. However, please
lets not threaten anyone with exile to the moon or rapid expulsion into the
stellar regions, if they can't see sunse, or keep their feet on the ground.

Similarily, I would hate to have our discussion crippled with paranoia about
the imminent Tibdixianisation of our ecosphere. I for one, have always resisted
the temptation to suppose that those ten-fingered dinosaurs were acting under
mind-control or any other form of alien COMPULSION.

My current working hypothesis about inspiration is, that I appear to have
a subconscious ReadOnlyMemory and a self-conscious (actually totally precocious)
WRiteOnlyMemory (thats from my point of view of course, from the
outside it looks vice-versa). Like a child, my li'l old stuttering pineal
gland just can't keep up with the flood of stuff that needs to get from one
memory to the other through the needle in the camel's eye (read snowflake
space-time singularity).

Anyway, thanks for all the showers of fish, and here's a little story about how
to drive a French Revolutionary, metric-mad, calendar reformer absolutely
BANANAs, in/for at least two whole years (semi-divinely revealed to me at a
pensione off the Campo di Fiore in the summer of 1971):

Collect together as many old defunct analog wrist-watches (pocket watches will
do, but they appear to have become collector's items and they are too big to
mail anyway) as you can (e.g. Timex cheapies that won't run but can still be
set or at least persuaded in some fashion to show any position, of the hands,
that you care to shove into your troublesome friends' face). Then send one a day
to your victim in the following manner:

phase one,
On day one set the little hand to one one-tenth of a day after midnight.
On day two set the little hand to two one-tenths of a day after midnight.
...

When he shows signs of comprehension you can either stop right there or go onto
phase two:

On day one set the little hand and the big hand to one one-tenth of a day a.m..
On day two set the little hand and the big hand to two one-tenths of a day a.m..
...

When he shows signs of comprehension you can either stop right there or go onto
phase three (from now on, if he still isn't as stark staring bonkers as you
like, you probably need to continue gesticulating, slowly, with your big hand,
say a factor of 2?):

On day one set the little hand and the big hand to one one-hundredth days a.m..
On day two set the little hand and the big hand to two one-hundredths days a.m..
...

When he shows signs of comprehension you can either stop right there or go onto
phase four:

Get him a ticket on the space shuttle (or package him up as a high school prize-
-winnning science project that's cute enough to get NASA's attention) and repeat
the foregoing procedures (rather more rapidly, as we don't want to expose his
poor earthbound metabolism to zer0-gravity for too long).

Feel free at any time in the experiment to give him a hint by inscribing
a pentacle on the watch-glass (points at midnight, 12mins. after, 24 mins after,
36 mins. after and 48 mins. after).

In cases of extreme obtuseness you may need to resort to dividing the space
between these five points into five equal inscribed subdivisions.

To accelerate this process (if it catches on as a way to drive the whole damned
world totally insane) I recommend you mass produce watch-glass sized transparent
stickers with the 125 divisions of the circle and some pretty colored pentacles
(your jeweller friend who was doing the inscribing may get pissed off at being
out of work, but by this time he probably won't care since he too will be
stark.)

Yuppies and hackers will probably keep their digital dick-tracey's
on-the-one-hand and their decorative relics OTOH. Artists and Adams'
family will eschew all apparent concessions to digital madness and re-employ
their jeweller friends to actually implement the halving of modern life's
hectic pace.!
 
 

Dear $Bill, thanks for not-thinking of mee, I'm busy right this instant, trying
to get an advance on the book, big enough (say $200,000.00) to make good my
promise to my mother (which has saved her life) and to ensure the publisher
makes the book into a best-seller. I am considering all unreasonable offers.
Even ghostly ones!

--Dee's Yrs., Simon Cassidy, 1053 47th.St. Emeryville Ca.94608, ph.510-547-0684.