HAPPY FUN DAY: A MODEST PROPOSAL It's hard not to like holidays. They always make for a nice change of pace. Plus, you might even get the day off. However, some of us have become increasingly dissatisfied with ordinary holidays over the years. None, it seems, are without serious aesthetic flaws. However, simply jettisoning all of them and starting from scratch is both unduly drastic and impractical as well. What we propose is the adoption of an artificial holiday. This will serve as a standard to which the other, naturally occurring, holidays will hopefully aspire. Goodness knows they need the help. Take Christmas, for example. At first it was some silly pagan ritual involving painting oneself blue and giving presents to people so they wouldn't slice you in two with their swords. Nowadays, it's one part rampaging capitalistic feeding frenzy, one part metallic glitter and six parts media lectures on Remembering The True Meaning Of Christmas. In our opinion, The True Meaning Of Christmas is bribing hairy, sweaty barbarians not to gut you like a salmon. Obviously, this is a holiday that's completely out of control. Surely this can be improved upon. Not so long ago, the complete synthesis of an entire holiday was little more than a dream, the sole domain of scoffed-at visionaries. But now, with recent dramatic breakthroughs in leisure technology, exciting possibilities present themselves. We can now manufacture a special occasion as good as, indeed, better than, anything currently available. For the last several fiscal years, our privately funded research organization, The Advanced Research of Fun Foundation (A.R.F.F) has been laboring in secret to create a new holiday (code named "The New Holiday Project"). What we've developed, Happy Fun Day, fills our requirements nicely. The idea is to simply do something that makes you happy and is fun. Simple enough. Notice that it is both generic and non-denominational, designed to appeal to as many people as possible. However, it just wouldn't be a holiday unless it was gussied up with a number of fine traditions. For example: Whacking Objects You Don't Like With a Baseball Bat: Whatever you want. It's a matter of personal taste. Presidential action figures, cheese balls, your computer, those little tablets dentists give you to make your teeth all red, you name it. Some of our research assistants were quite fond of destroying cans of non-alcoholic beer. They explode quite satisfactorily. Dressing Up: You can if you want. We don't care. Imitating Pirates: This involves standing around and saying things like "Ahrr, ahrr ahrr," and "Well, scupper me jibbets matey, this be fine day fer piracy on the high seas." Imagine a whole roomful of people doing this. Wow. Parrots on the shoulder are, naturally, optional. Carrying A Rubber Chicken Around: And don't be afraid to use it. Sing Television Theme Songs At The Top Of Your Lungs: Particularly if you don't know the words. "Ba-da-dum, Ba- da-dum, BONANZAAAAAAA!" Remembering Trilobites: Trilobites were the aquatic arthropods that dominated Earth during the Paleozoic Era. Perhaps a moment of silence to remember their accomplishments would be appropriate. Just Plain Sex: Another favorite of the research assistants. We at A.R.F.F. feel that there is room for improvement in this area. After all, this holiday has not been field-tested yet. If you have what you feel is a happy and fun activity, please let us know. If your Happy Fun Day Tradition is deemed by our distinguished panel of judges to be enjoyable and neither physically nor mentally destructive to living creatures that don't really deserve it, it will be gratefully adopted. The E- mail address is: metraton@cruzio.santa-cruz.ca.us. ------------------------------------------------------------------ No holiday is complete without its symbol. Christmas has Santa and gaily decorated trees, Easter has the bunny nailed to a cross, and Veterans Day has its....uh, veteran. For Happy Fun Day we spent many a sleepless night trying to find something to epitomize the whole concept. What we finally settled on was The Dog. To be precise, a cartoon golden retriever named Skippy, with big round eyes and a brainlessly cheerful appearance. The choice seems particularly appropriate, considering our organization's initials. (A.R.F.F. Get it?) If you don't like it, let's see you do better. Besides, you should have seen the rejects. (An iguana, for example. For what it's worth, the first runner-up was a dachshund. The consensus was that its general appearance was a little TOO amusing.) When can I celebrate this fine holiday, you ask? We arrived at the date by scouring the calendar for a period where there were no other holidays that might be overshadowed. August proved a virtual Sahara of leisure time. So get out your datebook and jot this down: Happy Fun Day (Observed) occurs on the second Saturday of August. (There is no Happy Fun Day [Traditional]. Yet.) This year (1993) it's on August 14th. Got it? Tell your friends. Anyway, that's the basic idea. If you have any questions, comments or suggestions for time- honored traditions, the E-mail address of the A.R.F.F. public relations department is: metraton@cruzio.santa-cruz.ca.us. or: ...netcom!cruzio!metraton Contributions will be passed on from me, the A.R.F.F. ombudsman, to Craig Vogel, Head of Research. You will not be paid for any material, but you'll be able to die knowing that your immortality is assured. It's a warm feeling, really. About A.R.F.F. A.R.F.F. (The Advanced Research of Fun Foundation) is a non- profit (indeed, a NEGATIVE profit) organization of individuals dedicated to helping mankind use its leisure time as efficiently as possible. Founded in 1987 by young philanthropist RIchard Rich II, A.R.F.F. today is truly a force to be reckoned with in the fast-growing field of investigative frivolity. Our primary research facility, located in a former zeppelin hanger in Sunnyvale, California, sprawls over three zillion cubic acres. It is here that we perform the bulk of our leisure technology investigations. Our primary research tool is the Encephalographic Endorphin Detector or "Fun Finder". This helmetlike device is affixed to the skulls of our test subjects and determines when fun is experienced on a basic chemical level. At any given time, as you tour the grounds, you are likely to find volunteers being tickled by complex devices, carefully analyzed volleyball matches in progress, or even men in lab coats watching The Playboy Channel (purely in the interest of science, of course). Over in Sector C the "fun factor" of various foodstuffs is carefully measured. (Lime gelatin is the current champ.) All the data gleaned by these methods is fed into our mainframe computer for sorting and assessment. (Our computer, incidentally, is a Cray Y-MPC90. You can't get many games for it, but it has nice graphics and it eats MacIntoshes for breakfast. It apparently sucks them through the phone lines.) Recent A.R.F.F discoveries include: inflatable meat, the perfect martini, new methods for thwarting Barney, the Purple Dinosaur, a cure for all known diseases, invisibility and, most importantly, Happy Fun Day.