More often than not I use this blog as a means to tear Eric down off his pedestal, or at the very least make petty insults about him. But today I find myself applauding Eric's efforts, since in this case he has shown himself to be selfish, childish, and unreasonable; shown himself, in fact, to be human, more so than he has in a long long time.
I've never known Eric to be much of a whiner, but given the natural tone and cadence of his speaking voice, I can only imagine that when he does whine it is well-near unbearable. So I could forgive his wife and friends and family for caving to Eric's demands to move his date of birth further from Christmas, as apparently all the love and adoration and material wealth he gained from his birthday and Christmas being so close together was not enough to sate his desire for acceptance and monetary manifestations of love. After all, surely it is easier to fork over the dough for a bloated DVD set of fantasy-film goodness than to listen to Eric gripe about it for hours on end.
But as much as I understand, or pretend to understand, his loved ones' plight, I am on Eric's side in this matter. As far as the subject of birthdays is concerned, I have long been opposed to their clockwork tyranny. Once a year, every year, the date never changing; as if we are not men of independent thought and free will, but slaves to the machinations of the Gregorian calendar. Fie, I say, Pope Gregory XIII, and to you as well, Aloysius Lilius! You spent your time devising and decreeing a restrictive, oppressive calendar system while the Incident at Honno-Ji was occurring? Have you no shame?
But I digress. Eric's fight against the might of birth-celebration convention is a worthy one indeed. I can't claim to have the same feelings about birthdays as Eric does--he being of the liking variety, while I find them to be inconsequential and overrated exercises in self-affirmation--but I fully support him and his second birthday, even though I won't actually celebrate it or send him presents or, for that matter, even really think about him. Even though we are enemies, there is no reason for our differences to impede our march towards a better world, a world where we are not slaves to the actual date of our vaginal expulsion.
I realize that perhaps some of you found that previous sentence offensive, and for that I apologize. I did not in any way intend to demean or ignore those of you who were born via Cesarean, or via test-tube; just because you weren't ripped from your mother's womb through her cervix and labia, with placenta and birth fluid dripping off you like gravy, doesn't mean you are any less of a person, though I am rather surprised at your ability to read this.
That said, I applaud Eric and give him kudos; although I would much rather see the practice of celebrating birthdays abolished altogether, simply changing the dates arbitrarily and even adding second or third birthdays is a great leap forward in the quest to undermine and devalue this absurd tradition. For the moment, Eric, we are brothers-in-arms.
And the card I bought for you must have been lost in the mail. Probably eaten by dingos. Curse the wild beasts of the Willamette Valley!
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