A special word of thanks today to Siobhan O’Rion, our great first world leader, for creating a spectacular new calendar and date notation. Hoorah! Hoorah! Hoorah! He managed to do away with the old ones. I am using the plural form here, as us humans had never been able to come up with one standard for all. At least, not until Siobhan O’Rion, our great first world leader, sent all of the world’s various calendars to the files of Myths and Fables and created a universally accepted new one. Hoorah! Hoorah! Hoorah!
I have no idea if you, future or even alien listener, will be familiar with our ways of counting years and days. So, let me explain this seemingly difficult, but deviously simple form of notation.
Instead of mindlessly dwindling into a detailed account of what historic events led up to the moment that Siobhan O’Rion, our great first world leader, became the great first world leader and ending up ridding the world of old and redundant ways, I will just share the bare necessities to then quickly dive into our great first world leader’s newfangled calendar that he, the humble person that he was, named after himself: Orion’s Dates. Its straightforwardness will baffle you beyond belief. I may or may not use today’s date as an example.
Our saviour and history’s finest, in his first successful attempt to unite the peoples of the Earth, abolished all forms of religion. Them, obviously, being the cause of so many disagreements, wars and general and frequent episodes of unreasonable unhappiness across the globe. He deemed these theologies to be more destructive of the path towards a united Earth than constructive. And right he was. By having yeeted the various religions and discarding the existence of any God or higher power, he created a new era beyond the B.C. and A.D. past the BCE and CE and far removed from other vague terms used by different kinds of atheists or religious fanatics.
His son Siobhan II, the one to be forgotten, succeeded him and honoured his father’s death by adding one more number to the list. However useful it might be, most people prefer leaving it out. Siobhan II, the one to be forgotten, fell out of grace rather quickly after having spent his father’s fortune over a fortnight of indulging in the severe abuse alcoholic beverages, a wide array of narcotics and hookers all sorts. One of his maids found him dead in an indecent position surrounded by numerous unconscious concubines, two drunk midgets and a legless sailor wearing a tutu. The poor thing never fully recovered mentally and poked out two eyes in order to get rid of the images of that horrible episode burnt onto the retinas. As for the maid, she quit.
You, dear listener of any species, will understand how this was a dark page in our world’s recent history. In order to never forget this, it is remembered by the yearly burning of his effigies on bonfires by people wearing tutus and drinking rum while chanting things like ‘Remember! Remember!’ I seem to have been dwindling. Will make a mental note of editing this part later. 152608.26: must not forget to edit this part. Final note: Did not edit this after all.
Today’s Orion’s Date is 152608.3. Let me break it down for ya. The twenty-six stands for the years that have passed since installing the new counting. The first year was the year 0 pronounced as naught. Giving rise to puns from nay-sayers calling it the naughty year. Nobody found that funny. These nay-sayers were soon caught and shot. Everybody found that hilarious. They had no choice.
Thus, we started with 0001.1. When Siobhan O’Rion, our great first world leader, felt that death would soon be upon him, decreed, and so it was written,’ After my glorious and heroic death, the world shall also count the years after.’ So it was done. The notation turned into 001001.1. The number fifteen in our present date being the number of years since his death. Luckily, for our calendar, he was killed in his sleep somewhere around the first day of a new year. That made things a lot easier for the butchers, the bakers, and the calendar makers.
As you may have deduced from the superior use of logic, the 08 stands for the month of the year. Months have no names. They were unnecessarily confusing and irrelevant for apparent reasons. The number 3 that comes after the dot is the day of the month, also having no name for the same reasons already stated. And so, we are now living in the fifteenth year after the death of Siobhan O’Rion, our great first world leader, and on the third day of the eighth month in the twenty-sixth year after the introduction of a new calendar. It’s as simple as that.
And Another Thing, just before I leave. Siobhan O’Rion, our great first world leader, made the counting of the days a whole lot easier for everyone by changing the number of days in a month to thirty-one. Except for the second month. That one has twenty-four days. Every year that can be divided by four is called an Orion’s Belt Year. During an Orion’s Belt Year every month has thirty days instead of thirty-one. Except, of course, the second month, which has an even thirty-six days.
It seemed like a good idea at the time.
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