I sat down today wondering why January 1 was considered the beginning of the year. Turns out it’s nothing astronomical (it’s about 10 days after Winter Solstice) or even anything religious (It’s 6 days after Christmas) for that matter. It was apparently the day when Roman consuls, Voluptuous Arteriosclerosus and Gluteus Maximus began their year in office in 153 BC.
I was also reminded of the word “laconic” and the slightly apocryphal story of its origins. Apparently Philip of Macedon threated the Spartan state of Laconia thus:
If I enter Laconia, I will level Lacedaemon to the ground
The Spartans apparently sent a brusque, brief, and yes, laconic message – “If”
So I was inspired to write a brief summary of important global events in 2008 in a laconic manner, if you will. But that was when I was interrupted by Infinite Monkey 2.0. For those of you who are not aware of this peerless simian, let me remind you. The 1.0 version of the Infinite Monkey spent many millennia randomly hitting keys on a typewriter. Once in a while (usually aeons), he would produce Shakespearean verse by the sheer force of probability. Now, Infinite monkey 2.0 is an improved version. He doesn’t use typewriters. He uses Web 2.0, and therefore rearranges tags (keywords) instead of letters.
I had originally written:
In 2008, the black dude won. China pulled off the Olympics. The original Windows guy stepped down. The Large Hadron Collider did not destroy the world. Mumbai burned, rich wall street crashed and became poor and Firefox released 3.
And the monkey decided to extract all the keywords and rearrange them. But I was surprised because he came up with this.
In 2008, the black dude won 3 at the olympics and the Large Hadron Collider promised to open some windows into origins of the world but foxed everyone as it crashed. China erected more firewalls and a movie about a poor guy from the streets of Mumbai struck it rich.
Oh well, he got lucky I guess. But then, he had another go.
In 2008, the large and rich city of Mumbai made movies that most dudes would not buy black, even from poor (fired) wall street guys who hadron out of jobs, even in China.
Now wait a second. This was getting out of hand. And then, Mr Infinite Monkey hit the “I’m feeling lucky” button once again and came up with:
The year was also interesting in the sense that several potential “The Onion” headlines became real headlines
- Black man with a name that rhymes with Osama defeats rich white Vietnam veteran to become president
- Jews ghettoize and kill innocent people in Gaza.
- Indian wins gold medal in the Olympic games
- Banks give lots of loans to folks who have no intention of repaying and then say “Oops”
- In revenge for years of bombing and collateral damage, irate Iraqi throws a size 10 shoe at Dubya.
Anyway, wish you all a Yappy Hew Near, Nappy Yew Hear, and that other combination as well.
Doing Jalsa & Showing Jilpa 
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