Welcome to Manuary

Humor by Nathan Bengtsson — January 5, 2010 at 7:00 am | 12 comments | | Print

Editor’s Note*: the Forum is an equal-opportunity organization and believes that women should take pleasure in all twelve months of the year.
*This note was added by a female editor.

Men, we have arrived. The detestable epoch of familial drivel and good natured warmth towards all of humanity has finally ended. With a boom and echo of the real projectiles that brought us glory and honor in the past, New Year’s fireworks are the harbinger of deliverance from the holiday season. No longer shall we remain in thrall to the threateningly wielded rolling-pins of matriarchs who force us to help in the production of Yuletide sugary confection. The sticky-sweet grenadine buzzing of Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas” has now been drowned out in the feral roar of barbarian debauchery that was New Year’s Eve. Now is our time! Now, is the hallowed month of MANUARY!

We are prepared, having adhered to the sacred commandment of Decembeard (and for the less hirsute of us, also to the noble dedications of No-shave November) to break the manacles of domestic frivolity in which the holidays bind us. Let us charge, as a single brawny phalanx, into the coming year. Manuary has long been the time for great deeds such as this. Never shall we forget the glorious march of the Alamanni in Manuary of 366 across the frozen Rhine, enduring wicked frost-bite and yet still bringing many sandal-wearing Romans to their pudgy knees. Nor will we lapse in honoring the exploits of Manuary 1777, when George Washington defeated General Cornwallis at the Battle of Princeton in the boldest strike against tea-drinking sissydom ever struck up until the end of the Raj. The list of Mantastic occurrences goes on and on: the British took the Falklands in Manuary of 1822, Al Capone was born, as was General Douglas “Nuke China” MacArthur. In what month do you think the rugged, flannel-clad state of Alaska joined the Union? It sure as hell wasn’t April.

I remind you, men, of our noble heritage for good reason. The plebian masses limp into January as if it were the dread Monday of an entire year, blinking off their hangovers in the light of a new month and clutching their resolutions like cardboard shields against the tide of reality. Such is not our way. Men (and any women who wish to join us knowing that no allowances will be made in the costume requirements), enormous spiky clubs in hand, shall bludgeon this year into a malleable chunk to be shaped by our iron will. A foolish poet once wrote, roughly, “let us rush out and seize the day.” To this I reply, “let us saunter out in a relaxed but intimidating fashion and seize ALL of the remaining 365.” And when Manuary is over we may shave, but only because the beards inhibit the consumption of the libations that come with the onset of FeBrewuary.