Lobbying for the 368-Day Weekend

Once again we are celebrating the best kind of weekend, good people—a 4-day weekend. Is there anything better in the great scheme of things than having to work one day less than usual. Of course. There's the 4-day weekend. Praise be to whatever genius created this thing, having only three days of actual work at my job before another, if somewhat disappointingly short weekend, comes around. And there's always that one week when the commune was shut down for Red Bagel's circumcision—that was a sort of gloomy vacation, but the kid survived and our fearless editor was cleared of all charges. Still, I have an idea that will blows your socks all the way up to your hands so you look like a lazy puppeteer: The 368-day weekend.

Are you aware that 2007 ends on a Monday? Good people, this gives us an amazing opportunity to demonstrate that America still knows how to have fun. Let us take that weekend before the last Monday in 2007 and start the longest weekend the world has ever seen. A 368-day weekend! I'm not joking, I wouldn't even know how to joke about something like that, I take my weekends far too seriously. Do you know how many barbecues you could have in 368 days? How many exhibitions of dangerous fireworks? How many days you could mow the lawn, shirtless, enticing the female neighbors? Just think about all the nights you could stay up researching bus tickets to Albany until 3 in the morning, carefree about the stack of work waiting for you on your desk back at that miserable office?

Believe me, I love my job. If it wasn't for my job, I would feel I lacked definition, and had no purpose in the world. It's doing whatever it is I do that makes me who I am. Still, that aside, it's a soul-sucking, worthless, abysmal darkness having to work day-in, day-out. It saps the very will to live out of me thinking of the things I love in my life and how I can't do any of them because I have to spend 40 hours a week performing some bullshit function to keep our crass commercial society steaming along, crushing the innocent under its tracks. So nothing perks me up like a long weekend! And a 368-day weekend would be the longest ever.

Imagine: You leave from work on the evening of December 29, 2007 (and it's been a wonderfully short Christmas week anyway) and you return on Thursday, January 1, 2009. Wait—coming back to work on New Year's Day? I don't think so! By necessity, this plan has to be a 369-day weekend! Good Snapple, this plan keeps getting better by the minute! 369 days it is.

I'm not blind to the practical difficulties of such a plan. I'm well aware that if the banks don't function in 2008, if the farmers don't grow food and the grocers don't stock it, if the power company just shuts down for the entire year, it might cause a less-than-enjoyable weekend. I say bullocks! Which is British for bullshit. Whenever I have a long weekend I can just do a few columns ahead of time, or play catch up when I get back. Why don't we do that? Everybody stock up all the food you can in December 2007, and buy a lot of batteries and gasoline generators. I have a laptop with a battery, so I should still be able to get on the computer. But who wants to? It's a weekend! This prettyboy's not working for the weekend.

Forget the dreary drag of the office, let go of that boring drive to work every day— we can hold the presidential election in 2009. The president can't do the country any more damage if we're all at home watching The A-Team on TV Land. All I'm saying is think about it, Americans. I just might go ahead and take the "long weekend" myself if no one else wants to do it. Feel free to stop by the regal Finger estate to see my wife, Ginger, sunning in the deck chairs and good ol' Rok himself mowing the lawn. Check out my pecs.

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