Frazz by Jef Mallett for March 16, 2024

Or as I like to say, Any day on the right side of the grass.

Thank Goodness it was Friday.

The Ides of March are over and not a dagger in sight. Guess we made it, boys.

Another conversation where Caulfield uses words most people never do. (At least not me.)

One day day at a time.

Celebrate every Kalends with an out of season dessert. As if I really need an excuse.

I’m so out of touch with the modern world that I think Calends, Nones, and Ides should still refer to phases of the moon instead of solar calendar dates.

Ides I knew. Kalends and nones, not so much. I googled it. No wonder Rome fell.

Love all the new stuff I find out here. Keep ’em coming!

Not only does every month have a Kalends, a Nones, and an Ides, but Roman calendar keeping is wild.

See, we count up from 1. March 1, March 2, and so on until the last day of the month. The Romans counted down from the next signpost.

So let’s take the Ides. We’d call that March 15. The Romans simply called it the Ides of March. The day before the Ides they referred to as “the day before the Ides”. The day before that they called… three days before the Ides. Yes, three days. Because they did inclusive counting, and if you count “today, tomorrow, and then the Ides” that makes three days.

I’m aware this makes no sense, but that’s how they did it!

At least they finally got around to doing a calendar by schedule rather than fiat. That caused more than a few problems, I can tell you!

Descend bold traveler into the crater of the jokul of Snaefells which the shadow of Scartaris touches before the kalends of July, and you will attain the center of the earth; which I have done.

It’s been a lustrim or two since I heard those words.

Caulfield will learn as Frazz has, that some days will be better and some worse but successfully reaching days’ end is a major good.

One guy didn’t make it through the ides of march. That meant something to quite a few people

And, to March Birthday peeps, another “year.”

But only the Ides of March is historically significant. Because I was born on it! Oh and that Julius Caesar thing counts for something too I guess.

Current life expectancy in the USA is 77.28 years = 28,227 days, which means that, for the average person, 28,226 times they “just make it thru another day”.

The ides of March had special significance to Julie (Julius Caesar).

I need a mental health day. Does anybody know how to turn off their brain?

I learned something new today … and before breakfast.

A long time ago, in a city far far away, on the Ides of March Big Julie got it in the rotunda.

Amen, Frazz.

The few years have taught me that just getting through the day is worth celebrating

Does he pronounce it “Eyedes”, or “Ee-days”?

Under the Gregorian system, Ides, Nones, and Kalends aren’t really meaningful anymore. I mean, you could place these on the Gregorian calendar or even the Julian one, but we don’t use them to structure the calendar anymore. Our months are now computed in a manner that lets us lay out the calendar arbitrarily out into eternity if we wish, while the ancient Roman calendar was far more flexible, and dates were not expressed the way they are today. Kalends, nones, and ides were important as waypoints; they expressed dates like we might express a time as “five minutes to noon”. They would say something like “two days before the nones of March”. (And if you think about it, that kind of makes sense, because it’s sort of how Roman numerals work too.)

They also had lots of intercalary days, designated by the priesthood, and there were a bunch of them every year. (Some years, they’d even have a whole intercalary month to get things resynced with the seasons.) We have just one — February 29 — and it only shows up once every four years.

Mallette delights in finding words that make people dash for Google or their dictionary. A favorite that he’s used more than once is “callipygian”.

Of course, Kalends is the root for our word calendar.