Today, it just so happens to be the case, was Publick Day at Henricus, the park at which I work at.  Since it’s a historical park, we are of course not allowed to just say that we made it up as an excuse to move roughly seven thousand folding tables all over the site, so instead here’s the real, not made up historical explanation.  You see, our ancestors had long lived in England, frolicking in the wilderness, wearing short pants, living in cute little underground houses, and hanging out with wizards and getting high.  This, as one might well imagine, was a totally sweet mode of existence and one which they would have been happy to continue with until their collective moms finally told them to stop with all the frolicking and whatnot and go get real jobs.  Unfortunately, the king of England, Queen Elizabeth, decided that really, England would never be known as a stuffy, rain-infested nation with terrible food as long as Englishmen were living carefree lives of pastoral grooviness.  As a result, she took all the cool people (and a choice selection of complete tools) and sent them all over to Virginia on three ships named El Nino, The Pinto, and the Buckwheat Bertha.  Some years later, they actually got here, and in celebration of having partially survived the trip, they proclaimed a day of awesomeness, and called it Publick Day, in recognizance of two of their most precious of freedoms:  Not having to pay $6 for an admission ticket, and being able to add all sorts of unnecessary and superfluous letters to words (Sadly, the early colonists penchant for just slapping letters around all over the place led to a shortage in subsequent years, which is why to this very day, we still have to abbreviate some words in order to balance out the universe again).

            Anyway, today was the day we did all that, and since it’s still just kind of a blur to me (a really long blur) I’m just gonna aimlessly ramble out some of the things that struck me throughout the day.

            First, and foremost, I got to wear a T-shirt today.  The thing is, since I always have to either wear my historical shirt (which kind of makes me look like a pirate, a farming pirate) or my Polo Shirt of the Damned (really, that’s what it says on the little tag in the back, and tags rarely lie about such things).  Whenever I wear a T-shirt though (especially an awesome, stylish and still totally for sale Teacupmammoths shirt), I know it means it’s my day off and I’m doing something fun.  Just for today though, we got to wear T-shirts to work, so all morning long, it was messing me up.  Like, I knew that I had to move say, the entire gift shop over into the James River, but I was still wearing a T-shirt, so I was all irrationally exuberant.  It was weird.

            Then, I spent the morning running the Free Brochures and Childrens’ Workbooks Table.  This would have been okay, except all these grownups kept coming along and taking all the kids stuff.  Like, a couple would come by and I’d be all like, “Yo, yo, yo, Homeslice!  Care for a site map or membership brochure?”  And they’d just kind of go, “Hunh…” and start leafing through one of the kids’ activity books.  Now mind you, these are quality activity books, full of stuff like those word searches that your teacher used to give you to shut you up after you finished a test and the two and a half dumb kids were still working.  So I guess these people would suddenly find a really good one or something (How many of these Historically Relevant words can you find? Beans.  Cholera.  Pantaloons.  Weasels.)  And then they’d just walk off with them (the workbooks, not the historical choleric pantaloon-wearing beanweasels, though that would make a good name for a band).  And I didn’t know whether to say something, “Excuse me sir or madam, if you’re over the age of seven, I’m going to have to ask for that back!”  Or whether I should just go with it and not do anything to shatter their childlike fantasy world of age-inappropriate activity bookage.  So mostly, I just gave out a bajillion activity books.  Maybe next year we should have some adult activity books so they won’t be mooching all the ones meant for the kids, but since I don’t think anyone would even want to think about what might go into an adult activity book, maybe I should just leave it to the professionals.

            And speaking of ice cream trucks, we had one of those too.  It wasn’t particularly historic, either in terms of being made out of like, raccoons and sailcloth (Raccoons and Sailcloth, by the way, would be a totally sweet band name as long as you could find a good gimmick for making it work) and they didn’t have old-timey ice cream flavors either, like chicory, or hardtack, or plague rat, but it was still a big hit.  You ever notice how ice cream trucks are always totally over the top, in terms of decoration?  Like, they never just put some pictures of various frozen treats and maybe a picture or two of a small child eating said treats, lest the short bused among us not be able to make the connection.  Instead, they always go completely insane, and have all these giant ice cream sandwiches and stuff dancing along with the kids, or maybe playing football or going frog gigging with the kids.  I think that’s just counter-productive, cause kids are only gonna come look at the truck and be all like, “Wha?!  Frog gigging?!  What the Hell kind of demonic freaky gateway to the netherworld ice cream truck is this?  That’s it, I’m just gonna go home and snort Pixie Stix for a while.”  Also, does it strike anyone else as a bad idea to make every ice cream truck in the known universe play the most incredibly annoying song ever?  If it didn’t herald the coming of tastiness, everyone would loathe that song, so why not stop playing with our emotions like that and choose a song that doesn’t sound like a bag full of toy poodles being dragged down an old spiral staircase?  I personally would suggest Kashmir, by Led Zepplin (which already is a totally sweet name for a band), because nobody hates it, and it’s like, an hour and a half long, so you wouldn’t have to repeat it that much.  All you’d have to do is take out an ad in the paper announcing the changeover, and then people would know what to listen for.  Then, whenever you heard someone totally blasting Kashmir as they slowly cruised through the neighborhood, everyone would be all like, “Woot, ice cream!”

            For the other seventeen hours or so, I did other stuff, but most of it wasn’t really that funny, so I’m just gonna end here, based on the principal that if anyone seriously wants to read more than two pages of blog about Publick Day, they’ll start up a grassroots effort to deluge me with requests and/or supermodels.