One of the many, many, many life lessons I can say I’ve learned from Steve Miller Band (aside from my undying pursuit to make “Space Cowboy” a viable career) is that time does, in fact, keep on slippin’ slippin’ slippin’ into the future. Turning in a paper yesterday I had accidentally dated 2007 made me realize exactly how quickly time passes and how totally out of the loop I seem to be on that one. Especially in this fast-paced environment where you’re taking midterms before your friends have finished their winter breaks, it’s important to take note of the time we have, how we spend it and just how hastily it slips away. While I’m a religious Google Calendar fanatic (I support anything I can color-code), my little time warp has compelled me to wrangle up some more fun, interesting and radical ways to mark time (and I’ll try not to think about how much time I lost looking for them).
Totoro calendars
Now I’m not really an anime person, but raise your hands high and proud if you were ever illogically mesmerized by the affable cat-bear creature Totoro. The lovable thing runs around, lives in trees and takes a girl on a bus made out of a cat…it sounds like the result of a really bad acid trip, but it warmed my four-year-old heart more than any Muppet ever could. Since then, I’ve found an alarming number of young adults who somehow found and loved this weird little guy along with me. Reconnect with your innate desire to love something that makes no sense (but you’re pretty sure is cute) every day with 3-D Totoro desk and wall calendars! Not only can you avoid losing touch with your inner child as each day makes you older and older, but you can also silently seek out the strange others around you who have also been secretly wishing they could take a flying cat-bus to work.
The Procrastination Calendar
Finally, a time-keeping device that will not only show you how much time you’re wasting, but will also help you come up with new ways to waste it. A multi-tasker if I ever saw one, the Procrastination Calendar is filled with lists, ideas, suggestions and from what I can see, commands of useless tasks and exercises that will make sure you’re kept busy all day without actually doing anything productive. In my opinion, it’s livin’ the dream.
The Condom Advent Calendar
For a less structured version of the procrastination calendar, the Condom Advent Calendar can do an equally great job of distracting you at work, keeping you busy, maybe even realigning your priorities and letting you acknowledge the passage of each day, while offering a more subtle suggestion of how your time could better be spent. If you want a calendar that makes you stop, look at your life and think about whether or not you’re getting the most out of each day, this could be the one for you. Or it will be terribly wasteful and cripplingly depressing. Use responsibly, or else your Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays could dishearten you just as much as the Mondays.
The Hibernation Calendar
Nothing says “seize the day” like watching each day be shredded by tiny razor blades and spit out in shredded little pieces. The Hibernation Calendar (or as I like to think of it, the reality check calendar) is a ceaseless, moving roll of calendar days fed through an attached shredder: a 24-hour process with no on or off button. You get to watch your days slowly die, undoubtedly making you reconsider how much of your day you spend YouTubing cute animals waterskiing and how little of it you spend reading about Slavic civilizations. Nothing like having a contraption akin to that of a James Bond villain threatening your productivity to light a fire under your ass.
The Bubble Wrap Calendar
Some people live happy, full, productive lives already without the aid of some external force of dread, influence or reminder to get them going. I am not one of those people, but I’m told they’re out there. So if all you expect from your calendar is to tell you what day it is, not to help you decide what to do with it, your already perky self can indulge in the Bubble Wrap calendar, a roll-out sheet of bubble wrap listing each month of the year, with each date printed under a plastic, air-filled bubble. You strike me as a person of simple pleasures, you who is so satisfied with life and need no scary influences to make you force it to be better, so this seems right up your alley. That is, unless you’re practical enough to recognize the alarming futility of watching your days pop. Think about it.