They celebrate No Music Day in the United Kingdom. No music on radio, in airports or supermarkets, or department stores.
What’s next? No Commercials Day? Why not? That would be a national holiday with more benefit than store sales in the mall.
Besides the basic national holidays of merit, we have holidays for Presidents that kids never heard of. Valentine’s Day is a holiday. So is Independence Day, Labor Day (whatever that is), Armistice Day (whatever that was), and Columbus Day (how does he discover something that obviously wasn’t lost?).
Mothers and fathers get a day, though everyone is required to remember the former and forget the latter. Thanksgiving is to give thanks for anything, especially good parking at the mall the next day, and low prices for turkey. Memorial Day is there to remember fallen heroes but serves better as the Gateway to Summer.
The Brits are on to something with No Music Day. What we really need here is a National Day of Quiet. Not only would there be a ban on music, but how about a ban on television and radio commercials? How about a ban on honked horns, police sirens, ambulance sirens, and children?
If No Music Day becomes a hit in the U.K., then television and radio commercials would be next, and why not? It’s all noise anyway, and that’s the point. There’s too much noise.
The only way to reduce noise, from my assessment of days that benefit society while benefiting me, is to go to a National Day of Quiet. No bells at school. No elevator music in elevators. Trucks would not be allowed to backup on National Day of Quiet for fear of the automatic horn beeping.
No iPods. No cell phones except for dialing out to 9-1-1.
A lack of noise doesn’t necessarily mean quiet, which is why I’m shooting for National Quiet Day instead of, say, National No Noise Day. There’s too much latitude with reducing noise and it’s arbitrary anyway. Quiet is where it’s at.
Everyone knows what’s quiet. Dogs make noise. Dogs that bark would be shot by authorities, but only with tranquilizing blow darts to reduce the noise.
No shouting on National Quiet Day. Just whispers. Motorcycles, mopeds, trucks, and airplanes would be grounded for a day. No factory whistles. No need. It’s a holiday, so no one would be working, right?
National Quiet Day should be endorsed by all the presidential candidates in the next debate. To prove they’re serious, each candidate should immediately stop talking for a day.
See? This holiday is becoming appealing already.