Bad Domo!

Our house calendar theme varies wildly from year to year. One year it might be an abstract art calendar, and the next year, a cheesy month-by-month collection of puppy dogs that was on clearance even before the new year began.


For 2008, I went for Domo, a funny looking Japanese character doing various household tasks. I've since learned that Domo

"is the mascot of Japan's NHK television station, appearing in several 30 second stop-motion sketches shown as station identification during shows.

In 2006 Nickelodeon announced that it is developing 26 2-minute shorts of Domo for broadcast in the United States. In December 2007 ICv2 announced that Nickelodeon would begin airing the shorts in early 2008."

Interesting tidbit: One of the characters on the show--a mom named Patience, no less--has a drinking problem.

(Thanks Wikipedia!)


Anyway, we soon noticed something weird about Domo. On any month where the 27th fell on a Sunday, the following day was listed as "26" not "28." This sequential blunder brought very, very bad luck to our household in January. Immediately, The Beloved suspected Domo had something to do with it, but I held out. After all, the little furry Japanese character was cute and endearing in his own scary way.

At the least, I argued, we should wait and see what would happen in April, the next month where the dates were scrambled.

And on April 28th (or the second round of April 26th, in Domo-land), our house was beset by unexpected daycare closures and the plague, in the form of a nasty stomach virus that knocked The Beloved and Chica out for several days.

Swift action was called for.

The following day, April 29th, I went to Third Place Books, one of my favorite local bookstores, and found a meager stack of calendars on the clearance table. About half of them featured photos of ugly minimalist Ikea-style chairs...a tempting calendar option, simply due to the visual jolt. Then there were a few medieval history calendars --if those chair calendars made me think of the sound of subway brakes screeching through the tunnels, then the medieval calendars recalled the hushed rustling of a few old churches that I've visited. Not exactly what I wanted.

Then the perfect calendar to replace Domo caught my eye. The 2008 Thrasher Skateboard Magazine calendar. There was only one left. If anyone could turn our luck around, it would be those snotty, rude, skinny-pant-wearing skater boys. Plus DJ would be stoked.

After hanging up the new Thrasher calendar, Chica and I made a big production of shredding the Domo calendar in an attempt to rid ourselves of that bad juju. I can't tell yet whether it's made a difference, but at least those skater boys know their numbers up to 31, in order.