Happy Gregorian Birthday to William Shakespeare!

A little over a week ago, the world celebrated the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death (and 452nd anniversary of his traditional birthday) on April 23.

This morning I found myself on the train reading this from Bill Bryson's short Shakespeare: The World as Stage (2007):

There's no reason we can't continue to celebrate the traditional Julian date of April 23, but according to our current Gregorian calendar today is Shakespeare's real double birth/death anniversary, so what the fuck am I doing at work on what should be a major holiday throughout the English-speaking world?

March Is Going Out Like a Lamb (i.e., with fluffy and white snowflakes)...

...which reminds me that there are eleven months of the year other than the one coming to an end in need of weather similes.

Some of these may vary if you live in another part of the nation or the world where spring doesn't arrive with a blanket of the cold white stuff, but here's my current list of lesser-known weather similes for the neglected months of the year:

April comes in like a Dandelion and goes out like a Lamb's Ear.
May comes in like a Chipmunk and goes out like a Wolverine.
June comes in like a Caterpillar and goes out like a Puff Adder.
July comes in like a Mosquito and goes out like a Mosquito.
August comes in like Thermidor and goes out like Fructidor.
September comes in like an Itsy-Bitsy Brown Recluse Spider and goes out like an Antibiotic-Resistant Flesh-Eating Bacterium.
October comes in like a Rash and goes out with Full-Face Clown Makeup.
November comes in like the Old Bosses and goes out like the New Bosses.
December comes in like a Tragedy and goes out like a Farce.
January comes in like the Beatles and goes out like the Banshees.
February comes in like a Scimitar and goes out like a Sea Lion.
and, of course,
March comes in like a Lion and goes out like a Lamb.

It's officially the naughties.

When I first asked the question back in July 2005 about the lack of an accepted name for this decade following on the heels of the fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties, and nineties, I never thought that the lack of an official moniker for the naughties would still be continuing with less than a week remaining until ones replace zeroes in the third digit on our calendar headings.

The Washington Post confirms the continuing uncertainty about the name in an article today by Michael S. Rosenwald today titled "21st century's first decade is slipping away without leaving its name":

"Dictionary editors, linguists and even radio DJs say we have entered a semantic black hole in which the English language failed to produce a term for the outgoing decade in the same way it has failed to find a catchy moniker for your former in-laws. (Out-laws never stuck.) The language is stumped. The Zeroes? The Ohs? The Oh-Ohs? Help!"

So, since the mainstream media cannot decide on the name that we should be using, I'm officially making "the naughties" the name for the waning decade in the True Blue Liberal dot Org stylesheet. It's not up to "the English language...to produce a term for the outgoing decade." It's up to us, the speakers and writers of our language.

Now, what's the name for the next decade? Should we start calling it "the teens" before 2013?