Leap Day Playlist

So, today is the very rare date of February 29th. Growing up the fact that we simply invented a day out of thin air every four years confused me, but it was one of those things everyone else seemed to have no trouble rolling with, so I didn't want to ask too many questions. (This is the same approach I took concerning the career of Cyndi Lauper.) For those of you who may have wondered but never asked, this date exists because it actually takes the Earth 365 days, 5 hours, 49 minutes and 16 seconds to complete one rotation around the sun and somewhere along the way the people in charge of things basically all agreed to ignore that extra time until it got close enough to make up a day. Now, pay no attention to the fact that over-run still doesn't actually add up to enough time to make an entire day, because apparently neither did they. (I guess they were really married to that 365 number.) What this means is that this planet is exactly where it is supposed to be only about every 400 years or so. Seriously, if Earth was a watch we would have thrown it away by now. It also means our entire system of time is essentially nonsense. Most people complain about never having enough of time and here we are ignoring nearly 6 hours every single year. Seems rather wasteful.

All that being said I'm willing to concede that the concept of a leap year makes sense. However, the idea of February 29th does not. The date we have chosen to cash in this time we've built up in credit was poorly picked. Our internal clocks have all been off by a day for the last two months for no real good reason. What would have made the most sense would have been to simply tack another day on the end of last December, but you know damn well they invented February 29th just because February is the shortest month. I imagine the people who make calendars to have wicked OCD and the fact that February is the only month which doesn't have at least 30 days drives them crazy. My position is that if we're going to be this arbitrary with it, why not use it when it would do the most good, like June? Wouldn't we all appreciate an extra nice, sunny summer day more than another cold winter afternoon?

You know what? Let's not think about it too much and just listen to music instead. These are all songs about leaping or, because leaping is not exactly a commonly-used word in the music industry (I imagine because it is hard to rhyme), jumping.