Title: “The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun”

Author: Gretchen Rubin

Rank: 20

Blurb: “Gretchen Rubin had an epiphany one rainy afternoon in the unlikeliest of places: a city bus. ‘The days are long, but the years are short,’ she realized. ‘Time is passing, and I’m not focusing enough on the things that really matter.’ In that moment, she decided to dedicate a year to her happiness project.”

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What better way to kick off a new year than a fresh prediction of our divine demise?

Mark your calendars: May 21, 2011. Harold Camping swears by it.

Never mind that Harold also swore by September 6, 1994. Sorry. Calculation error. Hell, anybody could have made that mistake. But hey, it was good practice for the people who gathered that day at the Veterans Memorial Building in Alameda, California. Holding their bibles open to Heaven. Waiting to die.

Anyway, where were we? Right. 2011. For sure. How sure? Harold figures it this way:

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Walt Disney (right, in copyright-violating jacket) and UO Athletic Director Leo Harris (holding non-animatronic duck) meet in 1947, reaching a handshake agreement that would piss off lawyers decades later.

With the Oregon Ducks playing in the Rose Bowl this afternoon, and the Official History forever confused, we thought we’d explain once and for all why the University of Oregon mascot is a Disney-licensed cartoon character, and why it’s all our fault.

UO yearbook, 1906. The phrase "Fuck a Duck" stems from misbehavior by early Eugene settlers, leading to genetic anomalies that are still visible in local natives.

The full story goes back long before our time. The real team nickname was “Webfoots”, which had nothing to do with delicious waterfowl. Instead, the original Webfoots were Massachusetts fishermen (even longer story), the name came West with the settlers, and eventually it landed on the UO’s doorstep in Eugene.

The Media (then quaintly known as The Press) couldn’t handle eight-letter names in headlines, so “Ducks” started showing up in sports sections. The UO students offically confirmed Ducks as the team mascot in 1932.

Ducks. Not Donald.

However, since Donald was introduced in 1934, a casual association was inevitable, and the Duck became that duck in the local imagination. Walt Disney himself informally approved the use in 1947 — that’s a photo of him posing with the UO athletic director and a real bird — and after Walt’s death, a legal agreement was drawn up.

And there things stood.

Until 1978. Our freshman year.

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Hey! Watch it! You can take out someone’s eye with that cork!

Last year we had this brilliant idea: Run a New Year’s post for every hour affecting a Stinque reader. Three or four posts in, it had become an utter mess. So this year you get one for Australia (bar’s open!), and another for the East Coast. We Left Coasters are used to having reality tape-delayed. We can deal with it.

Hey, remember when everyone thought the Y2K rolllover would be the worst thing to happen to us in the new millennium? Good times.

We apologize for not having a boobtastic Fox 5 Weather Bimbo to illustrate, but the new year will be greated by a rare Blue Moon.

Now before you get all excited, a blue moon does not refer to color, nor to a cursing heavenly body, but rather a mere calendar coincidence of a full moon appearing twice in one month.

Although it may turn blue if the Russkies misfire their asteroid-destroying rocket. America had its chance, but in yet another failure of the Obama Administration, couldn’t even manage a decent Michael Bay explosion.

Blue moon to shine on New Year’s Eve [CNN]