Humanity has progressed far in our many years of existence. We’ve restructured the world itself, and we’ve changed throughout the eras. But one thing remains constant, for all of us. The asking of certain essential questions, intrisic to every human. Why are we here? Are we alone? Will we ever get ARMD’s new album? And finally, probably the most pressing of them all: Is it Opposite Day today?

But first, a slight introduction. While you of course will have no earthly idea as to when it is, we all know what it is. One dreaded day, on which every little thing you say means the opposite of its intended meaning. “Mr. Heinreich Pickleblower has been found not guilty and absolved of all charges” would end up very badly indeed. Here’s a much more professional definition of Opposite Day. It’s professional because “E = mc^2, and Newton weighed more than Bohr”, says the chief smarty-pants of the Hecrenews Science and Research team.

Opposite Day neck gaiters aside, let’s get to the meat of the issue. Like a skulking shadow, you never know if a given day is opposite day, until its far too late. Ever since we were little and first introduced to this altogether quite troubling notion that any day might be opposite day, and if we didn’t realize it we were doomed, we’ve known that this horrible anxiousness must be put to an end. For this reason, the Hecrenews Science and Research Team was tasked with finding the solution to this problem: determining whether or not a given day was Opposite Day.

After perusing a veritable mountain of sciencey texts, the team found not even a mention of Opposite Day. Nobody before had even attempted to divine a method to predict this dastardly day; they were probably far too scared. Such was the terrifying power of this holiday. After looking through what all of science had to offer and being sorely disappointed, the intrepid nerds of the Hecrenews Science and Research team decided to turn to history. Perhaps by examining past probable occurences of Opposite Day, they would stumble upon a pattern. And so they hit the books (again).

  • It was the chief himself, Sheeple Dunnell, who found the first probable occurence. On July 21, 1861, during the first battle of Bird Run in the Hecretarian Civil War, Union commander Birdfield Scott famously remarked, “Boy-o, we’re gonna win this”. Sadly, the Union never did.
  • April 1st, 1666. Somebody in an ancient Chinese text declared his intense intent to use the restroom. He then went to the restroom. This may seem like everything is in order, but you have to consider the special circumstances of April 1st, which make this sort of like a double negative.
  • Cheetos, get ‘em while they’re hot!
  • Measly little intern Eif al-Tawa scrounged about in a medival edition of the hecrepeda and found that The Evil Snaxe said “not one of us is good or evil, but you are evil for antagonizing me…” to Hecrusander the Great during the Legendary Battle, which took place on an unknown day sometime after years of technological warfare. This, while intriguing, provided absolutely no help to the team.
  • Finally, perhaps the most compelling evidence of all: On September 8th, 1522, the ship of Ferdinand Magellan “circumnavigated” the world, “proving” that the Earth is round. It goes without saying that this must have been an Opposite Day.
  • The fifth of November also showed up in the dataset, but nobody could remember, remember why it was there in the first place.

And so, the scientists that made up the Hecrenews Science and Research team had their data. They just needed to make sense of it. Luckily, this part was easy. Dunnell simply grabbed his handy TI-84 and by the altogether quite magical powers of linear regression, they found the clue. According to the slope of said line, an Opposite Day would occur ever -0.29 days. What does this mean? Idk, but its probably one more of those certain essential questions. The r^2 value of the evaluation was a solid 0.023, so the findings are essentially indisputable.

And now we go to the present day. All the Hecrenews Science and Research Team has to show for themselves is this rather queer negative decimal, but at least we know when Opposite Day is. The world can rest at last, and judges can finally absolve poor Mr. Heinreich Pickleblower without fear. All thanks to the Hecrenews, of course.

Well, that’s enough for one article. The mystery of Opposite Day has been quelled, all misconceptions expelled, and this word’s been mispslelld. Such are the goals of as illustrious of a news source as the Hecrenews. Now, you may have noticed that this article’s been a bit shorter than those prior. Well, the boss rolled out his idea of a game-changing reform: thrice-daily articles. So article length involuntarily goes down to compensate. Hope Hecrenews Article Quality Control (HAC) doesn’t flag me on this. Still, this is gonna be a doozy. I guess that upcoming feud with that up-and-coming news website will provide more than enough content. Till then, Wopps out.