Lockport Union-Sun & Journal — We’re a little more than half way through October, and while a lot of exciting things have happened (Red Bull space jump, the season premiere of “American Horror Story”) I feel like a lot more exciting times and opportunities to come together and celebrate have been swept under the rug, or lost in the hustle and bustle of the news cycle by virtue of them not involving space, Red Bull or Presidential candidates.

We are currently in the small window of calm before we’re forced to put aside political differences in the name of ‘the holiday spirit.’ Let’s take this time to prepare ourselves to be civil by having a few dry runs to work on our ‘togetherness.’ Today I’d like to take a moment to spotlight some of the awesome holidays we’ve missed while we were busy setting our DVR’s and starting parody twitter accounts for Mitt Romney’s binders and #Invisible_Obamas_Chair.

Let’s start with what I feel is an important topic that has been greatly ignored in recent days, the life blood that courses through the veins of most of this great nations adult’s and all of its college students I am of course talking about pizza. October is national pizza month, a gift from the Greeks (the ancient Greek for ‘fermented pastry’ being “pikte” which in Latin became “picta” which eventually became “pizza” because, language? ) by way of the Italians has been a part of our ‘too tired to make a real dinner’ routine for hundreds of years. I have a personal appreciation for this celebration because the Dominos ‘5-5-5’ deal literally kept me and my roommates alive for much of 2008, what have you done to celebrate?

Some of us are generally better than others and don’t lower ourselves to the base enjoyment of sliced pepperoni or any other animal products, for these people, we celebrate vegetarian month, which started October first with World Vegetarian Day. In case you took my last sentence too seriously, I would like to point out that October is also “Sarcastic Month.”

If you’re like me, you’ve spent a lot of this month accidently eavesdropping and subsequently being annoyed by, arguments about ‘policy’ and ‘the economy’ between equally uninformed people; well, you just missed your chance to say something about it because the second week in October was Pet Peeve week. There’s always next year.

If you’ve missed all of those, there’s no need to panic, you still have Newspaper Carrier day (20th), National Bologna Day (24th) and “Punk for a Day” day (25th), as well as a whole host of others, so find some time to celebrate this month.

Today is “Evaluate your Life” Day, a time for reflection and a perfect opportunity to get a head start on some positive life changes so your New Year resolutions this year won’t be identical to last year’s. As October comes to a close, there will be a sharp increase in events where you’ll want to yell at a teenager who just got into politics (via twitter) and thinks that they know everything and you just don’t get it.

Chances for you to get overly worked up about topics you don’t think about for most of the year will suddenly be everywhere, but remember, voter fraud has never made you late for work and a lack of oil drilling on public land is not the reason your internet is so slow. It’s during these stressful times that setting down our differences and celebrating what brings us together is the most important.

Vincent Davis II is a Cornell graduate, DJ, and market development specialist in the IT industry. His column appears on the second and fourth Friday of every month. He can be contacted at vincedavis06@gmail.com