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Kirby: So we’re changing when my columns run to save you some stress — at least that’s my story and I’m sticking to it

Robert Kirby

The Salt Lake Tribune recently spent a lot of money on market research for its columnists. Word is the bosses did this to determine which days readers are most likely to take offense at something we write.

For purposes of this column — which will be the last one I write for Saturday’s print edition — I’ll focus on what the research revealed about me.

For some reason, Thursdays and Saturdays are not good days for my print column, or, more specifically, for super-serious readers. They aren’t even moderately tolerable days for the self-important.

Based on the results of the extensive study — the findings of which are over half a page long — Thursday is a high-stress day for the sensitive.

It’s hard work taking yourself so seriously. By Thursday, you’re exhausted and you still have Friday to get through. The last thing you need is some smart-aleck shooting at your sacred cow.

My Saturday column is bad because, well, that’s when church people are preparing their Sunday school lessons, sermons and how to squeeze in a football game or two. They don’t want a bad influence sneaking into the material, even if it’s still just sitting on the driveway.

So, instead of Thursday and Saturday, my scurrilous ramblings will hereafter appear in print on Tuesday and Friday.

I get to keep Sunday because clicks on my column go way up during church hours. Read into that whatever you like.

I don’t mind the change. Wouldn’t matter if I did. In this business — as it is in most — I do what the boss says or I find another job. And since my wife says she isn’t going through another career change with me, I should probably keep his one.

Since marrying her, I have changed careers four times. I was a carpenter until I got hurt falling off a roof accidentally. Then I was a soldier until I got hurt jumping out of an airplane on purpose. After that I was a cop until I got hurt — well, enough so that it just got boring.

Writing has been the only job I’ve ever had in which I’m actually paid to hurt the feelings of a certain type of person while in the privacy/safety of an office.

Truthfully, not much will change in what I do. You can continue to grouse or grin at my musings or shun or share them — just on different days.

The biggest change will come in how I research potential subject matter. It’s both thorough and serious — and date related.

For example, Hitler’s birthday (April 20, 1889) falls on Friday this year. April 20 is also the day in 1994 that the space shuttle STS-59 Endeavour 6 landed with proof (quickly hushed up by Jews, Mormons and Freemasons) that the Earth is not round but rather more of an oblate spheroid.

It gets better/worse. Eleven years to the day before Endeavour’s return, President Ronald Reagan signed a bailout for Social Security to the tune of $165 billion, funds allegedly diverted from NASA, which no longer needs to spend big money to fool us because of a guy name Mike.

Last month, on a Friday (Nov. 24), Mike Hughes, a California-based flat-Earth believer, announced that he was forced to cancel launching himself into space because of government interference. He says the launch will still happen, possibly on a Tuesday or a Friday.

Is all of this coincidental? I think not. That’s a column that will practically write itself. Most of mine do.

Editor’s note • If Kirby thinks we would spend even a dime researching anything he does, he is severely delusional. But, then, you already know that.