A calendar of silly observances

March 27, 2010 2:28 PM

Having once again missed Talk Like a Pirate Day AND Pi Day, help me assemble a full calendar of nerdy observances.

The Internet is full of daily celebrations that I can never quite keep on top of. So please help me assemble a full list. I'm thinking of observances like CAPS LOCK DAY and Talk Like a Pirate Day. Even the ill-defined "holiday" of the Pastafarians counts.

There is a list of unofficial observances on Wikipedia, but even that doesn't seem comprehensive.

So please, help me get ahead of the game. What's on your calendar for the year to come?

posted by bicyclefish to society & culture (47 answers total)

For extra geek points, there should be a webcal URL for something like this.
posted by grouse at 2:33 PM on March 27, 2010 [1 favorite]

Winter-een-mas
posted by madmethods at 2:33 PM on March 27, 2010

Well there is Festivus Day spun off from Seinfeld. I've taken part in this but that was during times of lone christmas holidays in college for those of us w/o family. Not sure if that's what you are looking for.
posted by kanata at 2:35 PM on March 27, 2010

e-Day (2/7)
posted by i_am_a_fiesta at 2:37 PM on March 27, 2010

Towel Day is coming up.
posted by reptile at 2:38 PM on March 27, 2010

National High Five Day
posted by sallybrown at 2:40 PM on March 27, 2010

May 25th is Towel Day. 22 of July is pi approximation day.
posted by martinX's bellbottoms at 2:45 PM on March 27, 2010 [1 favorite]

I and about three other people on the internet celebrate Eben Changing Day. It's mostly in memory of old-school crazy websites.
posted by cobaltnine at 2:52 PM on March 27, 2010

National Mole Day!
posted by queseyo at 2:54 PM on March 27, 2010 [3 favorites]

April 3 is Cheese Weasel Day.
posted by octothorpe at 2:55 PM on March 27, 2010

April 4 is the feast day of St Isidore of Seville, patron saint of computer users, programmers, and the internet. He was by all accounts quite the tedious pedant.
posted by longsleeves at 3:01 PM on March 27, 2010

Here's the calendar we made for this year. It includes things like Bean Day, Take Your Pants for a Walk Day, the Feast of St. Frumentius, and Wear Something Gaudy Day. We just picked things that sounded fun. Note: we didn't include Talk like a Pirate day, but that was a considered decision which will be revisited this year.

Also note: harmonic series appreciation day is something we made up. That doesn't mean it isn't a good idea, though!
posted by amtho at 3:07 PM on March 27, 2010 [4 favorites]

Febgiving is the first Saturday after Valentine's Day, to bring some Thanksgiving cheer to a dreary month.
posted by ellieBOA at 3:47 PM on March 27, 2010

I don;t know if there's a holiday for this, but this year and the next two have three pretty neat days: 10/10/10, 11/11/11, and 12/12/12.
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 3:49 PM on March 27, 2010 [1 favorite]

Steak and BJ Day! (NSFW)ish

Maybe not that nerdy, come to think of it...
posted by Serene Empress Dork at 4:12 PM on March 27, 2010

grouse: For extra geek points, there should be a webcal URL for something like this.

There is, courtesy of the newly relaunched iCalShare.
posted by WCityMike at 4:13 PM on March 27, 2010 [3 favorites]

The Annual Meteor Showers & Eclipses
posted by Brent Parker at 4:34 PM on March 27, 2010

Read an RPG Book in Public Week
posted by CarolynG at 5:26 PM on March 27, 2010

not really the same as the rest of these, but as a geek I really enjoy celebrating the solstice and equinox. Four times a year, I take the day to reflect on the past three months, and write a journal entry in a special journal I have. Because I have a hard time keeping the equinox and solstice apart in my mind, I just call them all Solar Day.
posted by rebent at 5:37 PM on March 27, 2010

You can download Discordian Holydays calendars here, for those of that particularly geeky bent.
posted by immlass at 5:50 PM on March 27, 2010

April 4 is the feast day of St Isidore of Seville

Not this year. This year it's Easter and there is no feast of St. Isidore of Seville.
posted by Jahaza at 5:52 PM on March 27, 2010

Leif Erikson Day! Referenced on an episode of Spongebob, some friends of mine used it as an excuse to throw a party where everyone wore cheap, plastic viking hats.
posted by Shesthefastest at 5:52 PM on March 27, 2010

every day is like sunday!

(sorry)
posted by sexyrobot at 7:10 PM on March 27, 2010

Don't forget 2pi day (6/28). Tradition dictates that you eat two pies!
posted by albrecht at 7:32 PM on March 27, 2010

May 4th is Star Wars Day:

"May the 4th be with you"
posted by Mike Mongo at 8:07 PM on March 27, 2010 [3 favorites]

It's okay if you miss the American Pi Day (3/14) because there's also the European/UK version in July (22/7).
posted by ErikaB at 9:19 PM on March 27, 2010

Don't know if this is geeky enough, but National Sweater Day (Mr Rogers Day) is March 20, Fred Rogers' birthday.
posted by clerestory at 10:38 PM on March 27, 2010

You need to head down to the local library and peruse their copy of Chase's Calendar of Events. It has everything you could possibly want.
posted by timepiece at 10:20 AM on March 28, 2010

THANK YOU EVERYBODY! These answers are awesome. So awesome, in fact, that I have A FOLLOW-UP QUESTION:

What would be a good web-based calendar solution for gathering all these days up and sharing them publicly? A wiki-based solution would be even better. How best to share this wealth?
posted by bicyclefish at 12:20 PM on March 28, 2010

At the time it may have seemed I was hijacking your question, but in reality I was just asking the question you hadn't thought of yet.

iCalShare, as linked above, would be a good way of doing it. If you want a wiki, there's always the MeFi wiki.
posted by grouse at 12:25 PM on March 28, 2010

http://www.sysadminday.com/ July 30, 2010 (Last Friday Of July)
posted by theora55 at 1:31 PM on March 28, 2010

September 26th.
posted by Iridic at 1:37 PM on March 28, 2010

Yuri's Night "to celebrate and honor the past, while building a stairway to the future" (of space exploration.)
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 5:24 PM on March 29, 2010

Jan 12: HAL's Birthday
posted by benzenedream at 1:31 PM on March 30, 2010

A little off-tangent but I originally got this off a freebie website:

Oriental Trading puts out a free calendar that has uncommon holidays. For example, some holidays they have printed for March 2010 are:

1 - Share A Smile Day
2 - Dr. Seuss' Birthday
11 - Johnny Appleseed Day
12 - Girl Scout Day
16 - Everything You Do is Right Day
22 - National Goof Off Day
25 - International Waffle Day
26 - Make Your Own Holiday Day

Not necessarily nerdy, but I've never seen any other pre-printed calendar before that has these less-celebrated holidays. Unfortunately, they're out of 2010 calendars, but if you can remember, hit them up when it's time for the 2011 ones to come out.
posted by Seboshin at 1:08 AM on March 31, 2010 [1 favorite]

You can put it whenever but I always giggle at TODAY THE OWLS COME from the weebl video.
posted by The Whelk at 1:19 PM on March 31, 2010

I have a soft spot for St. Swithun's Day (July 15th), because its utter obscurity in the U.S. makes it amusing to celebrate, and because it comes with an awesome explanatory poem:

St. Swithun's Day, if thou dost rain
For forty days it will remain
St. Swithun's Day, if thou art fair
For forty days 'twill rain nae mair
posted by dephlogisticated at 4:12 PM on April 2, 2010

grouse: For extra geek points, there should be a webcal URL for something like this.

Well, this afternoon I've taken the responses above, as well as the Wikipedia unofficial observances, and placed them into an iCalendar. I'd prefer not to host it myself off my Google Calendar account – if some day I want to remove this data from my own calendar, I don't want it to be a point of failure.

Anyone know of a good non-Google-Calendar iCalendar webhost? It looks as if the resurrected iCalShare doesn't host the iCalendar files ... they apparently have to be elsewhere.
posted by WCityMike at 5:10 PM on May 1, 2010

Just make a new Google account?
posted by grouse at 5:16 PM on May 1, 2010

No, Google Calendar does not handle some variants of "last [weekday] of the month" well.
posted by WCityMike at 12:33 PM on May 5, 2010

Oh, good grief, no one? Seriously, I put all that work into it and no one can host the bloody file?
posted by WCityMike at 5:04 PM on May 7, 2010 [1 favorite]

I think I can do it from mobile.me, if nobody has a better solution.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 6:34 PM on May 9, 2010

Adding for future reference, this appears to be how.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 7:56 PM on May 9, 2010

Thanks to cobaltnine, the iCalendar file can be found here.
posted by WCityMike at 11:18 PM on May 12, 2010

And is also on iCalShare.
posted by WCityMike at 11:21 PM on May 12, 2010 [1 favorite]

Awesomesauce. Spreading the word.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 11:31 AM on May 13, 2010

Here it is mirrored on google calendar. Subscribe at the bottom right. Also in Atom and iCalendar.
posted by Tobu at 10:54 AM on May 28, 2010