All-New Dewey Teaser: All-old time slot

Last week we asked you to name your favorite sport yet to be indexed in the DDC. Props to Bill Murray for taking time out from what must be a punishing production schedule to wax lyrical about his first love, the fine art of chucking enormous cheeses down a steep incline and then chucking oneself after them. Many thanks also to Mark Behrens, resident social-sciences expert here at the Manor and source of much authoritative advice to the Dewey blog team, who outed himself as a big fan of the world punkin chunkin championships of Millsboro, DE: a unique event in which competitors attempt to propel pumpkins by catapult, trebuchet, or other mechanical means as far as decently possible. We'd class cheese-rolling races in 796.425 Non-track races; we'd put punkin chunkin in 796.2 Activities and games requiring equipment. All that remains now is to introduce this week's Teaser, which again isn't really a teaser per se (Leave it. -- Ed.), but a simple call for suggestions of special commemorative or celebratory days that haven't yet made it into the DDC. Saint Patrick's Day, Earth Day, Groundhog Day -- they're all indexed. But which day doesn't have the recognition it deserves? Pi Day (March 14)? Towel Day (May 25)? Talk Like A Pirate Day (September 19)? Let us know your favorite; tell us where you'd class it; and then sit back and reflect on a job exceedingly well done.

Comments

[Megan]

Jonathan, you are going to love this. It's like KISMET! I've been wanting to send you an email about this, but didn't really have any real reason to...and now you're asking for cool holidays!

Here's the link: http://www.lawrenceks.org/web_based_agendas_2005/12-27-05/12-27-05H/dadaism_month_proclamation.html

Here's the official proclamation:

WHEREAS: Dadaism is an international tendency in art that seeks to change conventional attitudes and practices in aesthetics, society, and morality; and

WHEREAS: Dadaism may or may not have come into being in the summer of 1916 at the Cabaret Voltaire at 1 Spiegelgasse in Zürich, Switzerland, with the participation of Hugo Ball, Tristan Tzara, Emmy Hennings, Marcel and Georges Janco, Jean Arp, and Richard Heulsenbeck; and

WHEREAS: The central message of Dada is the realization that reason and anti-reason, sense and nonsense, design and chance, consciousness and unconsciousness, belong together as necessary parts of a whole; and

WHEREAS: Dada is a virgin microbe which penetrates with the insistence of air into all those spaces that reason has failed to fill with words and conventions; and

WHEREAS: zimzim urallala zimzim urallala zimzim zanzibar zimzalla zam;

NOW, THEREFORE, I, Dennis “Boog” Highberger, Mayor of the City of Lawrence, Kansas, do hereby proclaim the days of February 4, April 1, March 28, July 15, August 2, August 7, August 16, August 26, September 18, September 22, October 1, October 17, and October 26, 2006 as

“INTERNATIONAL DADAISM MONTH”

(dude, the dates were pulled out of a hat!!!)

(and I really want you to see the picture of him turning in the proclamation to the town council. The costume is a reproduction of a 'suit' designed and worn by Hugo Ball: http://www2.ljworld.com/photos/2005/dec/28/71802/)

(this story makes me so happy)

[Megan]

oh man, I didn't realize that i needed to class it. Sorry. How about...
394.2912 Boo (how did I build this number you might ask? Well, as I'm sure you're well aware, 394.2 is "special occasions" and this is indeed special. The numbers "912" were pulled out of a hat, and Boo is the author declension, although I'm using his nickname, because 1) it's funny, and 2) I think it's more in keeping with the spirit of the holiday.

How do you think we should celebrate International Dada Month? March 28 is next Tuesday...something random, I think.