French Fries Day, Embrace Your Geekness Day

Saturday, July 13 is French Fries Day, although we here at BOD are partial to french fries on just about any occasion. If our significant others aren't watching too closely, we'll even sneak on some extra salt. Perhaps on Saturday, in celebration of the occasion, we should just do so openly....

Saturday is also Embrace Your Geekness Day.

We here at The Blog of Days were somewhat confused as to precisely what a "geek" is. The Urban Dictionary lists several definitions. According to the most popular definition, geeks are "[t]he people you pick on in high school and wind up working for as an adult."

Another says that "geek" should not be considered interchangeable with "nerd," that intelligence is not necessarily part and parcel of the geek's make-up, but that geeks are generally not athletic, and enjoy video games, comic books, and being on the Internet.

Still another definition traces the origin of the term to carnivals, where geek used to mean a performer who bit the head off of bats or ate glass. Eventually, according to this definition, the term became associated with anyone who gets paid "to do work considered odd or bizarre by mainstream society." More recently, according to this theory, the

term now enjoys a special status within the technical community, particularly among particularly knowledgeable computer programmers. To identify oneself as a "geek" indicates a recognition that most people still consider programming computers to be a bizarre act....

To recap, therefore, if you are a computer programmer, Saturday is your day. But even if you are not a computer programmer, but merely enjoy hanging out here in the ether, visiting quality websites like The Blog of Days, Saturday is your day, too.

Saturday is also Barbershop Music Appreciation Day -- but we are not certain how you will be able to harmonize (*ahem*) your affinity for barbershop quartets with your inner geekness....