it emerged out of the surrealist movement via Alfred Jarry.
For reference his play “Ubu Roi” (Ubu the King) starts with the word “merdre” (often translated at “pshit” or “shitski”) - which after it was uttered in the first performance, caused a 15 minute riot in the theatre.
The purpose, such as it is, is that you can make it “unimaginary” for a leap year etc, or if you need an extra day in a month for whatever reason - and it doesn’t alter the rest of the year.
I still don’t see the benefits. It’s a bit like saying that every Februar (in the Gregorian calendar) had 29 days but sometimes it’s imaginary and sometimes it’s not.
Would you phone calendar show “imaginary days”? Could you schedule meetings on imaginary days? If yes - that would probably be a complete mess, and if not - why even call it “imaginary day” if it’s not a day at all.
Seems a bit like a bandaid that tries to make it more symmetric/pretty. We could expand all months to 32 days in the Gregorian calender and just call some of the days imaginary. That way all months would be the exact same length 🤣
I prefer the opposite: The 'Pataphysical calendar
Never heard of that one before. What’s the point of having an imaginary 29th?
it emerged out of the surrealist movement via Alfred Jarry.
For reference his play “Ubu Roi” (Ubu the King) starts with the word “merdre” (often translated at “pshit” or “shitski”) - which after it was uttered in the first performance, caused a 15 minute riot in the theatre.
The purpose, such as it is, is that you can make it “unimaginary” for a leap year etc, or if you need an extra day in a month for whatever reason - and it doesn’t alter the rest of the year.
I still don’t see the benefits. It’s a bit like saying that every Februar (in the Gregorian calendar) had 29 days but sometimes it’s imaginary and sometimes it’s not.
Would you phone calendar show “imaginary days”? Could you schedule meetings on imaginary days? If yes - that would probably be a complete mess, and if not - why even call it “imaginary day” if it’s not a day at all.
Seems a bit like a bandaid that tries to make it more symmetric/pretty. We could expand all months to 32 days in the Gregorian calender and just call some of the days imaginary. That way all months would be the exact same length 🤣
there are no benefits really. it was part of the surrealists who were doing things to be provocative