No, said Aziraphale, it's ineffable.

waaaaargh

tinsnip

frigging Cardassians tho!

As per the Iron and Ash supplement, Cardassia Prime has a 344.35-day-long year, and a 26-hour-long day, and it takes about 26 days for the moon to orbit, so a month is presumably 26 days long.

Twenty-six does not divide by anything except two.

How long is a damned Cardassian week?

And my husband says, they probably don’t have weeks, and I say, how can they keep track of anything, then? that’s way too long an interval to keep in your head, and he says, not for a Cardassian, don’t they have really good memories, and I say, damn it, you’re right, which means I now have to come up with terminology for twenty-six days so I know when something’s happening on Cardassia Prime.

Can they not do anything easily??

(As an aside, I really do recommend that sourcebook. It’s clearly made with love. I’ve printed out the map of Cardassia Prime as a reference.)

the-first-victory

OK, here are a few things I learned and possibilities I explored with their months:

The best answer I can come up with is that they actually can work with 2 13 day weeks per month, and they have 13 months per year. The week to weekend ratio would just be divided 1-5-1-5-1 instead of our 1-5-1. 2 days off for the new moon, 1 day for the quarter moon, and 2 days off for the full moon. In fact, they might be fine with 13 day weeks because they’d have 13 months in a year. This way, a month on Cardassia would be 26 days on odd numbered months, with each even numbered month having 27 days. Sound about right?

(Fun fact- we could also fit 13 months in our year if we really wanted to.)

Other ideas that could be a possibility-

-They could have 8 day weeks. It fits evenly into the number of days. This would mean 43 weeks per year. I see no logical reasoning for it except that it divides into the year. Highly unlikely. Especially since then we’d have to figure out how the hell they divided up the rest of their calender.

-Maybe they have one of those messed up calenders like the Romans with Kalends and Ides and all that and have dates based off of that instead of weeks. So if someone wanted the date in Cardassian time, you’d say it’s 6 days after x day of the 3rd month. Of course, this is an infuriating system, but it is a possibility.

-.Considering that many Cardassian designs on the show were based off of the Ancient Egyptians, we can look at their calender for some clue, and that clue would be that they didn’t have weeks. Just years, months, days, and hours (and 3 seasons, in case anyone cares). Perhaps on Cardassia your break depends on whoever your boss is.

-Or we can come to the easiest conclusion possible- they don’t give 2 shits about moon time and came up with some other solution that we never thought of because we don’t live on Cardassia.

(Also tinsnip, you are so going to pay for all of that math that I did as a result of investigating this. ~~JK, I actually thought this was fun.~~)

tinsnip

/basks in the glow of your radiance

I kind of like the idea of them having a thirteen-day week. Doneski. Thank you!

I also like the idea of there not being weeks, although how the hell do you schedule anything, then? How did the Egyptians do it?

(And all of this came from Julian going, “But Garak, it’s the weekend, can’t I sleep in?” Oh, fanfic, what have you wrought?)

the-first-victory

Well, we don’t set dates based on weeks- if we want to know when we’re supposed to do something, we’d say at 11:00pm on February 2nd. Maybe that’s how they’d work. Plus, I suppose with the Egyptians, they lived in an agrarian society, so I guess they didn’t really have breaks. They just did the work that had to be done that day. And I suppose they had breaks with assorted holidays and celebrations.

And in regards to Cardassia, I wouldn’t go as far as to say they didn’t have breaks. A country can’t be 100% military, and even though there are plenty of other jobs that would have strange work schedules, I suppose someone on Cardassia has to do what we’d call the 9 to 5 job. I’d think they’d get their time off each week. I suppose not even Cardassians are excused from the fatigue that comes from working for 5 days straight.

Now, I wonder what they called their days, if anything at all?

(Fanfiction is a curious thing. Do you think any other alien species has fanfiction?)

tinsnip

But weeks are useful for basic, cyclical events. I mean, I know that I work Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Do I work February 14th? I haven’t got a clue. Is it a Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday? Otherwise it’s too much to keep track of. But you’re right - in an agrarian society, it’s probably not as useful.

I kind of figure the nine-to-five white-collar gig is sort of what Garak’s doing post-canon, a few years down the road. He’s a bureaucratic bigwig, and he commutes in to the city, does his thing, and commutes back home. Better home life, a chance to have a garden, much less angst. I wonder how he likes it?

I hope every alien species has fanfiction. :)

I remember seeing a cartoon that speculated about the first encounter between Vulcans and Humans, and the reactions of poor Captain S'whatever. “This is not at all like my fanfictions - they are most illogical!” Anybody got that? It’s so cute!

Season 6 Episode 3 Sons and Daughters

Oh, were there Klingons in that episode? I didn’t notice. (Sorry, guys; Worf & Alexander et al just don’t do it for me. If it pleases you, I tumbled through all of those scenes.)

Ziyal’s makeup was about 5000% better in this episode. The slightly stronger facial ridges and the more greyish cast to her skin make her work better for me.

I like Dukat a lot better when he’s being a horrible creeper than when he’s just generally being a horrible person. He and Kira are great to watch when he’s toying with her. When he’s being a sweet ickle woobie who wuvs her, he makes me physically ill. He never really sees Kira. He sees imaginary Kira seeing him. It throws him when real Kira disrupts the fantasy. And even then, he’s not too bothered about it. Eeeyuuuuurgh.

I mean, Jesus, he makes her meet him at the airlock every time he comes back to the station, and then he sends her a dress, and then he plays the Ziyal card, and then when she says she never wants to see him again he says, “Major, that’s simply not true!”

FULL. BODY. SHUDDER.

Dukat, you were kind of hot back in season 4, but I think I just might be done with you.

(Well done, Marc Alaimo! More more more!)

And Kira is looking thinner and thinner and is wearing less and less makeup and she’s giving me worrying Resistance flashbacks.

Also enjoyed Odo and Kira closing Jake out completely, and even Quark saying in a kind of fatherly way that Jake really does not want to get involved in this. They care about him, not just because he’s Sisko’s son, but because they’ve watched him grow up, and he’s family. It’s nice to see.

Bashir & O'Brien bitching about gagh was cute too.

Where was Garak? (I always wonder!) Also, an aside - is it not kind of weird that Garak even came along? I mean, he got on to the Defiant because he begged, basically, and Sisko is not enough of an asshole to leave him on a station that is about to be taken over by his worst enemy. But then, what you do with the Cardassian spy is, you leave him on a Starbase where he can be watched. You don’t give him a comm badge and take him on a secret mission in a Jem'Hadar ship because he “might be useful”! How the hell did Sisko get clearance for that? And hasn’t he already tried to jump ship back to Cardassia twice during DS9? I mean, I love him, I’ll watch him do anything, but it doesn’t make any sense! He Is Not Trustworthy!

So, you know, your thoughts?

See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

waaaaargh