Subject: Required scientific behavior at eclipses

Here are a few tips intended to make your eclipse experience extremely memorable.
REMEMBER !!!:

– Focus your camera before taking photos.

– Take a flash photo (full face view) of someone acting as "astronomer" being
very serious about trying to take a classic eclipse photo. Do it just as everybody shrieks
"There’s the corona!! Oh, its so BEAUTIFUL!!"

– Run around trying to wake up any roosting birds. Claim they are missing a great
experience.

– Wave a bright flashlight around. Hold it eye high and sweep it horizontally. Try to
see if it’s dark enough to see flashes from bike reflectors, car taillights, etc. That
will be fun (anyway, more than the science part of an eclipse). Of course, you will
undoubtedly catch many people directly in the face. That’s their problem. IF anybody
challenges you, tell them you’re doing research for Kodak on the Red Eye phenomenon and
you need a crowd.

– Buy a live rooster and take it with you to a popular observing site, binding its feet
to keep it close by. Put it up high like on a wall (or on someone else’s telescope). Call
to it incessantly (Here Karl Friedrich Gauss Leghorn, LOOK LOOK! Pretty soon you’ll be
getting sleepy. ACHTUNG !! YOU DUMB CHICKEN!! OH GOOD CHICKEN GOOD CHICKEN. BAD CHICKEN.
THAT’s IT! ) Soon, you’ll draw a crowd, all eager to watch how the rooster behaves during
the eclipse.

1. As above, wait until it gets very dark, then take lots of flash photos of the
rooster. (How else WOULD you get a good photo in the dark anyhow ??)

2. Set up movie lights to better see the rooster (String a couple of long extension
cords). Of course, no one else will be able to see for 100’s of meters, but so what? And
also of course the rooster will not notice the eclipse. Scream at the rooster to go to
sleep. It won’t help, but will get you lots more attention. After it’s all over, give a
press interview stating your name as someone else (DO NOT USE MY NAME!!!!!).

Claim that this was an individually bad chicken. Next eclipse you’ll be back with an
entire crate of them — that will give you better statistics.

Alternatively you can claim you have disproven hundreds of years of hearsay evidence
about eclipse phenomenology — and you now know that roosters don’t notice eclipses!!!
Make sure they spell (whomever’s) name right.

– Gape at the dark sky and scream. "There’s Mercury, there’s Venus, there’s Mars,
there’s Pluto. God, there’s a new comet!!! No! I saw it first." Keep acting like
someone else is arguing with you about who saw it first. Threaten them loudly that you’ll
call the police.

– Talk in a very loud voice. Claim that all your previous eclipses were MUCH better
because you were always on a cruise ship and those people were so much nicer than these
German tourist riffraff. Tell them all how you hate being there but there were no cruise
ships except on the Rhine, and you HATE the Rhine!!! Keep this up for the entire eclipse.
Pay someone else to agree with you, that they have had the SAME experience.

OH yes, have a great time.