Friday the 13th

Friday the 13th. I always feel weird about this day at any time of the year other than fall. It makes sense in fall. It makes me feel all Halloweeny.

Halloween. My favorite holiday. I have black cat, pumpkins, a skull, a witchy teddy bear, a gothic fairy, and a gothic doll all on display on my shelf at work. These are my year round decorations and not the actual Halloween décor I put up at the end of September.

I am the Halloween girl. I even have a tattoo of a black cat cuddling with a Jack O’ Lantern on my shoulder. When my parents took me to Hawaii, I even managed to find a lovely black sarong with white and pale blue hibiscus on it.

Now a rather bizarre study was done on automobile accidents on Friday the 6th compared to Friday the 13th. They found that fewer people were driving at all on Friday the 13th. People seemed to want to avoid driving. At the same time, more people were admitted to the hospital due to vehicular accidents than on a ‘normal’ Friday. I’m willing to guess it is more a case of people expecting bad things to happen, who start to watch for them and are less careful because of the distraction. This is in the nature of a ‘self fulfilling prophesy’.

What I didn’t know is that this is actually the MOST widespread superstition and 8% of Americans suffer from varying degrees of paraskevidekatriaphobia. Lovely word that. 8% sounds low but actually represents about 21 million people.

13 is sometimes called the Devil’s Dozen. Which is kind of weird to me. It’s also a baker’s dozen. There was some story about why bakers would toss in an extra if you ordered a dozen, but I don’t remember the story any more.

The silliest reason for the origin of fear of the number 13 is the fact the people could only count to 12 and therefore 13 was a mystery. They get this 12 idea from having 10 fingers and two feet. Apparently, toes wouldn’t count. See, silly.

It seems 13 fluctuates between lucky and unlucky at different time in different places. I’m not sure if there is any value in trying to pinpoint where fear of 13 originated. And I’m a big fan of archaeology and anthropology, so that’s saying something. What I’m not sure.

More of the unlucky 13 bits and pieces seem to be after the rise of male dominated and/or solar dominated religions. The theory is that it evolved to vilify or demonize the lunar and or female orientated religious.

There also seems to be a rather strong hatred of Friday’s in the past. This is weird as these day, we live for our Fridays. Once the end of work bell rings, we have 2.5 days to ourselves. Well, those of us with regular day jobs do.

Apparently, everything bad that happened in the Bible happened on a Friday. I want to know how “they” know that. How in the world can they know that the whole business with the apple and the snake happened on a Friday? How could anyone possibly know that the “Flood” started on a Friday?

And since many pre-Christian societies thought Friday was an auspicious day to get married, Fridays must be bad and the Friday goddess (Freya/Frigg/Venus) was recast as a witch. Wow. Can I get a copy of the Venus Di Milo with a witches hat on her head, a broom clutched in one hand, and a black cat sitting on the clam shelf at her feet?

On the whole, I like superstitions and find them a fascinating subject. Some even have an odd sort of logic to them. But Friday the 13th as an unlucky day has always seemed the ultimate in silliness to me.

Random Things. That’s all I got Today.

Because it is has nothing to do with anything….

Hunger Games, the book.  about 374 pages.  About 4 hours.  Maybe 4 hours and 15 minutes.  Easy.  Fast.  I remember how all these people said they spend one entire day reading it.  It just isn’t that long and complex.  The writing is very straight forward and simple.  Events are very fast paced.  You have no idea that in reality, it covers several weeks. 

Some channel was playing the Mummy movie remakes over the weekend.  I always felt sorry for the Mummy.  Okay, they did find a really good looking actor to play him, so that helped make him a bit sympathetic.   But it was really that all he did was done out of love.  It wasn’t even a selfish love.  Because he so totally loved her that he would do ANYTHING for her, even if it was of questionable ethics.  But she wasn’t worth it.  When push came to shove, she was more concerned about saving herself than helping the one that loved her so much that he gave everything of himself for her.  In the end, he realizes that his great love and great sacrifice was thrown back into his face and he let’s go of the person trying to save him and takes death in the realization of what he had done for someone who was so selfish.

My birthday was yesterday and I kinda wish that I had chosen to take my floating holiday today.  I don’t feel like much today.  It’s too pretty out.  It would have been a great day to go to the gardens and have a picnic someplace.  But I decided to save it and go to work instead.  I have a free birthday meal at Red Robin but I don’t feel like it yet.  I better before the end of the month.

I want noodles for dinner but I don’t want to go out of my way to the Vietnamese place.  I might go down to Pana88, a new pan-asian place close to work, and get their giant bowl of ramen noodles to take for dinner when I run off to my gaming group tonight.  Or maybe I’ll just stay there and eat.  That way I don’t have to try to kill as much time after work. 

My new meds are making me sleepy.  I’m trying to get used to them.  So I may be very sleepy at  the game tonight.  My warrior may be a little un-energetic.  I need energy.  The doctor told me to take them before bed.  But one is a twice daily, so I have to take it once in the morning as well. 

My supervisor got back from her week vacation.  She brought back a bag of my kryptonite for each of us.  Salt Water Taffy.  I live this stuff.  I have a fair amount of the black ones.  I love the black licorice taffy.  That and Banana are probably my favorite.  I got very little chocolate taffy.  I wanted more only for the purpose of trading it for more of the black licorice. 

I brought almonds for a tasty and healthy snack.  They are only healthy if I eat the right amount.  I have to make sure I stop.  I love nuts.  Except walnuts.  I hate walnuts.  The Squirrels can have them. Foamy can take over the world and keep the walnuts.  I like foamy.  Illwill press is great stuff.  Lovley cartoons, if you are slightly misanthropic.  I am, so I apreciate them. 

 I’m very upset with the judge in Utah that ordered a girl’s hair to be chopped off in the courtroom as an option to lowering her community service.  When I was 6, my mom had my aunt cut my hair short. It so traumatized me that I couldn’t get my hair cut short for years. Even with a trip, I would literally freak out at seeing the hair falling from my head. So maybe the child was traumatized. But small kids cut each other’s hair all the time. I don’t know a parent that hasn’t come into the room one day to find the kids with the scizzors either cutting their own hair or a siblings hair.

Sure is was wrong for a couple of young teens to cut a toddlers pony tail off. But NO judge should ever have the right to order a parent to chop of a kid’s hair in the court room. That goes way beyond reasonable autority for a judge. On top of it, he allowed the other older girl involved to be taken to a salon to have her hair professionally cut and returned to the courtroom to determine if it was acceptable to him or not. 

This gives us another case where cutting another persons hair with malicious intent is an assault. But punishing an assault with an assault is not justice. It’s revenge. And judges are suppose to be above revenge.

As for Tennessee’s ‘no holding hands’ law, they over look a common theme in areas with high pregnancy rates. Boredom. Many kids are complaining of boredom. They are becoming sexually active because it is something to do. Start creating more diverse activities and activity centers for teens, not kids, not adults, not ‘family friendly’ but specifically for teens and you would be amazed at the reduction in teen pregnancy. Or maybe not amazed because it won’t stop all of them, but it will give them something else to go than having sex because there is nothing else interesting to do.