The Subject of This Post is Also the Date

I am up way too early. It's 5:53a as I write this; we got up around 5:10 or so. It's weird to have Makal leave for work while it's dark out; but then, it's weird to have him getting home when it's dark out. Yet tonight he should be getting home earlier due to this early start, so that's good.

Apart from being really fucking early, it's also Friday the 13th! w00t! Okay well there's often several Friday the 13ths in the year, but this one is occuring in October, the spookiest month of them all; that makes it the spookiest Friday the 13th of the year. I thought I could post a few interesting pictures related to the day, but everything on Google Images ends up being about the slasher movie of the same name, or really lame/boring/cheesy. So I looked it up on a few other text sites.

The Wikipedia article has some interesting info. It talks about how in a Gregorian calendar system (my least favourite, but it's what everyone else uses so I kind of have to know it ;) Friday is actually the most likely day of the week for the 13th day of a month to occur, beating out Sunday and Wednesday 688 to 687 each. Which is interesting from a statistical standpoint. It also lists a massive amount of people born on Friday the 13th, but while I'm sure the people are all important I only recognize a few names. The article also relates the day to the Mayan calendar and the projected end of the world in 2012 (that's apparently wrong, btw), and I am a big fan of that crazy round pictographic calendar.

Heading over to Answers.com, their article on today's date relates much more of the mythology and superstition behind the 13th. One thing they relate the superstitions of Friday the 13th to is Jesus and the last supper; luckily since I neither believe in Christianity nor the Gregorian calendar (which shuns a lunisolar calendar of 13 months) I'm all in the clear on that one. In addition, they debunk the myths of the Norse god Loki crashing a party as the 13th guest, as well as the tale of King Philip IV killing the Knights Templar for money on a Friday the 13th. Of course, they also get a little feminist action going on: "Feminists have argued that because of the lunar year and Friday being named after a goddess in most European pagan calendars, the fear of Friday the 13th is a patriarchal invention, associating femininity with bad luck." I guess you could call that a feministic view, though I'd call it logic considering our current calendar system was invented by Christians, a group notorious for thinking women themselves were bad luck, let alone Paganism.

I don't find Friday the 13th to be so bad. I've never experienced anything bad on the day, but I haven't gone out of my way to, either. Scientists conjecture that Friday the 13th is perhaps unlucky, due to the number of ill events that does seem to occur on the day. I'd say that's more of a placebo affect than fate or bad luck, inasmuch as you make your own (bad) luck. The Housemate from my last living experience was born on the 13th of January, and he swore that his birthdays that fell on a Friday were always really crappy. Again, I'd say that's probably because he went into the day thinking it was going to be shitty, and therefore it was. Either way, it's not a bad day for me, and any day that's not bad for me must be good. :) So, Friday the 13th of October, 2006, hello!