February 13, 2009

It's Friday the 13th.

For the love of God, people, be careful. If you're going to take any risks, I hope it's worth it for you.

41 comments:

KCFleming said...

Friday the 13th is even worse when it falls on a Monday.

Jason (the commenter) said...

Yeah, don't sign any major pieces of legislation or anything.

Bissage said...

* eyes breakfast fugu with suspicion *

hmmmm . . .

Michael Haz said...

It's sunny and clear with moderate temperatures this morning where I live. The sky is a lovely medium blue.

Is this an omen?

Michael Haz said...

Great irony in 'Jason' urging caution re 'Friday the 13th'.

bearbee said...

If you're going to take any risks, I hope it's worth it for you.

Too late. Pigicorn will pass with BO, Pelosi and Democrats farting rainbows.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

If you're going to take any risks, I hope it's worth it for you.

Have no fear.

It's not like people are lining up to buy up "toxic" bank assets.

Wait a minute.. that's exactly what they... we.. everybody wants.

al said...

For the geeks out there today is when the 1234567890th second of Unix time will occur.

For me this is at 17:31:30

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Would it be considered doubling down if you kiss Bill today?

ricpic said...

Schumershit

I'm always farting rainbows
Like a pig at the trow,
I'm always farting rai-ain-bows,
Little tiny porky pow pows.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

No matter what happens to you today, just remember this prayer..

At least Joe Biden is not my president...

Yes.. it could be worse ;)

hdhouse said...

I'm going to go with the Caesar's 13th legion crossing the Rubicon...that is sufficiently remote from my existence to erase any threat.

rhhardin said...

For the geeks out there today is when the 1234567890th second of Unix time will occur.

For me this is at 17:31:30


$ timeadd.sh `date +%T` `echo 1234567890 \`date +%s\` - p|dc` +
18:31:30

But maybe under windows XP things are an hour off. (EST)

George M. Spencer said...

"Jason barely appears in Part 1. “He shows up in Part 2, gets killed in Part 4,” he said. “There’s an impostor in a Jason mask in Part 5. Jason comes back as a zombie in Part 6. Toxic sludge turns him back into a child at the end of Part 8. He gets blown up in the opening minutes of Part 9 and then becomes a body-hopping force of evil that gets sucked into hell. In Part 10 the earth is destroyed, Jason becomes a cyborg and lands on an alien planet. Where could the series possibly go at that point? A reboot is the only sane answer.”

From a lengthy scholarly examination of the film series, its business strategy, and its "coolness" from The New York Times.

It may be hard to for younger folk to believe, but 30 years ago the paper would never have covered this garbage.

ricpic said...

What the ef is Unix time, you two geeks?

Jason (the commenter) said...

Great irony in 'Jason' urging caution re 'Friday the 13th'.

You know, I did that movie when I was four years old. I look older in the film, but it's all creative use of camera angles. Same techniques they use on Tom Cruise. Of course, since I was so young they had to put a hockey mask over my face; otherwise it would have given away the illusion.

Shame about all those teenagers. But it was a low budget film and they really didn't have the money for fake blood.

traditionalguy said...

Doesn't Friday the 13th hex only apply to Freemasons who are the spiritual heirs of the Knights Templar's doomsday experience? The fear of anything is a useless emotion, unless you can make your enemy fear something. On the other hand the number 7 may be lucky.

William said...

Geithner should wear a hockey mask while detailing the fine points of the stimulus plan. The semiotics of the mask should soften the distrust many people feel in Geithner's presence. Too many people are trapped in their prejudices and past experiences. A few bad experiences and they are unwilling to reach out for Jason's help in a moment of crisis. It's time to start trusting Jason. He's the only one who can save us.

Leland said...

I met my wife on a Friday the 13th. It was worth it then, and now.

Wince said...

Geithner should wear a hockey mask while detailing the fine points of the stimulus plan.

LOL. And Obama can wear the William Shatner mask like Mike Myers from Halloween!

Wasn't there some consensus here after it was observed that Obama at his presser sounded like Shatner?

Speaking the language of the deal, alright.

More importantly, does all this mean Althouse is now completely vindicated?

From Wiki...

In the Halloween series, Michael Myers wears a Captain Kirk mask that is painted white. Designer Tommy Lee Wallace wanted a mask that represented a "blank face", and decided to use the Kirk Halloween mask. "It didn't really look like anybody." Wallace cut the eyeholes larger and rounder, removed the eyebrows and sideburns, poofed up the hair so it looked "demented and strange" and finally spray-painted the mask. Wallace explains, "It created a shiver right in the room, and we knew we had something special." John Carpenter claims that the mask looked nothing like Shatner whatsoever, but joked, "I guess I owe the success of Halloween to William Shatner." According to Jamie Lee Curtis, the mask needed to be a "human image", and the only thing in stores at the time that matched what they needed on set was the Kirk mask.

Beth said...

I used to dislike Friday 13ths. I'm not one to read astrology columns or pay much attention to such things, but in elementary school, I got sent to the principal's office in 2nd, 3rd and 5th grades, on Friday the 13th.

Fred Drinkwater said...

Bissage, thanks for the morning laugh. I flashed a perfect image of you looking dubiously down at a beautifully arranged spiral of fish slices. Shadow of server hovering in the background...

rhhardin said...

I'm always getting fired on my birthday.

Crimso said...

"For the geeks out there today is when the 1234567890th second of Unix time will occur."

Perhaps the Mayans forgot to account for leap days.

reader_iam said...

Awwww, Beth. What'd you do?

MadisonMan said...

I think she was screaming in the classroom that it was Friday the 13th and they were all gonna DIE!! AAAAAAAHHHHH!

Buford Gooch said...

" Pogo said...

Friday the 13th is even worse when it falls on a Monday."

Spoken in true Pogo (Walt Kelly)style.

Michael McNeil said...

UNIX time is a count of the number of seconds since midnight January 1, 1970 GMT.

As for the Mayas, their Long Count calendar not made only no effort to keep in sync with the solar year via an added “leap year” day every four years such as we do, but also counted 360 days per Long Count “year” (18 months of 20 days per) not 365.

Beth said...

reader, it's like MadisonMan was there!

No, really, I realize looking at those grades that I would have been in a new school every time. I didn't adjust well to all the moving (military brat), I suppose.

I just didn't like school at all up until high school. Too many rules, too much boredom, too many social situations to navigate (made harder by being the new kid so often). And teachers? What a bunch of crabapples.

Anonymous said...

It's my 75th Birthday.

The Dude said...

Built a staircase and installed a digital tv antenna on a 10' mast on top of a barn today. Ladder work, plenty of cats, none of them black, and what do you know, at the end of the day all is swell.

It's unlucky to believe in superstitions.

blake said...

For the love of God, people, be careful. If you're going to take any risks, I hope it's worth it for you.

Great, now you tell me. I drove today! In the rain! On surface streets and freeways?

I ate food that I didn't personally prepare!

I'm on a treadmill right now and I know for a fact that several of the screws are loose!!

So many risks!

George M. Spencer said...

Has anyone pointed out that there is another Friday the 13th next month and also in November?

Some year.

blake said...

"A reboot is the only sane answer.”

While true, the important thing to note is that the series ended because it stopped making money, and not for any other reason. Hell, that's the only reason the series started.

It's probably has the worst continuity of any movie series in history. Parts 2, 5, 6, 8, 9 and 10 completely invalidate their predecessors.

I review part 1 here and part 2 here.

I'm probably aiming low to say that my reviews will take less time and be more enjoyable than the actual movies.

Michael McNeil said...

Surely for the superstitious the United States must be the unluckiest country of all — and has been for more than 200 years — since it began with thirteen states.

Also, since the topic of the Maya calendar has come up in this thread concerning the number thirteen, one might note that the Mayas had a special place in their numbering system for what one might call “magic thirteens.”

Just as every number in our base-10 so-called Arabic (actually Hindu) numerals can be written with as many (virtual) high-order zeroes as one likes, somewhat similarly the Mayas considered every date (sequence of digits in their base-20 Long Count system) — whose digits above the 20-year (“katun”) level have not yet rolled over to higher digits — to begin with (an infinite number of virtual) ‘magic 13’s (which behave numerically exactly like zero), though the Mayas normally abbreviated such numbers/dates to no higher than the 400-year (“baktun”) level.

For instance, in a case that was written extending beyond the normal abbreviated form, in a particular inscription found at the Maya city of Cobá the Maya creation date (usually abbreviated to 13.0.0.0.0) was expressed showing twenty ‘magic 13’s above the katun, to wit: 13.13.13.13. 13.13.13.13. 13.13.13.13. 13.13.13.13. 13.13.13.13. 0.0.0.0.

Similarly, an inscription at Yaxchilán expressed a date within the “classic” Maya period (AD 744) with eight ‘magic 13’s above the katun as: 13.13.13.13. 13.13.13.13. 9.15.13.6.9.

For comparison, today's (Gregorian 2009-02-13) abbreviated Long Count date is 12.19.16.1.13. (Imagine that with an infinite number of 13’s above the initial “12.”)

Finally, at Palenque another inscription records a particular anniversary of their great King Pacal's accession, which happens to occur following the advance of the Mayan calendar to the next higher digit column (the equivalent of our year 1,000), which occurs in the year AD 4772 according to our calendar, by a mere eight days, as: 1.0.0.0.0.8.

All of which suffices to demonstrate that the Maya did not consider the upcoming rollover of their Long Count calendar (on December 23, 2012 AD in ours) to a (non-magic) 13 — to wit, 13.0.0.0.0 — to be any very unusual (e.g., the “end of the world” according to modern hystericists) day — as they clearly expected their descendants to be still around to commemorate the special day to follow in AD 4772.

Eli Blake said...

I'm not a bit superstitious about Friday the thirteenth and bad luck and all that.

And just to prove it, I went to H and R Block today and had my tax done.

reader_iam said...

Eli: Your sangfroid is perfectly understandable, friend, if all you needed done was a tax (your singular, not mine). That'd explain a lot of things, dude. ; )

AllenS said...

Eli, if you would have had Tim Geithner do your taxes, you would have found out that Friday the 13th was indeed, bad luck.

amba said...

Always my lucky day -- the 13th. I figure Friday just adds more mojo. I've signed contracts and received checks on the 13th more often than any other date I can think of. Yesterday all I got was a lousy free drink at Caribou Coffee. (Actually, it was delicious.)

dustin8467 said...

Did anything bad happen to anyone on friday? I made it through the day ok.

Bruce Hayden said...

I have always been rather partial to Friday the 13th, having been born on one some 643 years to the day after the Knights Templar were disbanded by force.