paraskavedekatriaphobia

Well, I have successfully avoided applying for any jobs all morning and now it is lunch time already. I really am refining the art of procrastination.

I was about to open up my incomplete application for a nice lil’ multimedia editor job, when the perfect excuse hit me: Friday the 13th. Actually, I hadn’t even consciously absorbed the fact until I read Kass’s blog. Where would I be without your blog in my life, Kass?

I am not at all superstitious, unless it suits me to be. And it suits me just fine today.
I can’t apply for a job today. It might all go hideously wrong. I haven’t quite got the imagination to conjure all the possibilities… but they could include the accidental sending of pornography or viruses and being blacklisted by all potential employers in Vancouver…maybe some ghost code writer (lol) might insert lines of evil code in my emailed cover letter that will make - - I dunno, bad shit happen.

It then occurred to me though that I had absolutely no idea what Friday 13th was actually about or where it originated. Neither it seems, do many people. I went to the good ol’ Wikipedia and found out that it is considered to be a day of bad luck in English, German, Polish and Portuguese-speaking cultures around the globe, but that there are only really stories and theories about why. There is not really any authoritative documentation of it, that I or wikipedia know of.

13 is considered an unlucky number, and Friday is considered an unlucky day, apparently (but what is unlucky about Fridays? I love Fridays! I think Mondays are much more unlucky.) But other than that, there is very little that links them together.

Some stories (taken from Wikipedia) include:
* The Last Supper, with stories that Judas was the thirteenth guest, and that the Crucifixion of Jesus occurred on Friday.
*That the biblical Eve offered the fruit to Adam on a Friday, and that the slaying of Abel happened on a Friday (though the Bible does not identify the days of the week when these events occurred).
*Many modern stories (including The Da Vinci Code) claim that when King Philip IV had many Knights Templar simultaneously arrested on Friday, October 13, 1307, that started the legend of the unlucky Friday the 13th.

None of these nor any other historical date has been verifiably identified as the origin of the Friday the 13th superstition though. The first documented mention of a "Friday the 13th" is generally listed as occurring in the early 1900s.

So anyways, I think it is amazing that as a culture we are terrified of this particular day, and none of us know why! How dumb are we???

Interesting facts (also from Wikipedia):
· "It's been estimated that [U.S] $800 or $900 million is lost in business on this day because people will not fly or do business they would normally do."
· Some people are so paralysed by fear that they are simply unable to get out of bed when Friday the 13th rolls around. The Stress Management Center and Phobia Institute estimates that more than 17 million people are affected by a fear of this day.
· A British Medical Journal study has shown that there is a significant increase in traffic related accidents on Friday the 13ths.