It's that time of year again, folks. The time of year when a chill runs up your spine when you step out into the cold air. When the wind rustling through the trees may or may not be the result of witches flying through the air on broomsticks powered by heathen black magicks and the blood of delicious, tender unborn fetuses. The time of year that causes spooks, frights, heebie-jeebies, willies, scares, and heart palpitations.
That's right, I'm talking about Friday the 13th! Ooooohhh! Booga booga! Nevermind that Friday the 13th falls on a different month every year. If Hollywood and old American hillbilly supersitions have taught me anything, it's that Friday the 13th is ALWAYS scary, no matter what month it is!
For example, this morning, when I went out to my car, the air was... wait for it... REALLY COLD. Yikes! I nearly ran back inside and cowered under my bed in the fetal position, but since I do that most every day regardless of the reason, my reaction of getting into my car and going to work must have meant I was EXTRA terrified.
Friday the 13th began in the year 120 BCE in ancient Rome as a way to celebrate the invention of numbers. People especially liked the numbers 1 and 3, and since there was only 1 Friday that fell on the 13th every year, people thought it was super special, like a two-headed goat or a wine cask free from dead rodent carcasses. So, in traditional Roman fashion, people would put on their best loincloths, tunics, and other old shit, and go out and drink until they vomited. Then they drank some more, then had an orgy, then drank some more, then vomited, then had ANOTHER orgy (people had wicked stamina back then), and then finally stumbled off to their yurts, or huts, or whatever the fuck they lived in back then. Probably teepees.
The dreams they had those nights were typically horrifying, as the draining of everyone's libido, coupled with vast quantities of rodent-tainted alcohol coursing through everyone's veins, caused near-hallucinatory states to occur in the minds of the populace. This wasn't that different from regular evenings, but they partied really, really hard on Friday the 13th, so the dreams were extra vivid.
Over the years, people began to dread the post-celebration ball-tripping and the harsh hangovers that followed, and within a few decades, Friday the 13th became an event marked not by partying, but by seeing who could come up with the most insane hallucinatory combo. Some people drank until they nearly blacked out, then ate fresh cow dung and huffed animal oil fumes. Others were lucky and discovered mushrooms in the local hills that would make them think gladiators with snake-heads were holding swords made of fire and spiders and were trying to kill them. Most people spun around really fast in a circle, then smoked the nearest plant they could find. Most of the time this did nothing but cause profuse vomiting, but sometimes they would find a semi-psychoactive plant and begin proclaiming that they could fly "as the gods did" from the rooftops of their filthy yurt hovels. This was always awesome.
At first, the citizens who could come up with the most horrifying hallucinatory combo were usually labeled as sorcerers and promptly split in twain by the bare hands of the burlier revelers, but over time people realized that they would run out of some really awesome story material, so the mob executions eventually stopped. People were so bored in those days that anything, no matter how ball-shrivellingly terrifying it might be, was deemed good enough to be used in local legends.
Eventually, time wore on, and people's view of Friday the 13th mutated into that of a time when only bad things could happen. And so, some 22-odd centuries later, we come to today. People still view Friday the 13th as an unlucky day, and some superstitious folks go out of their way to plan major life events around the date so that nothing big happens on that inauspicious 24-hour period. I have arranged all the mirrors in my house to face the street, and have set ladders hanging upside down from the ceiling so that when I walk through them I will get reverse-bad luck, which I think might be good luck. Also, I put salt on my Yak's horns and made sure to dip my toothbrush in Vaseline, so I should be good.
Anyway, hopefully your Friday the13th will be full of fun scares, like finding out you have a freakish disease or nearly running over a busload of kittens! Don't let any machete-wielding madmen hack you to pieces in the middle of the night!
That's right, I'm talking about Friday the 13th! Ooooohhh! Booga booga! Nevermind that Friday the 13th falls on a different month every year. If Hollywood and old American hillbilly supersitions have taught me anything, it's that Friday the 13th is ALWAYS scary, no matter what month it is!
For example, this morning, when I went out to my car, the air was... wait for it... REALLY COLD. Yikes! I nearly ran back inside and cowered under my bed in the fetal position, but since I do that most every day regardless of the reason, my reaction of getting into my car and going to work must have meant I was EXTRA terrified.
Friday the 13th began in the year 120 BCE in ancient Rome as a way to celebrate the invention of numbers. People especially liked the numbers 1 and 3, and since there was only 1 Friday that fell on the 13th every year, people thought it was super special, like a two-headed goat or a wine cask free from dead rodent carcasses. So, in traditional Roman fashion, people would put on their best loincloths, tunics, and other old shit, and go out and drink until they vomited. Then they drank some more, then had an orgy, then drank some more, then vomited, then had ANOTHER orgy (people had wicked stamina back then), and then finally stumbled off to their yurts, or huts, or whatever the fuck they lived in back then. Probably teepees.
The dreams they had those nights were typically horrifying, as the draining of everyone's libido, coupled with vast quantities of rodent-tainted alcohol coursing through everyone's veins, caused near-hallucinatory states to occur in the minds of the populace. This wasn't that different from regular evenings, but they partied really, really hard on Friday the 13th, so the dreams were extra vivid.
Over the years, people began to dread the post-celebration ball-tripping and the harsh hangovers that followed, and within a few decades, Friday the 13th became an event marked not by partying, but by seeing who could come up with the most insane hallucinatory combo. Some people drank until they nearly blacked out, then ate fresh cow dung and huffed animal oil fumes. Others were lucky and discovered mushrooms in the local hills that would make them think gladiators with snake-heads were holding swords made of fire and spiders and were trying to kill them. Most people spun around really fast in a circle, then smoked the nearest plant they could find. Most of the time this did nothing but cause profuse vomiting, but sometimes they would find a semi-psychoactive plant and begin proclaiming that they could fly "as the gods did" from the rooftops of their filthy yurt hovels. This was always awesome.
At first, the citizens who could come up with the most horrifying hallucinatory combo were usually labeled as sorcerers and promptly split in twain by the bare hands of the burlier revelers, but over time people realized that they would run out of some really awesome story material, so the mob executions eventually stopped. People were so bored in those days that anything, no matter how ball-shrivellingly terrifying it might be, was deemed good enough to be used in local legends.
Eventually, time wore on, and people's view of Friday the 13th mutated into that of a time when only bad things could happen. And so, some 22-odd centuries later, we come to today. People still view Friday the 13th as an unlucky day, and some superstitious folks go out of their way to plan major life events around the date so that nothing big happens on that inauspicious 24-hour period. I have arranged all the mirrors in my house to face the street, and have set ladders hanging upside down from the ceiling so that when I walk through them I will get reverse-bad luck, which I think might be good luck. Also, I put salt on my Yak's horns and made sure to dip my toothbrush in Vaseline, so I should be good.
Anyway, hopefully your Friday the13th will be full of fun scares, like finding out you have a freakish disease or nearly running over a busload of kittens! Don't let any machete-wielding madmen hack you to pieces in the middle of the night!
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