Attack of the Leaky Nose

Hello.
I have a cold. This sucks. My nose is all cracked and sore because I've blown it so many times, and my lips are the same, which is probably a bit more odd. I ended up emailing sick into Uni because I just couldn't face it.

Looks pretty nice, for something that can ruin your day in an instant.

I've decided on a lazy day at home, therefore. Chicken soup (that tasted awful and looked like vomit) homemade lemon, ginger and honey tea, lemsips, Fallout New Vegas and plenty of rest. Might be a reaction to the incessant revision for exams I've done over the past week.

Not exactly the way I intended on spending the first day for ages when I don't have to work. I mean, apart from the games and the rest and the comfort foods. The rest wasn't part of the plan.

What I don't understand is why things like chicken soup are considered good for feeling ill. There's nothing in there that acts as a cure for a cold, because as we know, there is no cure. So why is it that everyone always prescribes it as cure-all?

Ow, my poor nose.

Earphones and the Number 13

Firstly, I'd like to have a quick go at the stereo and earphones industry for clearly ripping us all off. Shame on them for making really funky headphones that advertise that they are built for people that listen to music a lot, that then promptly die on the inside (in the wires) after 3 months. I've had this happen so many times I've lost count. I don't tend to mind as much if they're cheap earphones that come free with stuff, but when you've paid 45 euros for a really nice pair of sound-blocking headphones, it's really annoying.
So people, don't buy into the scam! Get imported ipod earphones from Ebay for 5 cents (yes, they do exist) instead of forking out for a nice pair.

Ok, so now that rant's over, I'd like to turn your attention to the fact that it was Friday the 13th this week. I sort of forgot until I ended up staring at a Friday the 13th baseball cap wondering why it seemed so significant. Obviously, it's a significant day because it's THAT day... the day when people suffering from paraskevidekatriaphobia (fear of Friday the 13th and also a word I HAD to copy-paste to spell correctly) doesn't go to work, doesn't travel or doesn't even go out to eat. The combined unluckiness of the number 13 and Friday seems to make some people really nervous, but the question is, what's the reason for this superstition?

Ok, so first, to consult Wikipedia:

Both the number thirteen and Friday have been considered unlucky:

• In numerology, the number twelve is considered the number of completeness, as reflected in the twelve months of the year, twelve recognized signs of the zodiac, the twelve tribes of Israel, the twelve Apostles of Jesus, etc., whereas the number thirteen was considered irregular, transgressing this completeness.^[2] There is also a superstition, thought by some to derive from the Last Supper, that having thirteen people seated at a table will result in the death of one of the diners.
• Friday, as the day on which Jesus Christ was crucified, has been viewed both positively and negatively among Christians. The actual day of Crucifixion was the 14th day of Nisan in the Hebrew Lunar calendar which does not correspond to "Friday" in the solar calendar of Rome. The 15th day of Nissan (beginning at Sundown) is celebration of Passover.

But as we all know, Wikipedia is for losers, right? The above theories are all religious (and wrong- there were 13 disciples at the Last Supper), and don't really carry any real historical fact (unless you believe that all that happens in the bible is true, in which case, you have your answer already).

In an artical from Urban Legends (dot com), it is revealed that this superstition dates back as early as primitive man- they only had 10 fingers and 2 feet to count with, meaning that they could only count up to 12. 13 was a mysterious number. Also, in Ancient Egypt (huzzah!) there were believed to be 12 stages of life and a 13th beyond it- 13 therefore symbolising death. Then there's the theory that 13 represents women (of course there'd be a problem with that) and the Hindu belief that 13 people meeting in the same place is unlucky.
As for Friday, it was supposedly a Friday when Adam and Eve were cast out of Eden, when the Great Flood (you know, the Noah's Ark story) happened, when King Solomon's Temple was destroyed, execution day in Rome and Britain... yet strangely enough it used to be Sabbath Day for non-Christian religions.

It is reckoned that Friday the 13th became an unlucky day not only because of an amalgamation of these superstitions, but also because of an event that happened 700 hundred years ago. On Friday the 13th October 1307, the Knights Templar were hunted down by King Phillip IV of France and executed. However, it's only recently that the phonomenon of Friday the 13th has been talen seriously. It's not mentioned in early books on superstitions or unlucky days. It only arises in revised versions of these books, and even then, no real reason for it's unluckiness.

So maybe this day has only recently become unlucky. Maybe we're more superstitious than we were 200 years ago, and maybe this is just a phase that will pass eventually. Is there really any cause for such superstition?

I will leave you with one final thought, however; Margaret Thatcher was born on Friday the 13th.

Clockwork Monkey

One man's trash is another man's treasure

So my old friend caffeine races to the rescue on wings of ebony...

You'll have to forgive me, I'm slightly distracted today, and all this abstract 8-bit music isn't helping. I keep getting the urge to lock all the doors, close all the curtains and play Pokemon Yellow in the dark.

Speaking of Pokemon, I was charged with the mission of selling around 7 years worth of tat at a carboot sale at school yesterday. Talk about soul-destroying! 7 years of stuffed toys and children's board games that have never seen the light of day since we moved suddenly appeared from behind a cupboard in my bedroom and were placed under the unforgiving gazes of the Dutch. Now, not to be rascist, but the Dutch are not the most generous of nations, as a quickly found out when a grizzled, 70-something year old man repeatedly attempted to persuade me to lower the price of a bass guitar I was selling from 75 euros to 40. 40! I couldn't buy half a guitar for 40 euros, and to be honest, when I finally did sell it (for 80 euros to a man whose whole appearence and character screamed "I am a bassist") I was rather pleased to be able to shake my head in faux-sympthay and say "Sorry mate, sold it"... not that he understood me.

As the day dragged on, and me and my bemused parents realised that our increasing dribble of customers were not planning on doing anything other than tut our prices (reasonable prices, might I add), people started losing the will to live and started packing up, throwing all their unsold garbage into a skip. This was all well and good... until various people decided that it was a good idea to rummage in this skip for free goodies. OK, some of the people there seemed less than wealthy, in which case, fair play to them. However, some of the scavangers were just there for the sake of getting free stuff. One woman who bought a electric piano from us was happily rummaging in there for a good half hour... someone who can afford to buy a 30 euro piano doesn't need to grab second-hand stuffed toys. I'm not sure what was more frustrating; people just rummaging in there and running off with stuff that was only priced at 1 euro to begin with, or the fact it was almost exclusively my toys they were grabbing.

Any-hoo, my dad and a couple of other stall-holders got the idea into their heads that it would be fun to start smashing and maiming all the stuff about to be dumped into the skip, therefore halting the scavanging. So the standing on technology and glassware began. The technology part was especially fun, as much of the sales (and, in one case, a return) made were cameras, PDAs and memory cards, and I was a bit frustrated that I was never able to sell any of it because my Dutch is pretty poor. The glassware was, in hindsight, a bit dangerous- one woman cut her finger on a shard of glass while trying to perloin whatever it was in the box with it, but seeing as she also wasn't without money, I have less sympathy.

I feel that there should be a point to this post... but I can't really see one at the moment. Maybe it should be about the greediness of the wealthy members of humanity or something.

Oh yes, and about the presentation I was supposed to do last week; my memory stick doesn't seem to like OpenOffice documents, and decided it would be best to neglect the fact that I had saved my presentation on it, leaving me a gibbering wreck when trying to explain my misfortune to a Head of Year. Luckily I can do it another time, huzzah!

End of post.