Fantasist’s Scroll

And, yes, by that I mean, Friday the Thirteenth.

I always thought it was because Judas was the Thirteenth Apostle or something like that. No, according to this article on GlobalPsychics.com, it has to do with the plot to suppress the Knights Templar. Hey, stop laughing! That’s what it says!! And, I quote:

The modern basis for the Friday the 13th superstition stems from Friday October the 13th, 1307. On this date, the Pope of the church in Rome in Conjunction with the King of France, carried out a secret death warrant against “the Knights Templar”. The Templars were terminated as heretics, never again to hold the power that they had held for so long. There Grand Master, Jacques DeMolay, was arrested and before he was killed, was tortured and crucified. A Black Friday indeed!

So, there you have it, Friday the Thirteenth is a global conspiracy! Personally, I usually have better luck on Friday the Thirteenth, but, then, I always have been a little out of step with the world. Oh, and here’s a link to some alternate ideas why everyone else is afraid of Friday the Thirteenth.
Enjoy it.

Or, Why Everyone Else Fears Friday the Thirteenth!
I always thought it was because Judas was the Thirteenth Apostle or something like that. No, according to this article on GlobalPsychics.com, it has to do with the plot to suppress the Knights Templar. Hey, stop laughing! That’s what it says!! And, I quote:

The modern basis for the Friday the 13th superstition stems from Friday October the 13th, 1307. On this date, the Pope of the church in Rome in Conjunction with the King of France, carried out a secret death warrant against “the Knights Templar”. The Templars were terminated as heretics, never again to hold the power that they had held for so long. There Grand Master, Jacques DeMolay, was arrested and before he was killed, was tortured and crucified. A Black Friday indeed!

So, there you have it, Friday the Thirteenth is a global conspiracy! Personally, I usually have better luck on Friday the Thirteenth, but, then, I always have been a little out of step with the world. Oh, and here’s a link to some alternate ideas why everyone else is afraid of Friday the Thirteenth.
Enjoy it.

I saw a strange story…
Okay, a really, really strange story, on BoingBoing, about a woman breast feeding two tiger cubs in South East Asia. Obviously, after trying to picture this scene in my head, what I pictured was a kind of Asian Romulus and Remus story.
If you’re not familiar with these two fine lads, according to legend, they were twins who were raised by a wolf bitch and went on to found Rome. Imagine the same thing, but with a tiger in Asia somewhere. I can see a small, island country, not unlike Singapore, that has this as their “creation” myth. It’s similar to Romulus and Remus to resonate with Western readers, but different enough to be interesting and exotic. And, possibly, not immediately recognizable, either.
Dang! I keep giving you guys these ideas and what I need to do is develop one of them myself! Ah, well, maybe the next one.

Why We Fear Friday the Thirteenth!

I always thought it was because Judas was the Thirteenth Apostle or something like that. No, according to this article on GlobalPsychics.com, it has to do with the plot to suppress the Knights Templar. Hey, stop laughing! That’s what it says!! And, I quote:

The modern basis for the Friday the 13th superstition stems from Friday October the 13th, 1307. On this date, the Pope of the church in Rome in Conjunction with the King of France, carried out a secret death warrant against “the Knights Templar”. The Templars were terminated as heretics, never again to hold the power that they had held for so long. There Grand Master, Jacques DeMolay, was arrested and before he was killed, was tortured and crucified. A Black Friday indeed!

So, there you have it, Friday the Thirteenth is a global conspiracy!
Enjoy it.
(Yes, I also posted this on my other blog.

Okay, so it’s not quite dead…

This is from the May 15 Wired News e-mail, under the section called “Furthermore”:

Recentis Latinitas
The Vatican’s Latin lovers — that is, those who love the ancient language of Rome — are issuing a new dictionary on how to say contemporary words like FBI and videophone. The book may never become a liber maxime divenditus — a best seller — if only because of its steep cost of 100 euros, but its release is causing a major buzz in literary circles. The Italian-Latin dictionary, Lexicon Recentis Latinitas, which joins two earlier volumes, A-L and M-Z, offers students of Latin, still the Roman Catholic Church’s official language, a way to refer to things that didn’t exist in Julius Caesar’s time. FBI, for instance, is known as officium foederatum vestigatorium. TV correspondents embedded with U.S. military units in Iraq might be amused to know that they filed stories via a telephonium albo televisifico coniunctum.

Cool.