Add Homonym Attacks! #13
Ad Hominem: Appealing to personal considerations rather than to logic or reason.
Ad Hominem Attack: An argument that focuses on a personal attack as opposed to the subject in question.
Add Homonym Attacks!: The process by which one inserts a homophone and it bites you.
(It also serves as the title to Inside Pulse’s representative column in the world of Critical Thinking, Science and Skepticism.)
Intro
Bad luck wind been blowing at my back
I was born to bring trouble to wherever I’m at
Got the number thirteen tattooed on my neck
When the ink starts to itch, then the black will turn to red
I was born in the soul of misery
Never had me a name
They just gave me the number when I was young
-from the song “Thirteen” by Glenn Danzig.
Uh oh! Number 13! Must be unlucky! Wait… Why the f*ck is 13 unlucky anyway? Four is unlucky to some people. That’s because the word for four sounds similar to the word for death in Mandarin. Ironically, I think that tradition dictates 13 as a lucky number in China.
Thirteen? Nothing sounds like 13. Hurt spleen? Pert Bean? Dirt Clean?
Allegedly, some buildings skip the thirteenth floor. Well, actually, I don’t know of any that do. I have seen some that call the 13th floor the 14th floor, but none that actually went to the trouble of having open space where the 13th floor would go.
Fear of thirteen is older than me. I know that much. Even the Charlie Brown Christmas special mentions triskaidekaphobia.
Hell, E. Cobham Brewer was writing about 13 in the 1890s, so I guess the superstition predates all who are reading this column.
In 1898 Brewer wrote the following:
The Turks so dislike the number that the word is almost expunged from their vocabulary. The Italians never use it in making up the numbers of their lotteries. In Paris no house bears the number, and persons, called Quartorziennes (q.v.), are reserved to make a fourteenth at dinner parties.
Let’s examine this thing. I might be venturing into Lucard territory, but f*ckit, he’s still on vacation.
Triskaidekaphobia
First off, as you probably know, I don’t believe in any of this shit. Luck is bullshit. Superstitions are bullshit. Just so you know.
A number of studies have shown triskaidekaphobia as one of the top superstitions in America. As many as 1 in 6 of us believes thirteen to bring bad luck. (And nearly 8 percent are scared to death of Friday the 13th.) But why?
The ancient Egyptians considered 13 to be lucky. Their afterlife was the 13th stage of living. (Note to self: pitch “13th Heaven” to the new WB/UPN amalgam.)
There are a couple of competing theories as to why 13 is a bad number. Many involve dinner parties.
The first, and more famous of the two, is the Last Supper. Jesus plus twelve Apostles equals thirteen dinner guests. As the story goes things don’t go so well after that dinner party. Although fear of 13 seems to pre-date Christianity. So, not everything is about you, Jesus!
Another dinner party in question is a much cooler story: the Lokasenna. It’s really f*cking complicated, so I’ll try to sum up as concisely as possible. In Norse mythology, Loki was suspected as being responsible for the death of everybody’s favorite god Baldr. (Loki himself wasn’t a god, but a giant. He had some mysterious back-story with Odin, the head god, and was always allowed to hang out with them.)
Sometime after that, Gymir invited all the gods to a big dinner party. Loki crashed it. He basically got drunk and called all the goddesses sluts and all of the gods pansies. Thor showed up afterwards chased Loki out, Loki turned into a fish and was captured.
All of this is eventual set-up for Ragnarok, where everything dies.
Anyways, according to some Loki was the thirteenth guest. Other tales have more than 13 guest show. The stories differ, and it depends on whether you count the elves that were there, the servants, Gymir himself, Thor who shows up later and so forth.
But the leading theory as to why 13 is bad magumbo involves Loki being the 13th guest at an earlier dinner party. The one at which Baldr was killed. You see, Baldr was protected. Everything in the universe had sworn not to harm him, except for that pesky mistletoe.
Being that he was protected, the Norse gods would pass time with a spirited game of “throw shit at Baldr.” Loki gave Hod, a blind god, some mistletoe, and poof, dead Baldr.
It seems to me that 13 isn’t unlucky in this instance. Having a mischievous giant crash your dinner parties seems like the cause of bad luck. But that’s just me; I’m weird.
Other Theories not involving dinner
Some say that fear of the number thirteen is related to anti-woman sentiment. 13 is allegedly important to the goddess, therefore Christians hate it. 13 witches in a coven, women menstruate 13 times a year (generally), things like that. These seem like bullshit to me. Men don’t keep track of women’s cycles.
Other theories have it as something during the course of man’s development. A fella only has 10 fingers and two feet, so thirteen is weird and foreign. I don’t know if I buy that idea. Especially considering men have toes, and 21 is a lucky number in Vegas.
Kinda partnered with that theory is an idea that thirteen is unlucky because it is the evil big brother of 12. Twelve is easy, it can be divided many ways. But one more and you got a big bad prime number. This seems more like a minor inconvenience that anything to me, but I can see this as holding some water. I mean, if you are splitting up shit between a couple of folks, you don’t want thirteen things. Especially if those folks are big mean Viking motherf*ckers.
Outro
So, I’m f*cking back where I started. The history of superstition is generally nebulous at best. (Damn that Lucard! He makes it look easy!)
All I can say for certain is that 13 is just like any other number. It isn’t scary at all if you call it a baker’s dozen.
In addition to Triskaidekaphobia, there is also fear of Friday the thirteenth. That actually has two impossible to spell names: paraskevidekatriaphobia and friggatriskaidekaphobia.
Some sources
www.bartleby.com/81/
www.Skepdic.com
urbanlegends.about.com
