Month: October 2023

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Friday The 13th

From Bustle:

Humor me for a moment, and try to think back to where you were in 2006. If you also unwittingly conjured a bunch of images of frizzy hair, braces, and angsty sing alongs to Taylor Swift's "Teardrops On My Guitar" in the back of your mom's minivan, then you're not alone. Why, you may be wondering, did I just take you on a journey back to your pimple-ridden, t-shirt layering, pre-Gossip Girl youth? Because if you're wondering how often Friday the 13th happens in October, you should first wrap your mind around the fact that we haven't had one since 2006…and according to my good friend math, that means this is the first one we've had in eleven years. [This was published in 2017 – MA]

That being said, you won't have to wait as long for the next one, which will come in 2023. As for how often it occurs, it just depends on Leap Years and our good old friend the Gregorian calendar; we can go anywhere from five and eleven years between October, Friday the 13ths. (For future reference, in case you like to plan your memes ahead: the next few are 2023, 2028, 2034, 2045, 2051, 2056, 2062, 2073, 2079, 2084, and 2090. If you manage to live longer than that, don't @ me, because I personally plan on dying of butter consumption long before then.)

But why, exactly, is it so spooky to have Friday the 13th happen in October than any other month? It's not just because it's rare—it's because one of the more popularly documented origins of the superstition took place on October, Friday the 13th.

A medieval society known as the Knights Templar were arrested on Friday, October 13, 1307 by French King Philip IV; the Knights Templar, a group of mostly unmarried men, were paid handsomely by Christian pilgrims for their protection during the crusades. Apparently they amassed enough of a fortune that when King Philip IV was low on funds himself, he initiated the arrest of hundreds of them on the grounds of heresy, which is—well—bad luck if you're one of the Knights Templar.

This didn't stop people from theorizing that the knights were actually involved in shenanigans within the church, or they discovered legendary treasure, and all sorts of far more interesting fates. But despite their unfortunate arrests and the timing, more documented incidents of that particular Friday the 13th being an "unlucky" day didn't really start to stick until the 20th century, when authors began to reference it in their works (most notably The Iron King in 1955, and The Da Vinci Code in 2003). From there, the idea of October, Friday the 13th being a super spooky day instead of just a baseline spooky one seemed to take on a life of its own.

Friday the 13th may have been causing unease long before that particular one in October, though, because in Western superstition, both the number 13 and Fridays are considered historically unlucky; some people theorize that it may hark back to the Bible, as 13 people were at the Last Supper, and Jesus died on Good Friday.

As for the October factor, Knights Templar aside, October itself is a known ~spooky month~. A lot of the things we associate with Friday the 13th — superstition, magic, black cats (which are pure and good and must be protected)—we also associate with Halloween. It's kind of a psychological double whammy considering that alone; when you put the 11 year wait from the last one into the mix, it's no wonder people are more hyped about this particular Friday the 13th than they have been over others in recent past.

Whether or not you choose to acknowledge Friday the 13th this year, stay safe, y'all—and try not to let any French kings rob you of the cold, hard cash you pillaged and protected for.

And for those of you who (like me, obviously) were curious, we haven't had an October Friday the 13th full Moon (adding to the spookiness) since the year 2000—and the last one prior to that it was in 1905. I haven't been able to find definitively how often this confluence of events occurs, but based on the two dates I was able to dig up, it looks to be approximately 90-100 years.

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🤣 🤣 🤣

From The Palmer Report:

MyPillow guy Mike Lindell keeps suffering blow after self inflicted blow. He now claims he's just about broke, and he recently revealed that the lawyers representing him in the Dominion case all quit because he couldn't keep paying them.

Now Lindell says he's going to represent himself in the Dominion case…

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The Missing Link Demands…

The Missing Link making "demands" of her political party who currently hold the gavel in the House wants to stop weaponizing the government…because she can't spell hypocrisy let alone define it

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Karma is a Bitch

From Comic Sans:

Resurfaced Video Of Tommy Tuberville Falling Down Airplane Stairs Inspires Perfect Nickname

Video from 2014 showed the Republican Senator losing his footing on some stairs while exiting a plane before tumbling all the way down on his behind—and the internet gave him a fitting new nickname.

Alan Herrera
Oct. 12, 2023

X screenshots of Tommy Tuberville disembarking from a plane and falling down the stairs
@JasonCooper22/X

Alabama Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville was widely mocked after a resurfaced video from 2014 showed him losing his footing on some stairs while exiting a plane before tumbling all the way down on his behind.

Tuberville, holding a small suitcase in one hand and a duffle bag in the other, appeared to lose his balance after descending three steps, resulting in a slide down the rest of the staircase. Airport staff were seen checking on him once he reached the bottom.

The resurfaced incident prompted social media users to give him a fitting new nickname: Tommy Tumbleville.

You can see how Tuberville got his nickname by watching the video below.

What added an extra layer of irony was Tuberville's prior jabs at President Biden for his own stairway mishaps.

The President has faced multiple instances of stumbling on camera in the past year, including a notable fall during this year's Air Force Academy commencement ceremony when he tripped over a sandbag. He's also been observed slipping on the stairs to Air Force One, both when ascending and descending, prompting conservative critics to speculate about the impact of his age.

Over the summer, Tuberville mocked Biden's falls in remarks to reporters:

"You watch Joe Biden over in Europe. I mean, I'm afraid he's going to fall down every time I turn on television."

Given his own fall, social media users couldn't resist having a laugh at Tuberville's expense.

The mockery was swift.

In recent months, Tuberville has been under scrutiny from members of both political parties for refusing to lift his hold on over 300 military nominations.

He has kept the nominations on hold in protest of the Department of Defense's abortion policy, which allows U.S. service members and their families to take time off to receive the procedure out of state.

Earlier this week, news outlets reported Tuberville's hold on military confirmations impacts several senior military appointments in the Middle East, which could complicate the U.S. response to H

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Matthew Shepherd Died Today*

From I Should Be Laughing (*originally posted in 2009):

He was just a kid. A slight kid, a sweet kid. A gay. But it wasn't the kid who got noticed on this day eleven years ago, it was his murder that caught us all, gay and straight, off-guard.

Matthew Wayne Shepard was a twenty-one-year-old college student at the University of Wyoming. And he was gay. And, for being gay, he was tortured and left to die near Laramie, Wyoming. His attack occurred on October 6, but Mathew didn't die until almost a week later.

Matthew was born in Wyoming and grew up there. He spent his last high school year at The American School in Switzerland. After high school, he attended Catawba College and Casper College before he relocated to Denver and becoming a first-year political science major at the University of Wyoming.

Political science. Matthew might have been a politician, or a community organizer, or a gay rights activist. Or a teacher or a bartender or any number of other things which we'll never know because he never got the chance to be anything else.

He was described by his parents, Judy and Dennis, as "an optimistic and accepting young man [who] had a special gift of relating to almost everyone. He was the type of person who was very approachable and always looked to new challenges. Matthew had a great passion for equality and always stood up for the acceptance of people's differences."

He might have done so much.

But Matthew knew he was gay, and so did many other people. And like so many in the LGBT community, he faced physical and verbal abuse all throughout his life, and death. In 1995, during a high school trip to Morocco, he was beaten and raped, leaving him withdrawn from friends and family and battling depression and panic attacks. But he soldiered on, went back to school and seemed to be coming out of his depression.

Then, just after midnight on October 7, 1998, Matthew met Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson in a bar. McKinney and Henderson offered Shepard a ride in their car. They took him to a remote area, tied him to a fence, robbed, pistol whipped, tortured him, and left him to die. They also found his address and decided to rob his home as well.

Matthew Shepard was discovered 18 hours later by Aaron Kreifels, who mistook the beaten, dying young man for a scarecrow. Matthew was barely alive. And suffering.

There was a fracture from the back of his head to the front of his right ear. He had severe brain stem damage, which affected his body's ability to regulate heart rate, body temperature and other vital functions. There were also a dozen or more lacerations around his head, face and neck. His injuries were deemed too severe for doctors to operate.

Matthew Shepard never regained consciousness and was pronounced dead on October 12, 1998.

Police arrested McKinney and Henderson shortly thereafter, finding the bloody gun as well as the victim's shoes and wallet in their truck. The two men had attempted to persuade their girlfriends to provide alibis. They used the gay panic defense, arguing that they beat, tortured and killed Matthew Shepard because he came on to them. They even tried to say they only wanted to rob him, not hurt him.

But they hurt an entire community.

Russell Henderson pleaded guilty in April 1999, and agreed to testify against Aaron McKinney to avoid the death penalty; he was given two consecutive life sentences. The jury found Aaron McKinney guilty of felony murder, and as they began to deliberate on the death penalty, Matthew Shepard's parents brokered a deal, resulting in McKinney receiving two consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole.

In a statement read to the court, Dennis Shepard told McKinney what the sentence means to him:

"You won't be a symbol.

No years of publicity, no chance of commutation, no nothing—just a miserable future and a miserable end.

It works for me ….

Mr. McKinney, I give you life in the memory of one who no longer lives.

May you have a long life, and may you thank Matthew every day for it."

He was just a kid. A slight kid, a sweet kid. A gay kid. And he could have been any one of us, but in death, Matthew did what hadn't really been done before. He shone a light on hate crimes against the LGBT community. He gave us a face and a smile that needn't have been snuffed out so readily.

He could have been any one of us. He is every one of us.

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Quote of the Day

I've spent a lot of time studying bad men. I've examined their characteristics, their mannerisms, the utter banality of their cruelty. Yet there's something different about Donald Trump.

When I look at him, I don't see a bad man. Truly.

I see an evil one.

Over the years, I've met gangsters here and there. This guy tries to be one, but he can't quite pull it off. There's such a thing as 'honor among thieves.'

Yes, even criminals usually have a sense of right and wrong. Whether they do the right thing or not is a different story—but—they have a moral code, however warped.

Donald Trump does not. He's a wannabe tough guy with no morals or ethicc. No sense of right or wrong. No regard for anyone but himself—not the people he was supposed to lead and protect, not the people he does business with, not the people who follow him blindly and loyally, not even the people who consider themselves his 'friends.'

He has contempt for all of them.

WE New Yorkers got to know him over the years that he poisoned the atmosphere and littered our city with monuments to his ego. We knew first hand that this was someone who should never be considered for leadership.

We tried to warn the world in 2016.

The repercussions of his turbulent presidency divided America and rattled New York City beyond imagination. Remember how we were jolted by the crisis in early 2020, as a virus swept the world? We lived with Donald Trump's bombastic behavior every day on the national stage, and we suffered as we saw our neighbors piling up in body bags.

The man who was supposed to protect this country put it in peril, because of his recklessness and impulsiveness. It was like an abusive father ruling the family by fear and violent behavior. That was the consequence of New York's warning getting ignored. Next time, we know it will be worse.

Make no mistake: the twice-=impeached, 4-time indicted Donald Trump is still a fool. But we can't let our fellow Americans write him off like one. Evil thrives in the shadow of dismissive mockery, which is why we must take the danger of Donald Trump very seriously. 

So day we issue another warning. From this place where Abraham Lincoln spoke—right here in the beating hear of New York±to the rest of America:

This is our last chance.

Democracy won't survive the return of a wannabe dictator.

And it won't overcome evil if we are divided.

So what do we do about it? I know I'm preaching to the choir here. What we're doing today is valuable, but we have to take today into tomorrow—take it outside these walls.

We have to reach out to the half of our country who have ignored the harzards of Trump and, for whatever reason, support elevating him back into theWhite House. They're not stupid, and we must not condemn them for making a stupid choice. Our future doesn't just depend on us; it depends on them.

Let's reach out to Trump's followers with respect.

Let's not talk about 'democracy.' 'Democracy' may be our holy grail, but to others it is just a word, a concept, and in their embrace of Trump, they've already turned their backs on it.

Let's talk about right and wrong. Let's talk about humanity.

Let's talk about kindness. Security for our world. Safety for our families. Decency.

Let's welcome them back.

We won't get them all, but we can get enough to end the nightmare of Trump and fulfill the mission of this 'Stop Trump Summit.'" — Robert De Niro