Triskaidekaphobia is the fear of the number 13. Many American buildings skip the number 13 when numbering floors.
Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia is the fear of the number 666, which some consider the Number Of The Beast.
No building is tall enough to have a six hundred and sixty-sixth floor to skip, but Ronald and Nancy Reagan had their house number changed to 668 because of that fear.
Golf courses, on the other hand, have thirteenth holes, so I suppose if there were 666 holes, those would be numbered properly, too.
I’d hate to have to mow the grass on that course, though.
Category: My stories
Swept Under the Prayer Rug
The bishop stuck Father O’Brien’s file in a drawer and locked it.
“Move him to Boston,” he said.
Two years later, the bishop pulled out O’Brien’s file and added the newest reports to it.
“Try New York,” he said. “Last chance.”
It wasn’t. A year later, O’Brien was sent to Los Angeles.
When the file was too thick to fit in the drawer, the bishop had O’Brien sent to South America on a teaching mission.
The locals took matters into their own hands, hanging the child molester.
“I should have sent him there in the first place,” said the bishop.
The Blues
You bought that guitar from a store? Got it for Christmas?
Stop! Stop stop stop!
Stop playing the Blues!
You don’t have the right to play the Blues.
The old Bluesmen were so poor, they made their instruments out of whatever was lying around.
Screen doors, busted-down car radiators… even their little brothers and sisters.
You don’t make instruments out of your big brothers and sisters because they can beat you up.
And you don’t make em out of gramma and grampa because they smell funny.
So put down that guitar, get poor, and learn.
Learn, and earn the Blues.
Princess
Remember when you got to the end of the dungeon in Super Mario Brothers, killed the bad guy, and saw:
“Thank you, Mario, but our princess is in another castle.”
Well, then, who the hell is this bitch?
And what is she doing all the way down here?
Seven princesses later, Mario finally rescues the “real” princess.
If it were me, I’d have given up and settled for the first one.
She looks the same. And I’m sure her kingdom wants her back and will pay a reward for her.
I’m done with jumping around. Go ask my brother Luigi.
Blender
I love my new immersion blender.
Instead of using a hard-to-clean pitcher with blades in it that had be run through the dishwasher every time, I’m now using a stick with a set of blades on the end that I can just run under the faucet to clean.
I no longer have to go to Starbucks for frozen coffee slushes either. I just toss ice, chocolate sauce, cold coffee, and Bailey’s into a thick oversized mug, blend it for a while, and I’m done.
I still drop a dollar in a glass for a tip, though. Hard habit to break.
Unicorns
Most server administrators manage their servers, setting up simple rotation scripts to prevent their logs from filling the hard drive.
But there’s some slackers out there who have no idea what they’re doing, and they let the hard drive fill up, and they can’t send email or serve up any more web pages.
I send those people a knowledgebase article and offer to set up the log rotation scripts, but one refused, saying “The unicorns will appear when it reaches 101 percent!”
Bah. I install the rotation scripts anyway.
Remotely, of course.
(Those roaming unicorns are really dangerous, you know!)
Rain Delay
Usually, I go straight home after work, but my wife told me that there were holes in most of my underwear, so I walked by Target to pick up new underwear.
The delay kept me out after five, which meant that Nit Noi Thai was open.
Yeah, I stopped in to eat some spring rolls, soup, and beef satay.
By the time I got my check, it was raining.
Hard.
I own two umbrellas.
One is at work.
The other is on my back porch.
I ordered another tea, sat back with my brand new underwear, and watched the rain.
Walking Taco
A Frito Pie is a bowl of Frito chips covered in chili, cheese, sour cream, and other Mexican food condiments. You eat it with a fork like you’d eat a casserole.
If you pour that stuff into a bag of Fritos, it’s called a Walking Taco or a Taco-On-The-Run.
Close your eyes. Imagine a Taco walking around or running on its own.
If you saw a taco doing that, would you let it pass, or would you chase it down and try to eat it?
Eat too many Frito Pies, and you may have nightmares of the things chasing you.
Batman
I saw the Batman movie today.
And that’s all I’m going to say.
Because everything I try to say about it gets me in trouble.
Before I went to see the movie, I tried to say “I’m going to see it when the crowds die down” but people called me an insensitive asshole after all those people got shot and killed in Colorado.
And then, after I saw it, I said “That movie was awesome. It totally blew me away.” People got even more pissed off at me.
So I’ll just say “I liked it” and talk about the weather.
Ever after
There are eight million stories in the big city.
I plan on ending them.
The problem is, it’s hard to come up with an ending that’s the opposite of the simple and succinct classic: “And they lived happily ever after.”
Although “And they died happily” would work, since the poison I put in the water supply has a euphoric effect.
“Ever after” doesn’t make sense, since they’re all going to die.
Including me.
Which is why I’m writing the ending of their stories now. Because I won’t be around to write it later.
Think I can get that phrase copyrighted?