Twitterpated

• 00:24 Video: This is great. The sad thing is that it would probably actually work, but no one would ever go for it.... tumblr.com/xpy3ik7lp #
• 00:31 Today is the anniversary of the publication of "Winnie-the-Pooh." #
• 00:32 If Latium was in Italy, then why are Latin Americans Hispanic instead of Italian? #
• 00:33 I was trying to delete my appointments from my phone's calendar for one day, and ended up deleting all of them. #
• 00:33 I guess that's what I get for using a phone to keep track of appointments. #
• 00:33 N
  ow I don't remember what time my appointment tomorrow is, though. #
• 00:35 I recently watched "The Amityville Horror," and it wasn't very good. I always get it mixed up with "The Dunwich Horror" anyway. #
• 00:54 Video: The Nostalgia Chick reviews the Bratz movie. tumblr.com/xpy3ikoka #
• 02:54 Video: A bunch of kids hanging out with Creepy Mustache Man and some talking doughnuts, and laughing about... tumblr.com/xpy3im5x9 #
• 11:50 Shouldn't Koopa Paratroopas have parachutes, rather than wings? #
• 17:15 I am dreading the Christmas season. I hope I've earned some money by then. #
• 17:18 It's always bizarre when I learn about someone's death by checking the Twitter Trending Topics. #
• 17:19 As a fan of the Super Mario Bros. Super Show, I am upset by the passing of Captain Lou Albano. #
• 17:22 @Clamanity You did? How was it? #
• 22:13 Applied for a job at Target. They had one of those stupid questionnaires that I always suck at, though. #
• 22:14 @PressTheButtons Charles Martinet? #
• 22:14 When Danny Wells dies, will anyone notice? #
• 22:28 @MikeConway What are they crossing over with? Oz, I hope. {g} #
• 22:29 @d_whiteplume Just wait until nightfall, and they'll all turn to stone. #

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Campus Chronicles

I had an interesting dream last night. No, not the one about the diminutive con-artist with the white trash mother, although that was interesting in its own way. I mean a more realistic dream about going back to college (I've had quite a few of those recently, for some reason), and being reminded of how annoyed I was that we had to leave so often. For me, college was somewhat of a mixed bag. As opposed to high school, in which I was somewhat of an outcast, I actually was able to hang out with other people. The thing is, I didn't always, because I was generally way too nervous to approach anyone. I'd frequently go to meals at the dining hall alone and hope someone would ask me to join them, which happened sometimes, but not all that often. I guess I could say that there were a fair number of people I got along with, but not much of anyone who actually sought out my company, and that made me depressed. Still, as long as I was at college, I felt there was at least a chance of interaction with peers, while back at home I just fell into the same old lonely routine. That, combined with the fact that I lived so far away from campus, was why I never particularly cared to go home for breaks. When everyone was leaving for the first Thanksgiving break of my freshman year, I actually cried, and I'm not someone who cries all that often. I suppose I was quite out of the ordinary in this respect, as the college I attended was known as a "suitcase campus," with a significant portion of the population leaving every weekend. Of course, they probably had friends at home, which I didn't. Another thing that bothered me was how, after finals, I had to leave campus pretty much immediately. Apparently the university was so stingy that it wouldn't even give me the chance to unwind after finishing for the semester. Along the same lines, every year gave us less time between moving in and the start of classes. I wanted more time to just relax in the new environment, but I'm sure I was in the minority in that respect.

I will say, however, that most of this applied to my earlier time at college. By my senior year, many of the people I'd been friendly with in earlier years had moved out of the dorm, and I spent most of my free time on the Internet. The thing was, the Internet itself was also largely a college discovery for me. I hadn't had a computer with Internet access prior to living in the dorm, and it seemed like there was so much online to explore. By my senior year, I'd met several people on the Internet, including bethje, and I spent more time talking to them than to anyone in the dorm.

Black Cat Strut

Having a wife who has a fondness for black cats (we have two, Wally and Reagan), combined with Halloween approaching, I thought a post on the connection between black cats and witches would be appropriate. Conventional superstition has it that a black cat crossing your path is bad luck, but like most beliefs involving luck, there are a lot of local variations. It's traditional in the United Kingdom for black cats to be considered GOOD luck, and other cultures think it varies depending on which direction the cat is walking. Sailors also considered it lucky to have cats on board ships, and this superstition actually has a logical explanation, as they'd kill the rats. The Egyptian goddess Bast was often portrayed as a black cat, and while the general belief is that the Egyptians considered ALL cats to be sacred, I've seen some suggestions that black ones were particularly revered. There's a legend associated with King Charles I of England that he was tried and executed not long after his pet black cat died, implying that the cat itself was lucky.



So how did black cats come to be associated with evil, and with witches in particular? I don't think there's any one official explanation, but it seems to have something to do with the association of darkness with evil, which was particularly prevalent in medieval European Christianity. Cats are nocturnal, like owls and bats, and black cats have the misfortune of having dark fur as well. Felines also have a reputation of being sneaky, and of possessing psychic abilities, like being able to see ghosts. As such, it wasn't too much of a stretch for black cats to be considered the familiars of witches, and sometimes even alternate forms of the witches themselves. There were several periods in history of people killing black cats en masse due to their link to witchcraft, which could be why they're not as common nowadays. At least, most black cats I've seen are actually a really dark brown if you look at them in the right light, but maybe that was always the case. Incidentally, it's supposedly good luck to find a white hair on a black cat, and our vet says that all black cats have at least a few white hairs. Reagan has a rather large white spot on her front, so I guess she's especially lucky. {g}