Pen-Elayne on the Web

Triskaidekaphilia

Also via Maru, a multi-part article about why Friday the 13th has such a bad rep. My favorite bit is in part 3:

So when Friday is combined with the 13th day of the month we have a double dose of pagan symbolism and female significance. Up until the Middle Ages when pagans continued to celebrate symbolic pagan days, Friday the 13th was thought to be especially lucky because it combined the goddess’s sacred day with her sacred number (drawn from the 13 months of the lunar year). As a result, Friday the 13th was a celebration and festival day for many Pagans.

The goddess in question of course being "Freya who represented fertility and sexual love [and who also] is strongly associated with spring, birds and cats." Considering that "Romans named the day dies Veneris after Venus, their own version of the Freya goddess," (Friday being the only day of the week named after a woman), and today is the eve of the manufactured holiday "representing" fertility and sexual love, and that spring is just around the corner, I think this would be the absolute perfect time to reclaim Friday the 13th as A Good And Nice Day in the name of spring, love, Venus, Friday Cat Blogging (™ Kevin Drum), feminism and like that.

Update: Michele agrees, and provides a cool link - I used to be fairly heavily into mythology but I never realized this: "The day Friday was named after Frigg (or Frigga) the Norse goddess of marriage. Later she was confused with the goddess of love, Freya, who in turn became identified with Friday." I guess it makes sense that, even back then, people were confusing love and marriage. ;)