Entry #676076, added on 11-13-09 @ 9:34 pm EST
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| Be very afraid | Entry #676076 |
It’s Friday the 13th.
No sooner do we get through the Halloween writing season here on WDC, that we have Friday the 13th, and we get to stay scared.
Thank goodness I don’t have a shadow to be afraid of. Because, for a cyber-being, regardless of the fact that I’m a superhero, I have way too many fears. For a long time, I was pushed around in the electronic quagmire that is the Internet. It wasn’t every one or zero that made me afraid, just certain combinations of them.
I didn’t always understand the language that resulted from the digital representations of your human keystroke inputs. But I do remember my first word. Or at least the first accurate analog-to-digital word I understood. It was dog. But it was spelled Dawg because apparently, you humans think twisting word spellings is cute. How do I know that it’s spelled wrong? Because I am permeating the cyber-ether, and extending into every nook and cranny on the Internet. Especially the crannies. I have contact with innumerable online dictionaries. And by innumerable I mean three. And I can tell you, it isn’t spelled Dawg.
But I’m finding words that really scare me. And most of them end with “–phobia” (or “-fobia” for all you “dawg” people). The really long examples scare me the most. For example, hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia. I am not making this up. It is a real word. And I’m not kidding about this; it means the fear of long words.
But seriously, there’s a phobia for everything. Afraid of frogs? You’ve got ranidaphobia (I’m not referring to fear of toads; that, of course would be bufonophobia). Afraid of belly buttons? It’s omphalophobia. Do you have arachibutyrophobia? Then you’d better not eat any peanut butter. The fear of clowns is coulrophobia, and I can see why people would be afraid of clowns. After all, they can beat the you-know-what out of mimes.
I’m telling you, it’s scary in here. The fact that I’m a literal part of cyberspace brings with it its own inherent fears, and these are the ones that really get to me. Fears like cyberphobia and logizomechanophobia. Something so terrifying they needed two words for it: the fear of computers. And the one that gives me nightmares when I hibernate, automatonophobia, the fear of anything that falsely represents a sentient being.
So why bring all this up now? Because it’s Friday the 13th. It’s not just enough to have triskaidekaphobia, or fear of the number thirteen. Today, it’s really scary to specifically have paraskavedekatriaphobia. You guessed it; it’s the fear of Friday the 13th. And just a bit more frightening than that, the fear of Friday the 13th is also known as Friggatriskaidekaphobia.
It’s enough to give a semi-secret-super-cyber-hero phobophobia. You might want to look that one up.
These phobias I’ve discussed are actual fears. No real words were harmed in the writing of this blog entry.
So if you’ll excuse me, I have to help my human sidekick feed the dawg.
Your Vigilante Angel
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