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


 

I know it’s been two days since a reward update. But it was worth the wait because the numbers are astounding. We have additional secret benefactors and more points with which to reward. And, the most exciting development is that the Vigilante Angel Ranger Team is taking shape, and extending the reach of the Vigilante.

With the help of the Vigilante Angel Rangers, over the last two days we were able to reward a total of 714,000 GPs! This breaks down into several upgrades, a bunch of Reviewers’ Rewards, two merit badges, two Awardicons and a couple of sizeable direct contributions.

And my cyber-hero circuitry is as thrilled as it can be because, thanks to the little fleshy sidekick and the strong heroic Angel Rangers, the Team is now providing Reviews in addition to GPs! Special thanks to tangerinedream, EvilDawg - A Vigilante Ranger! and EarlyHours for providing these Reviews. As new Rangers are recruited, we can give out even more reviews!

Tune in tomorrow. I’m expecting to say something of interest to each and every squishy human on WDC.