My boss has this stupid time clock that she got because she can’t control her employees, etc. and instead of direct confrontation, some idiot expert “recommended” a time clock and card system.
So anyway, I am going to try and clock in this a.m. at 8:08 (I’m never on time anyway). I know it’s already passed for some of you but…it’ll look cool.
Apparently there are tons of weddings scheduled all over the world for today. The Chinese are going nuts for it, including scheduling their hosting of the Olympics for today.
Shouldn’t your title be 0808080808?
Now, where’s that lottery ticket …
djm
Yeah, it should, but I didn’t wait to post at the exact moment, knowing that it would already be over for the bulk of ye.
Double Double Fortune to all!
According to a recent HSBC commercial, the number 8 is a very lucky number in China. I wonder if 16 is twice as lucky.
Hm, a wiki article with more than you’d need to know on the subject of Chinese numbers and luck: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbers_in_Chinese_culture
Yeah, they like doubles of things. I remember playing a Chinese wedding where they ended up paying us more than we bid so they could give double $100 bills. They were encased in little red sleeves with some characters that I think meant double fortune. I was doubly happy to get mo’ moola.
I guess if you have a continuous civilization for 4000 years, you come up with a meaning for every damn thing (i.e. Wiki number article).
Too bad there won’t be a 13/13/13 13:13:13. That would be really cool. 
All you need is a lunar calendar and a 24h clock.
Numerology is a very old superstition. The Christian Bible is full of it (numerology, I mean … well, just lots of superstition, period.)
djm
Too bad this wasn’t your 8080th post, Weeks. But then you’ve always been a bit ahead of the curve.
T
Hopefully nobody finds this offensive… but I really hope that the Chinese are not as superstitious as they are made out to be. I hope this is one of those things where the western media has latched onto an amusing generalization and are just stereotyping like crazy, and that there’s not a huge portion of the world’s population that believes that they will all be lucky all day today.
Chance predicts that half of them will have a crappy
day, and won’t be quite so into it on 09/09/2009…
Well, I trust they’re no more superstitious than anyone else, knock on wood.
06/06/06 was a treat. I remember people who wouldn’t come to work that day.
At least not until 09:09.09. 
djm
Well, I didn’t clock in until 8:18 but at least it had an eight.
Superstition, folk beliefs, fears. There are actually plenty o’ em in US life, they are just well-disguised.
California Indians greatly feared being poisoned by others and it was the source of tension and sometimes conflict. They paid a lot of tribute to shamans to help them conquer their concerns and ward off the poisons. Along comes the Euro-man, who declares them primitive for having such fears.
But I find in today’s society, that we are obsessed with health-related fears, fears of being politically incorrect, fears of crime, fears of terrorism, fears of global warming and on and on. I think we fear being poisoned too, inordinately so. We killed nuclear plants back in the 70s because of fears of radiation. Al Gore, who was in the coal business at the time, didn’t mind a bit.
I was driving on the freeway yesterday behind a van that was professionally painted to advertise its services: air duct cleaning. This is among the more recent services that has people convinced that their air ducts must be cleaned lest they be poisoned with asthma, allergies, etc. Sure, there is a basis for concern. I don’t know how we survived without their services up till now!!!
But think of human history:
living in caves, huts, often insect infested and with open fires and all kinds of smoke pollution and animal hair, not to mention mold-filled dirt for floors.
And, you need a shaman to clean em out (air ducts), one dressed in spiffy uniform, I reckon. You can’t pull the register off and stick your mere mortal vacuum cleaner hose down there and get the bulk of what is close to you. Nooooo, you need to pay the tribute. And it’s pricey as hell, too.
Now, people try and encase themselves in anti-septic environments because of fears of contaminants. A report, to justify banning fireplaces, claimed that wood smoke causes heart disease, hypertension and the particulates are carcinogenic. (It might be that our windows are so good and tight now that we need to, because we have eliminated air flow, I suppose.)
To which I say: HOW in gawds name did we survive the last 500,000 years of humankind using wood for fuel??? Having animals and bugs in the house? We should have all died and gone extinct, having done the wrong things for so long, shouldn’t we have? Man, people didn’t even bathe daily, some still don’t .until recent times, but we are supposed to be afraid of those tiny, tiny critters who eat our skin and we are urged to change our sheets every week, lest we get sick and die…
Once again, one early pre-anthropologist who studied Calif. Indians noted that they had such strong, smoky environments that he suspected a high-rate of eye disease. Yet the Indians had phenomenally long lives for the most part, at least anecdotally, rther than heart attacks hypertension (though I can’t vouch for the quality of their eyesight). They were in rooms with only a hole in the top to let the smoke escape! Probably burned green wood, too at times. The fleas were so bad that they often would just burn up the hut and build a new one.
We are afraid of global warming, red dye #2, dirty air ducts, insect feces, wood fires, and on and on. In every case, there is a basis of reality. And, a person can be poisoned too by another. But who is primitive, superstitious and fear-based? Sometimes I wonder…
Even though I have a lot of problems with Michael Moore, he set forth, but didn’t answer, an interesting question in Bowling for Columbine. He basically asked out loud: is it possible that our gun violence in the US is related to fear-based thinking, stoked and fostered by the government?
I thought it was a great question. We don’t see it so much in ourselves, but I think this society is filled with fear, that is similar to superstition. We just don’t see it that way. And the fear is contagious.
Yeah, I know that’s different than thinking a number is lucky, but seeing the question unleashed the torrent, so to speak…
We need to think about our fears, as much as that which we fear.
great post, Weeks.
On another site I’m on (a mom’s site), I once posted a slightly tongue in cheek thread about what a “horrible” mom I was. How I had done SO many things you shouldn’t do, like let my kids play in the dirt and mud, shoot guns, and whatever “crisis de jur” there is. The owner of the board thought the post was so good that she asked me for a photo to accompany it, and I used one of my oldest on a 4 wheeler, completely covered in mud and sitting in a muddy sinkhole.
Some of the posts on this particular site slay me. Even with all the allergies and such that my kids had growing up, they certainly were never treated as “bubble children”, but some of these parents won’t let their high school kids walk to a bus stop for crying out loud! And I’m talking in a completely safe neighborhood, with sidewalks, and the bus stop is just several houses away.
that’s it Weeks old boy!!! 
I’m afraid to go muck the barn now… 
the wife’ll want a word with ya for this
It took me a minute to remember what thread I was reading, so I thought
that rant was going decidedly off topic. But you pulled it out of the dive with
that line, I tell you what. Well played.
You hope so, anyway.
My nephew Jonathon was born on 08/08/88 today would have been his 20th birthday but sadly he died from a heart attack 4 years ago,so today has been a sad day for our family.
Well, it’s a theory in progress that has a universal that I have held for a long time: that people are pretty similar through the ages, but the exterior trappings change so much that we think we’re different. Of course I have to watch that I don’t try to make the facts fit the theory. But I can’t believe that we mere mortals have overcome what we consider savage or primitive. When William mentioned the superstition, I threw it in there.
I believe that modern man has a lot of unresolved tensions, which are based on denying some very basic human needs that are universal in primitive societies; the need for music, dance, ritual, meditation, gender bonding (not sexual, but companion and familial) and interface with nature.
I think we end up stressed and fearful, not to mention the merciless immersion in an over-stimulating environment.
Thank God we still get to play music, because we have just about shut out everything else we probably need in the way we live.
I know, sounds crazy, but what else will you get from the flashy but shallow intellectual mind of Von Weekenstein? I just keep reflecting on why life has become so unlivable that seemingly everyone is trying to medicate themselves, licitly or illictly. Why ain’t we happy wi’ all our stuff???
We’re crazy and our culture, such as it is, scoffs at primitves.