Beware the Ides of March!
Posted at 6:00 AM on March 15, 2010
by Dale Connelly
(39 Comments)
A special message from our sponsor, Lloyd's of Monday.
Life is about making choices.Some of those choices are so big, you immediately recognize them as life-changing - getting married, leaving a job, pulling the plug on grandma.
Other choices feel ordinary at the time but have profound ramifications - Eating the leftover egg salad, giving money to Bernie Madoff, stepping out the door on a Monday morning.
Statistics and instinct tell us that Monday is the riskiest day - the day when weekend brains awkwardly shift back to weekday routines. It is the day of mistakes.
On March 15th, 2010, the ordinary distraction of a typical Monday is compounded in the United States by the loss of an hour's rest over the weekend - lack of sleep also being a trigger for errors and mishaps.
And then there is a dark history to the day itself:
A certain seer warned Caesar to be on his guard against a great peril on the day of the month of March which the Romans call the Ides; and when the day had come and Caesar was on his way to the senate-house, he greeted the seer with a jest and said: "Well, the Ides of March are come," and the seer said to him softly: "Ay, they are come, but they are not gone."
(The Life of Julius Caesar by Plutarch)Caesar will later wish he had stayed in bed.
And as Caesars' wife Calpurnia later discovered (much to her dismay), his regicide insurance specifically excluded paying benefits in the event of any plots that came to fruition on the Ides of March! What is the point of even having coverage when the insurance companies employ their own seers to exempt those days of greatest danger?
Things haven't changed much. Whatever the calamity you think you have protected yourself from, it is very likely you're not covered on Mondays OR the Ides of March. Check the fine print!
Someday, insurance providers will be required to write policies that are in effect every day of the week. Until then, and especially today, it's worth it to have "Day of Mistakes" protection from Lloyd's of Monday.
Expensive? Sure. Necessary? Absolutely!
Don't say you haven't been forewarned!Lloyd's of Monday - specialty insurance for the Day of Mistakes.
Are you superstitious?
Comments (39)
I am not superstitious but I do know about fine print. WE have a rider on our insurance to cover the computers. It paid in full when an adult spilled orange juice on the laptop and fried it.
When the cat knocked a dictionary off the shelf and broke the laptop screen coverage was not forth-coming. The policy contains a rider excusing coverage for damage due to vermin and other creatures. Even on appeal the guilt was placed on the black cat not the Webster's. Maybe I should be superstitious.
Be careful out there Heartlanders!
I am not superstitious but I do know about fine print. WE have a rider on our insurance to cover the computers. It paid in full when an adult spilled orange juice on the laptop and fried it.
When the cat knocked a dictionary off the shelf and broke the laptop screen coverage was not forth-coming. The policy contains a rider excusing coverage for damage due to vermin and other creatures. Even on appeal the guilt was placed on the black cat not the Webster's. Maybe I should be superstitious.
Be careful out there Heartlanders!
Sorry for the Jim! Blame it on Monday!
I'm not the least bit superstitious, although I have some strong emotions about a certain lucky fishing cap. Heartlanders will remember Garrison Keillor's baseball team, the Whippets. One year I thought it would be cute to make my new lucky fishing cap a Whippets baseball cap. The irony appealed to me.
Our family took a week-long vacation to Lake Superior that year. I had a flat on my boat trailer on the way up there, however, and I had to leave my boat unlocked and open on the side of I-35 for two days while I got a new tire. There was about $12,000 worth of fishing gear sitting in the boat or loosely attached to it. I was heartsick by the time I got the trailer fixed.
The first night I fished I hooked a very large lake trout. The fish was right beside the boat when the hook popped out of its mouth. And that was it. I spent a week of zealous fishing in my new lucky cap, and that was the only fish I hooked all week.
It is one thing to fish in total failure on your only vacation week. But if you make your living writing articles that ell other people how to catch fish in the Great Lakes, this kind of frustration is beyond humiliating.
I still have that lucky fishing cap with its queer dog logo. I wouldn't dream of taking it fishing again. I'd burn the thing if I were sure I could exorcise its evil spirit forever, but I'm afraid the evil in that cap might drift to another article of clothing. So, no, I'm not superstitious. But even I can see cause and effect when it hits me over the head. That cap is cursed. This isn't a matter of superstition but science!
Good Monday Morning to All,
Well Monday morning seems to have caused me to do another kind Jim activity. I lost the comment I wrote some how. Well, I try not to be superstiious, but I might have experienced some kind of Monday bad luck.
I will see if I can over come my Monday morning bad luck by making another comment later this morning which I hope will not be lost and I hope this comment will not be lost
No.
Steve,
There must be a way to neutralize the bad mojo in that Whippets cap.
Encase it in cement?
Launch it into space?
Ideas, anyone?
Isn't there a song ... "The Cap Came Back"?
Sorry everyone, couldn't help it!
I wouldn't say I'm supersticious, but it does seem to sometimes (usually in hindsight) that there was overwhelming evidence of how things were going to go. SIgns?
Dale, there might be a way to exorcise the cp.. But we are talking about bringing in an expensive specialist with a bone in his nose and ostrich egg rattles. I'm sure not gonna touch that thing with my bare hand again.
Oh, Sherrilee, stinky stinky!
I, as tribute to the Pogo comic strip of old, am most superstitutious when Friday the 13th falls on a Friday...or, a Monday.
steve, i believe the best way to deal with the whippets hat is to buld a box made of lead to keep it in until the next nasa mission carrying cargo from various scientists for experimantation. you could offer it to be sent to the black hole in the next solar system to test the fishing in other galaxies. it would be a very valuable data collection and i am certain that you would be one of the first to be offering guided expertise in other solar systems.
i am supersticious to the point that 13 or 666 are avoided things, i would follow the numerology in china if i understood it well enough to direct my actions.they get married and go on journeys based on the way the numbers line up on the yin and yang side of things. i believe that the opportunnity to do well or poorly is affected by the cosmos. i am fortunate not to know how to determine it, so all i can do is plug away as best i can.
Greetings! Generally, I'm not superstitious. But Steve's example of a very unlucky Whippets cap certainly deserves attention. Perhaps it should be encased in a Farraday Cage (a special copper structure). It supposedly blocks many forms of electromagnetic radiation, therefore it could also block bad mojo energy as well. Just a thought -- I'm going back to bed now. The Ides of March is starting to make me nervous ...
I don't think that I'm superstitious. I started to re-read Frasier's "The Golden Bough" this winter, however, that compendium of all our primitive beliefs and rituals, and I notice objects around the house that could be vestiges of the superstitious.. In particular, I see that my living room is inhabited by 2 straw Finnish goat figures and 4 wool Tomtens, and if those aren't totemic, I don't know what is. I keep them out all year, not just at Christmas-I just can't bear to put them away in the closet.
Just like Willie Dixon, I ain't superstitious.
Do you have the Howlin' Wolf recording in the library? If so, it would be great to hear, please!
Steve, my bad luck with a lost post is nothing compare to your unlucky fishing trip.
What I tried to say earlier, in my lost post, was that some how the change in time in the spring actually helps me improve my sleeping patern. However, there a negative effect on sleep for me from the fall time change. I really would rather not have any time changes.
I'd like to say that I'm not superstitious, but I think I'm mostly just selective. I will admit to what amount to talismans (a bracelet given to "make me feel better" by my daughter is a newer one), as well as a belief in theater ghosts.
Fishing hats? Not so much. I don't fish. Steve, perhaps the answer is to bury the hat in a back yard of a non-fishing hat believer (like me). We could plant a nice azalea over it.
I don't want to do all the talking, but cynthia just hit one of my big buttons. I grew up on Pogo and miss it every morning.
Churchy La Femme used to fret when Friday the 13th came on a Monday because that was such a dangerous way to begin the week!
Still have a bunch of those old books.
Steve, Frasier would recommend burying the hat and burning a straw effigy of a fish over it and then retreating to a darkened hut for 30 days to remove the bad luck.
Clyde,
No?
Thanks! There's never a time when it's not the right time for Howlin' Wolf!
elinor, I saw some of your photographs online. Very nice.
jim, well, a little I guess. Four of my superstitious beliefs were proven true over the last week. So 1) I guess I do believe that if I overeat I will gain weight. 2) I do believe in the power of vacuuming to keep the house clean. 3) I sometimes do wonder if all of the billboards aren't slowling down the rotation of the earth.
4) I think it is possible that my advancing age is not maybe making me old.
Thanks, Clyde in Mankato. :-)
clyde
i hadn't thought about the billboards. you are a deep thinker today.
I used to be very superstitious as a kid. It started with the recognition that my birthday is the first day of the Libra zodiac sign. I eventually grew out of it but I still think that superstitions are interesting from a human behavior view. I used to have discussions with friends about the disctinctions between superstitious practices and mainstream religious practices. Conclusions usually fell to 'it's all a matter of perspective.'
By the way, the aforementioned Julius Caeser was killed on the steps of Pompey's Theater. That theater was/is part of a roughly city block sized Roman temple area known as Largo di Torre Argentina or the Largo of St. Argentine. It was discovered in 1929 but after decades of lack of funding to continue the excavation, a group of 'squatters' took it over and turned it into a huge cat sanctuary. A very cool place to visit if you're walking around Rome. (Check it out at www.romancats.com)
jim--the billboard is a Click and Clack theory actually. This time of year my major superstition is actually that all of the things coming to life put things in the air that make my life pretty miserable and make it just about impossible for me to think. This will last about a month or so. \TGitH--there is a significant theological difference, but theology is, of course, a matter of perspective. One of my superstitions is that it is bad luck to argue religion, politics, or baseball. And we still want to know waht kind of car you drive.
What kind of car I drive? It's a 2001 Mitsubishi Galant. Why? It was the best bang for the buck I could find at the time. Purely practical economics decision at the time. Not the kind of car I would drive if I had my choice.
TGitH--this is from a blog last week in which you did not take part, about the kind of cars we drive. We all go to guessing what you drove. So, two more questions, if you do not mind: 1) what color is your car and 2) what would you drive if you had your choice?
How's voicing business?
I don't mind at all. When we start getting into license, PIN, and social security numbers, then I'll ask a few more questions.
It's white and I plan to drive it until the wheels fall off. If I had my druthers...hm...I'm tempted to suggest that I'd design something myself and have it constructed. But if we're talking about something stock...hm... My 'faves' tend to change with my mood but I would be very amenable to a 1967 Toyota 2000GT.
My guess was a small rusty semi-junker or a big dirty 3/4 diesel pickup.
An observation I made when I moved from NE MN to here 14 years ago. In NE MN a new 3/4 pickup is dirty, loaded with woodsy recreational or professional gear, and is driven by a 20-40 year old at least 10 mph over the speed limit. Here it is spanking clean, is empty (no, rarely has farm stuff in it) and is dirven by a 60-80 year old at a speed at least 10 mph under the speed limit.
Now that I think of it, Steve, I wouldn't burn a fish effigy. If the bad luck object is a Whippets cap, then perhaps you should burn an effigy of Jim Ed.
I used to think I wasn't superstitious, but like Anna, I do have talismans, lucky earrings and sweater. And I believe some things are explainable only by the fact that there is energy in the universe that cannot be measured and that I do not understand.
Have a safe Monday, all!
Off topic: Barb in Blackhoof, if you post today, I forget what you and the goats do with the time change. Just curious...
People seem pretty quiet on the blog today-Is everyone hunkered down to avoid disaster? Is Blackhoof Barb delivering goatlings? Is Donna on Spring break?
I'm trying not to call too much bad luck down on myself, after my very bad pun earlier, as I don't have enough lucky talismans here at my desk to keep me safe!
By the SF school calendar Donna has school today and tomorrow.
barb may be birthing kids, huh.
I feel wose than Dale sounds. Just always that way this time of year. My brain is insisting that it wants more room inside my skull but the skull is not cooperating. I will be this way for 3-6 weeks. Have you ever just wanted to pull your eyes out of your head, a la Oedipus?
Clyde, no, but I have, at times wanted to pour hot coffee up my nose and into my sinuses.
clyde, i understand politics and religion but baseball is the one thing i could discuss feverishly all day and we don't have to argue about it unless you have some stupid idea that i can't straighten you out on.
try the homeopathic alergy stuff. it seems to work well for a number of people i have suggested it to.
tgith 67 toyota 2000gt was a cool car. i was always an xke fan and the 2000gt is right up there.
you know steve this does make me hesitant to sew that whippets log i have in a drawer somewhere on anything at all. i hope it hasn't been doing voodoo on me from the drawer
Just kidding about the baseball. I can discuss baseball a long time too, mostly how it has been ruined by $, but I still love it. So of course I hate the Yankees. The only baseball argument I do get into is with one of my U of Chi roommates who is from NY and I always tell him you love the game of baseball and hate the Yankees or love the Yankees and don't care about the game itself. I love baseball movies. Since my wife cannot go to a baseball game anymore, I do not think I will be going to the new Twins stadium. Steps are too steep. They seem to have made as poor a handicapped provision in the new park as they did in the old one. And she is deteriorating lately. This blog has been an outlet for me.
I can also discuss religion without argument, like to as a matter of fact. But not politics. I am way to disgusted with it all to discuss it rationally.
Virtually no remedies work on my head. Is not a sinus issue or an allergy issue. It is a rhinitis issue, a trigger issue. I understand the difference but it is hard to explain. Almost everything I have tried is also a trigger. I have resolved to live with it after all of the misery I have gone through trying to fix the symptoms.
When I taught, I had a trivia question every day, different topic for each day of the week. I had a Trivia Hall of Fame for my room, with names on a plaque. Now all but one of those names is now a friend on facebook, which has also been a delight.
Steve, I was hoping someone else would remember Pogo and that Friday the 13th could come on any day.
Do you still go back and read the books from time to time?
nothing to do with this am's discussion, BUT, I just read Dale's article in MM on myth, very good, very funny, thank you Dale!
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