Shame on Ben Franklin. The man who exhibited his brilliance when he said, “Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy,” left a glaring omission on his short list of life's inevitabilities (death and taxes). Barring the former, Friday the 13th is unavoidable, and it's back again today in all its ominous glory. Here's the real bad news: This is one of three in the first seven months of 2012. That's as many as one year can have. We skated through 2011 with the minimum of one, in May - the same day the National Weather Service issued a flood warning for the Yaak River. Coincidence?/Kim Briggeman, Missoulian. More here.

Question: Are you superstitious, believing that bad luck haunts Friday the 13th, broken mirrors, black cats, etc.?

Let’s celebrate “Friday the 13th” with a little red meat, shall we? And hard numbers. There are 13 grisly deaths in this latest sequel: machete decapitations, an arrow through the head, somebody burned to death in a sleeping bag – you know the slasher drill. Three nubile young things take their tops off. Two of them have hot sex with not-nearly-as-naked guys in the same forest by the same Crystal Lake where all those camp counselors were butchered back in the 1980 original. This Michael Bay production is a graphic homage to the series that helped turn simple slasher pictures into a formula for success. It may have Bay’s big-budget sheen, and it’s every bit as efficient and heartless as the original Fridays. But for all its attempted jolts, it’s not all that scary/Orlando Sentinel. More here.

Question: Are you a fan of “Friday the 13th” type slasher movies? Or does the day itself make you nervous whenever it pops up on the calendar, like today?