The itsy-bitsy spider

I found a spider in the shower earlier. Naturally, I killed it, and proceeded with my shower.

While I was showering, I remembered this so-called statistic I've heard about spiders several years back. Of course, I've never believed it to be true--from a logistics point of view, I just don't see how it could ever happen, and the bigger question being--how could the person (or persons) who came up with the statistic ever have tested it to arrive at those numbers?

You might have heard it before--"The average person will swallow 7 spiders in his/her lifetime"--is what I remember hearing on the radio.

The figures and timespan may differ from what you've heard, but you get the basic premise.

How often does a spider land on you? Rarely? Never? One's never landed on me while I'm awake, even if I remained completely motionless. Typically they'd do their best to stay away from me. Does everyone sleep with their mouths open?

Snopes says that this particular statistic (at 8 spiders per year) was made up to illustrate the kind of absurd things people are willing to believe. The Straight Dope also debunks this as an urban legend.

This also reminds me of a statistics joke--"97.3% of all statistics are made up." I remembered it as 80%, but that figure doesn't really matter in this context, does it? A Google search showed 97.3% as the most common number given. Although it did show me something else I like even better, which uses the 80% figure--"80% of all statistics quoted to prove a point are made up on the spot."

In short, it's like what I keep telling the people who keep mass forwarding various tidbits: Don't believe everything you read. Question your source, and your source's source. Think about the info you got--does it even make sense? Do some research before you send it off to everyone else in your address book. Don't make yourself into a liar and a fool.

"Supernatural" and urban legend(s)

Last night's episode of Supernatural claimed to have the most famous of urban legends, and in the preview you can tell that it's the "Hook" legend that they were going to use.

Except it wasn't. Not really. Aside from the use of a hook, most of the other stuff shown actually came from two other urban legends. One was somewhat similar in nature, since the beginning circumstances of both involved a teenage couple in their cars, necking.

The other was totally unrelated, while the writers had the characters saying that it's "right out of the hookman legend."

The variations are:

1. "The Hook" - the obvious one, since the episode was called "Hookman." A teenage couple was necking in a country road, and a "man" with a hook shows up.
   
   
2. "The Boyfriend's Death" - Rather than the couple escaping to find the hook attached to the door handle, the boyfriend goes out to investigate, and ends up dangling over the car.
   
   
3. "Aren't You Glad You Didn't Turn on the Light" - A few days later, the same girl goes back to her dorm to find her roommate already sleeping, so she didn't turn on the light. The next morning she finds her roommate dead, with the message scrawled on the wall.
   

As the show and the urban legends are all fiction, I guess there's not really much room for complaint, and one can easily argue that, if indeed these urban legends were rooted in real events, and perhaps of a supernatural origin, that they were all originally from the same root... but obviously the legends that have been passed on now are three separate stories.

I don't mind so much that they used three separate urban legends to have one origin villain, but I think it would have been much better to show the characters as knowing these are from three separate legends, rather than trying to glomp them all into one. These were characters who were supposed to know more about this stuff, after all.