Satan's Sixes Sunday

I think this is the end.

Where did this fear of "666" begin? This article from the Los Angeles Times asserts that it was the 1976 movie "The Omen" that started the craze.

Thanks for the clipping, Karen.

I can't find a lot of material on the Internet that backs up this claim but I believe it is because of "The Omen." I don't have the energy or know-how to prove it.

I'm surprised that 12 years after the L.A. Times article was written that Silver Lake still uses the 666 prefix.

The people of Wagon Mound, New Mexico, didn't seem to care about that prefix to their phone numbers until 1996 (part 1, part 2). I think artist Barbara Quimby probably had no fear of 666 before "The Omen" came out so I think her saying (at the end of part 2) "I think it's insane that they had the 666 in the first place" is nuts. It wasn't an issue until 1976. At least the change was an option and there are still 666 phone numbers there. Not everybody is crazy.

Until this millennium, Tijuana was content with their 666 area code. No more.

I'll bet that nobody referred to U. S. Highway 666 as "The Devil's Highway" before "The Omen." But that designation had to change. Your tax dollars at work.

Nobody thought anything was odd when they found out that somebody lived at 666 Elm Street. Now they do and they are not happy.

A tool I've only recently learned of, the Google Ngram Viewer, gives me a little confidence that the Omen connection is real.

I did a search for the phrase "mark of the beast" to see how often it occurred in books written in English from 1800 to 2000. The results stunned me a bit.

English occurrences of "mark of the beast" 1800-2000

There was a huge jump in the percentage of books containing the phrase from 1800 to 1811, from 0.00000400% to 0.00002400%. A sixfold increase! That devil got folks' knickers in knots back then. But as Martin Miller suggests in his L.A. Times article the interest was limited to biblical scholars. The rest of us never cared.

Occurrences of the phrase dropped off till about 1976(!) to a smaller percentage of books than back in 1800.

In 1976 interest in the phrase started making a comeback.

English occurrences of "mark of the beast" 1970-2000

Coincidence? I think not.

What has my collection of 666 items proven? Probably nothing. I don't think that there was anything to prove. It shows that this number shows up just about anywhere you want to look for it. I'd say that that should prove the number can't have any special significance. I think if anybody who wants to use any of these items as proof that evil is among us, they will have to use them all (you can't go cherry picking for your evidence, can you?). And if they use them all to prove that evil is everywhere and we're doomed, I have to ask why now? This number has always been here.

People who worry about 666 are certainly odd.

I'm sorry that I couldn't drag this out until Sunday, October 21, 2011, when Harold Camping tells us we "will be annihilated together with the whole physical world." This time for sure. Really. His prediction of the end on May 21 inspired this sharing of my apocalyptic collection.

I haven't been adding much to my collection lately. I'm not sure why. I'm glad Mr. Camping gave me the kick in the butt to finally share it.

As Peggy summed it up, it was an odd hobby.

Satan's Sixes Sunday

We're now driving full speed to the end of my Satanic collection.

This undated picture shows the odometer of my old Camry.

Taking pictures of odometers that end with "666" is a common activity. But I didn't do it while hurtling down the highway at almost 80 miles per hour, like some!

Here's a newspaper clipping about the outside of a car:

In an earlier episode of this series, I said I have more newspaper clippings about the renaming of the Devil's Highway. In case you are interested, here they are. I think all of these were sent to me. Probably by Peggy. Thanks!

Silliness:

Temporary sanity at the highway commission:

Drunk driving is no accident! (The New Mexican, 11/24/1995):

The 8/3/1995 Wall Street Journal article referenced in the first Highway 666 clipping above:

Friends don't let friends drive 666.

Satan's Sixes Sunday

Odds and ends.

This hobby is odd. And we're getting to the end.

We get to see some of the things that have 666 somewhere on them but don't have much of a story to them.

Years and years ago, we didn't have terminals, much less computers, on our desks. We had to go to the "terminal room" to actually do something with a computer. These terminals didn't have monitors. They had paper. You typed on the keyboard and the terminal printed it on the paper. Then, as if by magic, and after only a few seconds, the terminal then would print something that the computer had come up with. In other words, the only way we had to do our work was through a command-line interface.

We were doing development for something that was running on Unix. On Unix all the processes running on the system have a process ID. Occasionally I would notice that the PID for something I was up to had a special number. I kept some printouts.

More than once I had been marked.

A Starbucks card somebody gave me as a gift marked me.

Peggy has given me several baseball cards that are numbered "666."

Thanks, Peggy! These must be worth a fortune. They are to me, at least.

Satan's Sixes Sunday

"VII: You shall not steal." --(Roman Catholic and Lutheran version of) God

Over the years, while nobody was looking, I've stolen order forms featuring 666 from places I was doing business with. I've sinned. I'm going to hell.

I took my car to Sears for some sort of service, probably a battery died. While the person writing up my order was away from the desk looking something up I noticed that the pad of claim tickets was approaching a magic number. I flipped through the pad and pulled out the one I needed.

In the good old days I had to take little canisters filled with strips of chemically coated plastic to Costco to have them magically convert them to paper with images of scenes I had pointed a camera at. (Now that magic happens in the comfort of my own home.) Where does this magic come from? I think this envelope I was supposed to have used for this procedure (but stole instead) gives us the answer.

There were times I did use the envelopes. No stealing was involved for at least two rolls of film.

(I probably went through the envelopes on the counter to get the ones with the special numbers. Is that kind of stealing?)

I stole this insurance receipt from the United States Postal Service. I hope the statute of limitations has expired for this federal crime.

Since this film processing envelope came from Vons in Santa Barbara, I'm assuming that Karen stole this one for me. I've received stolen property.

Karen sent me this one just last week. She recently rented a car and was given this form. No stealing was involved here.

The Beast is everywhere and is constantly offering temptation. I can't help myself. The forbidden fruit is so sweet!

Satan's Sixes Sunday

Peggy has sent me many 666 items over the years. Here are my favorites of the treasures she's given me. These live on my computer desk.

It's a bottle of 666 Cold Preparation made by Monticello Drug Company in Jacksonville, Fla., and an advertising fan. They still sell products with that name but they've been reformulated since this bottle was sold.

Here's a closer picture of the box.

666 Cold Preparation

And a scan of the fan:

666 Fan (front)

666 Fan (back)

Here you can read how to use it and what it's good for.

666 Box (front and side)

People get nervous about the number 666. Some crackpot called the company and asked about the name. Here is the start of a series of pages of exchanges with the company and other commentary. So silly! But it does have some serious discussion of the number and its newfound significance.

Be well!

Satan's Sixes Sunday

Money talks...

...the language of Satan!

I mentioned before that people seem to think anything with a number must be the mark of the Beast. What is more common in peoples' lives than paper money. Each and every piece is uniquely identified with a serial number. Money is Satan's tool! It's been proven! The only safe currency is gold! NOT!

I've collected money that features "666" in their serial numbers. Friends and family have sent me dollar bills (nothing larger!) that with 666 in their serial numbers. I took the five dollar bill out of circulation myself. Here are a few:

Karen sent me one with an extraordinarily special serial number:

It has only sixes (with a "666") and zeroes and it is a "star note"!

Family members often thought of me when they were writing checks and came to ones whose numbers ended with 666:

Great minds think of me often! Thanks everybody! I never cashed these. With all that money and with all the bills I'm hanging onto I could have been rich. But I have something much more valuable than their face value!

For a while, after Uncle Sam took his bite, and paid for my benefits, and bought company stock, and deposited money in savings and the household account and invested in my 401(k), my net pay was a pretty good amount.

What does all this prove? Nothing.

Except that I save things for a silly reason.

---

Satan's Sixes Sunday

Satan is in the news.

Here come some of my newspaper clippings that discuss 666 issues. My sisters contributed some of this week's material. Thanks for looking out for me, sisters!

The Los Angeles Times had a feature "Only in L. A." where odd stories from Los Angeles were shared. Occasionally they had some 666 bits.

I have two copies of the above story. One is folded so it could fit into an envelope so I'm pretty sure Karen sent it to me. I apparently saved it from my copy of the paper, too.

Here's another story, with a picture!

But enough of this frivolity, the Mark of the Beast is serious business!

From the North County Times, Saturday, March 7, 1998, the Eiffel Tower counted down the number of days until the year 2000:

I don't quite understand Jocelyn Kennedy's gratitude for not knowing the tower was marked with "666." If she had noticed the 666 she say's she wouldn't have gone to the top of the tower. How is it that this ignorance of the Mark could protect her from some horrible fate? It couldn't. Ms. Kennedy, you went to the top. Ignorance can't protect you! You are going to Hell!

Peggy sent me this article about the Beast and his number (from the Santa Fe New Mexican, 10/25/1997).

Use a Social Security Number, go to Hell!

And, just because it has "666" (but with some extra punctuation), I saved this one. It has nothing to do with the Beast. The headline is really enough to read.

That's the news from hell this week! See you next Sunday!

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Satan's Sixes Sunday

Ding-a-ling! Satan calling!

When I got my first telephone I was in the 714 area code. The proliferation of pagers and fax machines necessitated the splitting of that area code. Orange county got to keep 714 and I got put in the new 619 area code. Cell phones became popular and there weren't enough phone numbers to keep us all in the 619 area code so it got split. San Diego got to keep that number and our phone number got moved to the new 760 area code.

Again, the 760 area code was running out of phone numbers so they were going to split it and we were going to get yet another new area code, 442. But the people who are in charge of area codes finally got convinced that we had had enough of

• the expense and headache of notifying friends, family and clients of the new number
• changing letterhead
• changing advertising
• changing decals on company cars
• changing business cards
• and on and on

every few years when our phone numbers changed. At the last minute they decided that the area codes 760 and 442 not be split, rather they would be overlaid. New phones would get the new area code and existing phones would keep their old area code. Sanity prevailed!

The only problem with that solution is we now have to dial 1-area code for every phone call we make even when the number is in the 760 area code. That's not a problem. It's only four extra digits.

With any luck we won't get a new area code unless we move out of the area.

It was probably back in my 619 days that I wondered where my first phone number went. I found a web site that told me where phone numbers are. I entered my original Area Code and Exchange. I printed an image of the message box that was shown:

My phone number is answered in Satan's ZIP code in the heart of Orange County, in the city of Orange itself. I'm so proud!

I'm amazed that those people haven't managed to change their ZIP code.

In 2001 I read this story:

I laughed at the notion of wanting to change phone numbers for such a silly reason.

They got their area code changed. The area code 666 is now unused.

Tijuana isn't the only city afraid of harboring the Antichrist.

The folks in Wagon Mound, New Mexico, didn't like their phone numbers. I don't know who sent me this article from the New Mexican from June 13, 1996.

Whoever sent me the article is probably the one who sent me the Wagon Mound pages torn out of a phone book.

If you click on the Wagon Mound link you'll see that some businesses chose to get the new exchange. But you'll also notice that all of the government offices have chosen to remain associated with Satan. Hmmmmm...

Satan's Sixes Sunday

People seem to think that anything that has to do with numbers is Satanic since Satan is identified with a number ("666"). Kooks are afraid of Social Security numbers. Cars' license plates are Satanic. Drivers' licenses are the mark of the beast!

What then could be more Satanic than Lotto?

The California Lotto had its first drawing on October 14, 1986. Since I knew that Lotto and Satan were in cahoots, I decided to base my numbers on Satan. To win the Big Bucks you had to correctly choose the six numbers that will drawn from the numbers 1 through 49. Order didn't matter.

I came up with a surefire scheme. The prime factorization of 666 is:

• 2
• 3
• 3
• 37

That is, 666 = 2 x 3 x 3 x 37.

There are exactly six factors of 666 that are in the range of 1 to 49. Well, seven if you count 1 but it just gets in the way and isn't a product of the prime factors. These six numbers are:

• 2
• 3
• 6 (2 x 3)
• 9 (3 x 3)
• 18 (2 x 3 x 3)
• 37

Those were my numbers. Sure to win since they're based on The Mark of the Beast.

I started using those number from the first Lotto drawing. Satan, like god, apparently doesn't like people to try to manipulate fate. They never won.

I didn't keep my first Lotto ticket. It didn't win so I didn't have to turn it in for my winnings but it didn't make it to my file. A later one did:

 because it has a special serial number on its back:

This ticket didn't win even though it was very Satanic.

I played Quick Picks after a while. That method lets the system choose random numbers for you. I never won big bucks that way, either.

One Quick Pick ticket had 666 in its front side serial number:

I eventually quit playing the Lotto. As they say, the lottery is a tax on those who don't understand math.

Satan's number sometimes wins:

But in cases like this a disproportionate number of people will have to share the winnings. As the article said, the odds of this number winning are 1 in 1,000 but the number of people betting on it is surely more than one in a thousand. Special numbers like this and Lotto combinations that are dates are played more often than would happen from purely random choices. So even when Satan helps you win the Lotto with such numbers you'll have to split the pot with more people than when you play winning numbers chosen at random.

You just can't rig the system.

Satan's Sixes Sunday

In the early days of the Intertubes, before there were web forums for very specific interests, before spammers filled your inbox, there was Usenet. Usenet is a distributed, hierarchical, threaded discussion system.

One of the hierarchies that I followed was:

• rec.* – recreation and entertainment
• rec.humor – a free-for-all group to post jokes and funny stories
• rec.humor.funny – a moderated group where funny (as defined by the moderator) posts (usually originally from rec.humor) are posted. This group saved you from having to hack through the non-funny stuff in rec.humor.
• rec.humor.funny.reruns – a moderated group where a daily post was made from items in the rec.humor.funny archive.

In the early days any post that had even the faintest trace of commercialism would be flamed and repeated posters of these commercial posts were banned. Spam was born. The anti-Spam forces lost the war in groups such as rec.humor. It was impossible to find humor among all the get-rich-quick messages so I just quit reading that group.

I depended on the moderated groups for my humor.

One day this message showed up in rec.humor.funny.reruns:

(Here's a link to the post in the repository of rec.humor.funny.)

One of the numbers of the beast, "Route 666 - Highway of the Beast," has been discussed before.

I thought I had an illustration for "668 - Next-door neighbor of the Beast." Ronald Reagan, well, Nancy, didn't want to be the Beast, they wanted just to be the next-door neighbors. So they changed the address of the house they bought after Reagan's terms were over. I thought I had a clipping of the story. Shoot!

Speaking of rec.humor, I posted some jokes there. On the morning of October 1, 1987, the Whittier Narrows earthquake struck the Los Angeles area. Before we knew how bad it was I posted something like the following:

Subject: Old joke, new application

Body: I've heard the earthquake in East LA did 50 million dollars of improvements.

(The old joke I heard involved some disaster in Española.)

A day later the slightly reworded joke was posted again on rec.humor with the subject "L. A. Earthquake." A few days later it made its appearance on rec.humor.funny with its new title (the link is to Google Groups' record of it on rec.humor.funny.reruns...I can't find it in the official archive). I made the big time but without attribution. 

Satan's Sixes Sunday

Last week I told you about our drive down the Devil's Highway. Unfortunately, my car didn't carry the mark of the beast. Each time I buy a new car I wait on pins and needles for my license plate to arrive hoping that its numbers will be "666." It hasn't happened yet. I need to buy more cars.

Long ago, I went to California's DMV web site to see about a special license plate. I once saw a little pickup truck on the freeway with the California license plate that was simply "666." So they apparently didn't have trouble issuing plates with that number. At the time the license plates being issued were still starting with the number 2 or 3. The plate I was thinking would be cool would look like a normal plate:

They couldn't issue it because it was a plate configured as one in the normal sequence. I wonder if the person who eventually got it kept it. I would have died and gone to heaven hell. I'm not really a fan of personalized license plates. They're usually:

• Way too clever
• Way too phonetic: "CME2P" on a urologist's car
• Way to "what's the point?": "JAG XK 37" on a Jaguar XK..."37" because he was the 38th person to come up with that clever idea
• Way too possessive: "RD CR 4ME"
• Way too cryptic: "TEOATIB" This was a friend's plate. I finally found out what it meant. It turns out that Jerry helped come up with it. It's the initials of "The Essence Of All That Is Butch." To add to the crypticness: he isn't butch.
• Way too combining of the above
• And on and on

Wait, where was I?

Oh, yes, 666 license plates.

I haven't been assigned any yet. And at the rate I buy cars I have about a 50-50 chance of scoring one in the next 5000 years.

But Peggy has come to my rescue. Along with the highway sign, she gave me a used license plate. It hangs in the garage next to my highway sign.

It's not as cool as having a plate randomly sent to me by the DMV but it's cool nonetheless. Thanks, Peggy!

Since we're on the subject of licenses with "666" in them...

Twenty-some years ago Peggy's main squeeze was working at the Santa Fe animal shelter. This is where you went to get your pets' licenses. Since I was such a good boy she lifted this one and gave it to me.

If I had a dog I'd name it Cerberus. I have his license ready. And it's expired. He'd be living a life of crime!