This isn't funny, really...

...but I can't help laughing. I'm chalking it up to my defense mechanism. Inevitability of death and all that. Much obliged, Jonathan.

Superstitious Romanian dies on Friday the 13th
From AFP
14aug04

BUCHAREST: A superstitious Romanian, who refused to leave his house throughout Friday the 13th to avoid bad luck, died after he was stung by a wasp in his kitchen, police said.

Florin Carcu, 54, had even taken the precaution of asking his boss for permission not to go to work on the inauspicious Friday, the police in Cluj, central Romania, said in a statement.

"It was the strangest request I've ever received but I ended up giving him permission to stay at home because he seemed to be really scared of something bad happening to him on that day," Carcu's boss Gheorghe Domsa told the press.

Doctors from the emergency services in Cluj said Carcu had been making coffee when he was stung by a species of wasp nicknamed "the wolf", which is very rare in Romania and whose sting is very poisonous. He died on the spot.