Pretty much anything will do the trick

I was just watching the credits of The Number 23. They're adding a lot dates up - don't know how the movie will go. (Oh, the date of the movie's action just flashed up: February 3. Which I guess is supposed to be 23, too. But Feb 3 is "23" only in the US; other places, it's "32".)

But they're cheating. For instance, for some dates to be 23 all digits are added (April 1945 = 4 + 1 + 9 + 4 + 5) but the Mayan calendar year is added differently: 2012 = 20 + 1 + 2.

Not to mention sometimes they add up the day and month, but not the year, and sometimes they don't. As in the Mayan calender thing. Dec 23. Oooo. But if you add 12 + 23 you get 35. Or 8. And 12 + 23 + 2012? Why, that's 13. So that date is only significant if you ignore the month, and add up the year (a) separately and (b) weirdly.

He looks at the clock in the bookstore and it reads 23.05. Why is that "23" and not either 28 or 10? Oh, I see! 23 and 2 + 3 is 5!

Reminds me of Holy Blood, Holy Grail where we're told somebody's name (what? you expect me to remember that nonsense from when it was first published?) - anyway, they tell us that this name is an anagram of some King of Jerusalem's name - if you change one of the letters. Shoot fire, if you're allowed to change letters, anagrams become pretty easy. And if sometimes the century is two digits added together and sometimes it's one two-digit number (19 or 10) it gets a lot easier to make things add to some significant figure, doesn't it?

I guess The Number 23 is just fiction. But the argument is eerily familiar.