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Coincidences

Was sitting listening to Dark Side Of The Moon with my TV on in the background with the sound down just there now. I look up just as the words "dark side of the moon" are sung in the song Brain Damage, and on the News At Ten was footage from the Wizard of Oz.

Thought it was quite freaky given the urban legend about the two having some kind of synchronicity!
 
Red faces over four identical dresses
By Catherine Elsworth in New York
Last Updated: 8:33am GMT 08/12/2006

Arriving at a party in the same outfit as another guest can be viewed as a misfortune.

Wearing the exact same $8,500 (£4,300) costume as two others smacks of carelessness - at least possibly on the part of the suppliers of the “exclusive” garb.

So how much of a fashion faux pas is it when three guests arrive in identical gowns, and then discover their host is wearing exactly the same number? A pretty large one, it would seem.

Luckily the hostess in question, Laura Bush, the first lady, had an extensive wardrobe at her disposal and was able to discreetly nip away to change.

The venue for the designer pile-up was Sunday’s star-studded Kennedy Centre Honours hosted by Mrs Bush and her husband, President George W Bush.

Glamorous guests included Dolly Parton, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Reese Witherspoon, Aretha Franklin, Tom Hanks, Joan Collins and Andrew Lloyd Webber.

advertisementFootage of the arrivals showed three guests in the same red Oscar de la Renta embroidered tulle jacket and floor-length trumpet skirt from the designer’s autumn 2006 collection. It was also the outfit Mrs Bush had selected.

“Evidently Oscar is very popular this season,” Susan Whitson, Mrs Bush’s press secretary, told the Washington Post.

“It just goes to show that no one can resist a beautiful red gown.”

The guests laughed about it, she added. “But she [Mrs Bush] didn’t want her guests to feel uncomfortable,” so just before the gala began, the first lady slipped away and changed into a black lace number.

“It was the right thing to do, take the heat off the other women,” Letitia Baldridge, Jacqueline Kennedy’s chief of staff and White House social secretary told CBS news.

Despite the switch, however, the incident will not be immediately forgotten as Mrs Bush is also wearing the gown in this year’s official presidential Christmas photograph.
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http://tinyurl.com/v4wc9
 
This is probably a bit lame-o but I'm off into Lichfield today, Christmas shopping. FT218's (which turned up about an hour ago) Classical Corner discusses Dr Johnson :)
 
This one involves this thread, and my previous post on it:

I just resumed reading my psychology book, and came across this:

"If you've ever shown up at a party and found someone else wearing the same dress or tie that you were wearing, then you know how unsettling it is to share the room with an unwanted twin whose presence temporarily diminishes your sense of individuality."

:shock: :shock: :shock:

I've had that book out of the library for weeks now, and should have finished it long ago, but the Cosmic Joker wanted to delay me coming to that sentence until I'd come across a good example of people wearing the same dress at a party! :D
 
This happened to me a few weeks ago - not very interesting, but hey.

I have got approx. 1100 songs on my MP3 player. Because it is un peu manqué, I can only listen to it on random order.
I was listening to Prince - Nothing Compares 2 U, when I thought "wouldn't it be funny if the other version I have (Sinéad O'connor) came on?", which it didn't. Instead I got the Clancy Brothers doing Whiskey in the Jar. The next song after that was the other version of Whiskey in the Jar that I have, by the Pogues with the Dubliners.

hmm. What are the chances? I understand that random order isn't that random, but I don't think they are next to each other on the hard drive. What made it strange to me was that I had been thinking just before about the probability of two versions of the same song cropping up one after the other.
 
Well, someone's gotta ask - which one's which, den? :D
 
I would guess that Fearless Symmetry would be about Mathematics, while Beyond Fear is the security book.

That's just from the titles. I could be wrong.

[EDIT]Removed the word "internet" from the above, as it wasn't mentioned whether it was internet security or just general security, and I don't want to read too much into it.
 
The other Saturday I was driving into town when the song "I'm not your stepping stone" by the monkees came on the radio. All the while the song was playing the car directly in front of me was from a local driving school called Stepping Stones.
Just thought it was an odd coincidence.
 
Anome_ said:
I would guess that Fearless Symmetry would be about Mathematics, while Beyond Fear is the security book.
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Yes, you win a cookie :D It's Group Theory, but on a level that I can still understand - nice book indeed. I think there's also a book on that subject that's called "Fearful symmetry" (all shamelessly copied from the Blake poem ...)

Another interesting coincidence:

What do you think is the chance of seeing three contrails crossing in the same point? I had never seen such a thing before. This was at 11:30:
http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e182/uair01/contrail01.jpg

On the same day - at 17:00 I saw the same thing once again:
http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e182/uair01/contrail02.jpg

And since then not once more ...
 
Contrail coincidences:

To see 3 contrails cross at one point is coincidence;

To see 3 contrails cross at one point twice on the same day is.... Fortean?! :shock:


...or down to the fact that you live where the air corridors just happen to make this more likely? :?

Anyhow, I like it!


(While I'm here, for the sake of posterity, I'll chuck in a link to my 'Levington Coincidence', for the benefit of those who haven't been following the mainstream news:
http://www.forteantimes.com/forum/viewt ... 273#679273 )
 
Where I live, there's a bloke who videos contrails and posts them on youtube. He reckons they are dangerous. :shock:
 
Really? They must be essential viewing, must remember to post that video of the wall I just decorated, paint must be almost dry by now....
 
escargot1 said:
Where I live, there's a bloke who videos contrails and posts them on youtube. He reckons they are dangerous. :shock:
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Does he have loads of Orgone devices too?
 
With the recent events in the news I've been thinking about Jack the Ripper over the past few days (as I'm sure many people have). I watched an old Star Trek episode tonight and it was the one where the spirit of Jack the Ripper possesses someone and starts killing women. Immediately after that I watched a program about Prince Edward (the Victorian one, not the current one) and near the end of the program it had a bit about how he was considered a suspect for the Ripper murders! I'm presuming these programs were scheduled before the current news hit the headlines so it seems a bit of a coincidence to have both these on the same night.

Or is there always something about Jack the Ripper on TV and I don't normally notce?
 
I found this wonderful story through my other hobby - urban exploration. It describes a very remarkable coincidence. I won't spoil it by telling you what it's about exactly - but to whet your apetite I'll post just one page of the story. It's really worth to read to the end - and it has nice pictures too.

The story starts here:
http://www.actionsquad.org/crawlspace1.html

So I grabbed a flashlight, dust mask, and one of the two suction cup thingies that I'd liberated from a downtown window crew many years ago. Asylunt - my roommate - grabbed a digital camera to document the occasion - Max Action Explores his Own House kind of thing.

By the time he got back there, I'd already smacked the suction cup onto the board and wrenched it free from its frame.

Shining my flashlight in, the first thing I saw was a bunch of insulation. And a whole lot of cobwebs.

Further examination revealed two dead mice, dessicating away on the plastic sheeting that had been laid down over the raw earth floor. An old coffee can, rusted down to a fragment. A similarly- corroded strainer.

To the far right of the space, two withered men's shoes, and one dry-rotting woman's shoe. A stamped metal ID tag of some kind.

Everything was taken out into the light, examined, and carefully set aside.

Having removed everything that I could see, I pulled the dust mask on and crawled into the hole.

My goal was to see what the walls were like behind the collapsed cardboard boxes that lined the walls of the crawlspace.

But I never did find out.

As I crawled beneath the stairs, I felt something hard in the soft dirt beneath the plastic - a kinda domed bulge, sticking up slightly above ground level. Maybe it was finally time to find a human skull?

So I wormed one arm under the plastic, and probed the object. Whatever it was, it was embedded in the dirt, and it wasn't a skull.

I pulled it out and then twisted onto my back to examine the find with the flashlight.
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Just to be completely clear: I'm NOT the author of the story - I just am a member of a mailing list where stuff like this is posted. If you want to see MUCH more of Urban exploration (legal or otherwise) then visit:

http://www.uer.ca/

And please ignore the Christmas decorations on the site. The webmaster tries to irritate his users to death by pure excess. He does this every year and it's become a venerable tradition 8)
 
being off work on sick leave, i'm doing a lot of reading, often with daytime tv as background. this has already brought forth a few coincidences of various types, but i just got another good one.

yesterday, richard and judy interviewed 'primordial dwarf' children on their tv show:

today, in a book, the main character catches an oprah show on tv, where she interviews six dwarfs... :shock:

you couldn't make it up! 8)
 
I've noticed quite a few little coincidences this week (and then to come here and find this thread right at the top..!)

Doing a crossword with the Weakest Link on in the background, I read the words 'the odd couple,' as Ms Robinson said them.

While watching One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (my new favourite film) with my mum, I started wondering if the scene on the front of the DVD box, with Jack Nicholson wearing a hat, looking over the fence, was actually in the film. No sooner had I finished thinking the thought, there he was, looking over the fence.

I was thinking about a particular episode of the Simpsons I hadn't seen in a while (the one where they all go to Africa and see giraffes living under ground and rhinos hatching from eggs), then turned on the TV in the evening and there it was (I rarely watch TV during the day, though I could of course have subconsciously overheard an announcement when someone else was watching it).

All day sunday I had Donna Summer's 'I feel love' in my head, and thought to myself, 'ho ho, in light of all the coincidences this week, that'll probably be on the pub quiz tonight.' And it was.

Reading those back, they're actually quite rubbish (and more like predictions than coincidences, woo-ooo-oooh), but it was nice to have such a high concentration of them all in one week.
 
today, in a book, the main character catches an oprah show on tv, where she interviews six dwarfs...
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sorry to go OT here but can i ask what book that was rynner? it reminded me of American Psycho (bf's favourite book - the ghoul) when Bateman watches a 45-minute interview with a Cheerio on morning TV.

I'll let you know if this turns into a coincidence to bring this back on topic.
 
placeholder said:
today, in a book, the main character catches an oprah show on tv, where she interviews six dwarfs...
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sorry to go OT here but can i ask what book that was rynner?
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HIT MAN, Lawrence Block.

recommended by rynner

quite a few fortean themes in it, and despite the dark nature of the hit man's trade, quite a few laughs too! 8)
 
rynner said:
HIT MAN, Lawrence Block.

recommended by rynner

quite a few fortean themes in it, and despite the dark nature of the hit man's trade, quite a few laughs too! 8)
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And now that's just created a coincidence for me! Yesterday afternoon I was looking round a bookshop with a friend and we were looking at the cheap books being sold off. There was one by Lawrence Block and we were both trying to think why his name sounded familiar but we couldn't think of any other books he'd written. Eventually we worked out we'd both been thinking of Robert Bloch and in fact neither of us had heard of Lawrence Block before...until you go and mention him here!
 
tried another Block book, Two for Tanner, 1968, and it also has turned up a couple of synchronicities.

First, the real-world events: the news recently has been full of the inquest into the death of a British soldier, killed by 'friendly fire' in an attack by American planes.

And in a daytime TV car boot sale show today, three women spent their earnings going on a tank driving course (which I think is pretty unusual in itself!)

In the book, Tanner (an American, of course) goes to Thailand to find his missing girl-friend. After many adventures they find themselves in North Vietnam, in the war, and come under attack by US planes twice!

To effect their escape, they use a Russian-built Vietcong tank whose crew were killed in an air attack - even though none of them know how to drive it! (All this part of the book I read today, after the RW events.)


Again, a lot of wry humour in the writing, and a very anti-war attitude for an American in the 60s.
 
I am reading* Jeffrey Archer's prison diaries. Last night, I read about how a warder asked him to autograph a book as gift for his wife. However, Archer noticed that it was by the author Geoffrey Archer, not him, so the warder took it back to the shop.

Archer reckons that there is often confusion between the two authors. I thought, yeah right!

But just now, I found that on my local library's 'Talking Books' page both authors' books are listed under Geoffrey Archer's name. So a library can make that mistake.

* in 10-minute bursts while I dry my hair at the gym - can't take any more than that at a time!
 
Here's a good one: yesterday, I went into the studio, where two of my friends were talking, and opened a magazine (national geographic) that I hadn't previously look at. The page it fell onto was a photograph of a place 10 minutes from my home that I spent all my time in my childhood and young adulthood, and in fact until I moved away a few months ago, so I was suitably impressed and told everyone.
The fact was that, before I had come into the room, they'd been discussing coincidences at great length, and so I was doing an accidental demonstration.
 
Just a small coincidence, really, and not one that's quite extraordinary enough for an entry in one of our many "synchronicity" threads, but still...

On Monday night, I was sitting by the fire (OK, so it was electric, in case you're thinking wood and flames), reading a book, with the TV on mute. I glanced up, and noticed that University Challenge was just starting. It's something I watch when I can, to try to prove to myself that students are far less knowledgeable than when I was at Uni. The evidence is pretty conclusive, however - there are still loads of students who know huge amounts about the most diverse subjects.

Anyhow, about half way through the show, the question came up "what is the highest mountain in Australia?", and it's one of those questions that you're sure you must know the answer to - Mt Simpson, Mt Grant? I couldn't decide, and neither could the contestants. Turns out the answer is Mount Kosciuszko. No? Me neither?

So, at the end of the show, I went back to my book, "Down Under" by Bill Bryson. Well, if you're aware of Bryson or his books, you know what's coming. Within ten minutes of resuming my reading, BB had gone off on one of his informative little tangents, noting that the highest point in Australia had been named by a Polish explorer after a national hero from his homeland, General Tadeusz Kosciuszko.

So there you are - a mountain of which I am certain I had never heard before, brought separately to my attention twice in an hour.

I said it wasn't much.
 
There does, on first sight, seem to be a connection between what you are watching and what you are reading:

Like, I as was reading A history of Western philosophy while Lost series 1 started and got to the chapter on Rousseau when the character Rousseau appeared (but probably not surprising given the number of oblique inferences the writers of that show cram into it)

but the best I've had is from watchin Donny Darko. For some reason, when I first watched it the name of his girlfriend, Gretchen, really stuck in my mind - perhaps because it is quite unusual (at least in my circle of friends/work/reality). The next day I am working my way through Anna Karenina (I tend to read on my commute on the bus, so I need loads of reading material!). I had just sat down, opened up the book at my previous place and then stumbled across one of the characters stating 'So where is my little Gretchen?' or something along those lines. 'mmm, there's that name again', I thought and then put it to the back of my mind.

Two weeks later I am going to see friends but not till the afternoon so I slap on a DVD, and as I found Donny Darko quite fun to watch, I put it in on in the morning and watch it a second time. Later I'm on my way up to Norwich, and again on a bus. This time I'm half-way through Philip K. Dick's Vulcans Hammer, so I open it up and lo! One of the main characters reveals herself (dark-haired girl of course) to be called Gretchen!

Does not seem to be a lot, but it gave me a bit of a synchronicity mind-fuck than made me ponder about the fabric of the universe. But I didn't get too far as I then got to Norwich and proceeded to drink the sensitive parts of my brain into submission ;)
 
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