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Minor Strangeness (IHTM)

A dress jacket of mine, which has unique buttons, has suddenly produced a spare matching cuff button, loose, inside one of the pockets.

None of the buttons are missing. It never had any extra ones attached as surplus extras.

The jacket is ancient and familiar, yet has begat a bewildering baby button.

I had this mental picture Ermintrude, of a witch, alone in her solitude, gazing into her scrying dish, mumbling these words over the visions there, when the wind blows out her candle...


Out of this Unbearable beingness, I grant thee one button - receive it, and use it well Sister - It is a zygotic world, perfect and pure, to be used at the catabolism of this enduring one.

Know when to invoke it it... and remember the needed words spoken...



(Gawd, where does this mind of mine go to...)
 
I had this mental picture Ermintrude, of a witch, alone in her solitude, gazing into her scrying dish, mumbling these words over the visions there, when the wind blows out her candle...

Out of this Unbearable beingness, I grant thee one button - receive it, and use it well Sister - It is a zygotic world, perfect and pure, to be used at the catabolism of this enduring one.

Know when to invoke it it... and remember the needed words spoken...

(Gawd, where does this mind of mine go to...)

...and murmuring "It was meant to be a frog dammit, those symbols are so similar."
 
I am no witch, warlock, and certainly not a she, but, this mystery extra button remains impressively-possessed...just of physical substance, I mean. Not in any daemonic way. That would be a devilish fastening...knoop knap knop....get thee behind me, toggle of lucifer!

If someone was meant to be channelling me a frog, perhaps they pressed the wrong button within their magick app. I shall remain alert to the possible random emergence of further clothing accoutrements or even of anomalous amphibians.
 
I'm genderless upon this forum, merely a mysterious recipient of phantasmagorical fastenings, I am just a sequence of photons and electrons.

Very few shall ever see...and even less will look....

3e44bcbe968eba7a29945bf44f154ddc.jpg
 
I'm genderless upon this forum, merely a mysterious recipient of phantasmagorical fastenings, I am just a sequence of photons and electrons.

Very few shall ever see...and even less will look....

3e44bcbe968eba7a29945bf44f154ddc.jpg

I thought you were a dude-ette...erm, whoops. (George whistles Laurel & Hardy as he scurries off)
 
Well well well. Funny you should mention light bulb tomfoolery. Last week my main living room one went on the blink. I got by with a couple of lamps til a tall friend had time to come an assist. Only to find that the bayonet bulb had somehow become un-whatever bayonet fittings are when held fast.

How does that happen?
I've experienced this myself.
I think lots of heating/cooling cycles cause the bulb to gradually turn about in the socket, then the springs finish off the job.
 
To the best of my recollection my phone battery was perfectly fine when I went to sleep last night.. I woke up to find it wouldn't go on. Without any activity on my part every last (insert name of tiniest unit of electricity) has evaporated.,..not even enough to switch on, say hello and switch off again was left. Phone batteries die, but I've never seen this before from nowhere, there's a slow progression stemmed during inactivity. So I plug it in to recharge and it comes back to life, all is working fine, only it's gained an hour and a half. its says 9.10 at 8.40. Then I notice no, it's actually lost 11 days. It claims its 9.10 on Sunday 9 August.

There is only one rational explanation. Aliens. Or poltergeists. Alien poltergeists.
 
...So I plug it in to recharge and it comes back to life, all is working fine, only it's gained an hour and a half. its says 9.10 at 8.40. Then I notice no, it's actually lost 11 days. It claims its 9.10 on Sunday 9 August.

There is only one rational explanation. Aliens. Or poltergeists. Alien poltergeists.
Yes, missing time. Aliens took you into the future, but left your phone behind. Perhaps you should go out and buy a paper to double-check the date! :p
 
I am no witch, warlock, and certainly not a she, but, this mystery extra button remains impressively-possessed...just of physical substance, I mean. Not in any daemonic way. That would be a devilish fastening...knoop knap knop....get thee behind me, toggle of lucifer!

If someone was meant to be channelling me a frog, perhaps they pressed the wrong button within their magick app. I shall remain alert to the possible random emergence of further clothing accoutrements or even of anomalous amphibians.

My apologies Ermintrude...
 
I've experienced this myself.
I think lots of heating/cooling cycles cause the bulb to gradually turn about in the socket, then the springs finish off the job.

Thanks, it should have occurred to me I suppose but I wanted something spooky to be going on.
 
To the best of my recollection my phone battery was perfectly fine when I went to sleep last night.. I woke up to find it wouldn't go on. Without any activity on my part every last (insert name of tiniest unit of electricity) has evaporated.,..
Try turning it over every few hours - otherwise, all the electricity will run to the bottom.

...it's gained an hour and a half. its says 9.10 at 8.40. Then I notice no, it's actually lost 11 days. It claims its 9.10 on Sunday 9 August.
And it lost another hour, otherwise it would be 10.10!

There is only one rational explanation. Aliens. Or poltergeists. Alien poltergeists.
So, which one of those is the one rational explanation?

I'm sure that most mobile phones have pixies living in them, pixies who are normally quite happy to make the thing work perfectly, but occasionally fuck with you, just for pixie shits and giggles. When my phone's about to ring, it lights up, so if it's on my desk, I get a second or so's warning that a call is incoming. Just now, it lit up, so I glanced across to see who was calling. No-one, that's who. No call, text or email, and the phone went back to sleep after a few seconds.

Stranger than that, though, was a call I left unanswered this morning. Like a lot of you, I'm sure, I'm so fed up with borderline-legal marketing calls that I only actually answer if I know who it is. So when I saw a unknown number beginning with 01159 on the screen, my first instinct was to look the number up on one of those "who calls me" type of websites, rather than pick up the call. Nothing suspicious there, so I simply Googled the number instead. Turns out, it's the main number for a dentist in Nottingham! OK, so they probably just got someone else's number mixed up, but it was refreshing, if bizarre, to find it wasn't someone looking to compensate me for an accident I didn't have.

Shit - just realised what this all means. The pixie in my phone is actually a tooth fairy...
 
@gattino @rynner2 note that the clocks within smart phones are now far too clever for their own good. They can use Network Time Protocol as their time reference (if the settings are set to permit such skullduggery, and from either the internet or the phone company's NTP) and therefore can become asynchronous if out of contact for any reason. Ah, for the good old days of quartz clocks and watches...at least you knew where you were with them....plus or minus say 10secs a week.


Peripart said:
Shit - just realised what this all means. The pixie in my phone is actually a tooth fairy...
A scary logic, but persuasive reasoning. Tooth fairies in cahoots with dentists. Makes sense...subconsciously I may have always made that connection.

I do remember a cousin of mine, as a kid, being injected with insulin, regularly, as a diabetic. For them, the unseen intervention agents of potential providence were referred to as "jag fairies".

Back then, last century, the going compensatory rate for subjecting kids to injection needles ('jags', in child Britspeak, also known as 'shots' in the USA) appeared to be 50 New Pence.

Somewhat less perhaps than current exchange rates for teeth and coinage, from the tooth branch of the fairy kingdom, but I'm unsure about current tarrifs...or EU guidelines on such matters (Brussels is always so vague on supernatural matters....I once tried to find-out regarding Santa Claus, and EU guidance, and wouldn't you know it....the relvant regulations are really hard to track down)
 
Thought of @escargot1 last week; while shopping in Glastonbury, I felt a huge drip of water hit my shoulder as I walked into a shop. But no, there was no water (it wasn't raining).

In other news, my television just appeared to be trying to turn itself on (this was at 3am). I could hear a strange swishing noise and at first thought it was just my pulse being weird in my ears, but then I saw the light on the front of the telly was pulsing and the screen was flickering off and on. I've switched it off at the wall.

Something similar happened at a friend's house, too (I was sleeping on their sofa when the TV switched itself on in the early hours and frightened the life out of me). Is this just something tellies do?
 
Thought of @escargot1 last week; while shopping in Glastonbury, I felt a huge drip of water hit my shoulder as I walked into a shop. But no, there was no water (it wasn't raining).
Not 'lucky' white bird rain? Perhaps a house plumbing overflow trying to exinguish your cigar.

hooloovoo said:
Something similar happened at a friend's house, too (I was sleeping on their sofa when the TV switched itself on in the early hours and frightened the life out of me). Is this just something tellies do?
Many large-screen televisions develop early-onset power supply faults. It's just evaporated dielectric resulting in a few dried'out electrolytic capacitors needing to be replaced, but most people just either bin the faulty tv, or leave it on for insanely-long periods of time to eventually start. This could then even take semi-random durations such as 6-12 hours, with occassional wooshes of powered nearly-on states, causing surprise to the unwary and potential calls being made to the bishop for the duty exorcist to come for tea.

Sansung/LG, large-screen tvs generally: a lot tend to show this huff-puff-gasping fault mode. And will also obligingly continue to do so sometimes for a few moments even after unplugged from mains power....again appearing to show the demonic possession of the equipment. But no....again it's just bloody capacitors (this time, over-healthy ones, trying to reanimate the corpse).
 
Not 'lucky' white bird rain? Perhaps a house plumbing overflow trying to exinguish your cigar.


Many large-screen televisions develop early-onset power supply faults. It's just evaporated dielectric resulting in a few dried'out electrolytic capacitors needing to be replaced, but most people just either bin the faulty tv, or leave it on for insanely-long periods of time to eventually start. This could then even take semi-random durations such as 6-12 hours, with occassional wooshes of powered nearly-on states, causing surprise to the unwary and potential calls being made to the bishop for the duty exorcist to come for tea.

Sansung/LG, large-screen tvs generally: a lot tend to show this huff-puff-gasping fault mode. And will also obligingly continue to do so sometimes for a few moments even after unplugged from mains power....again appearing to show the demonic possession of the equipment. But no....again it's just bloody capacitors (this time, over-healthy ones, trying to reanimate the corpse).

Electrolytic capacitors are the most unreliable part in there in many ways - the lifetime of them is usually under-rated to keep the cost down and in consumer equipment a decent failure rate at two years is pretty much all that is asked of them. Commonly, the bulk caps on a switched-mode get 'de-rated' for cost and once open/c., cause the switched-mode IC to go mad trying to supply power without reservoir caps and then expire in a small puff of smoke...welcome to the consumer age.
 
Commonly, the bulk caps on a switched-mode get 'de-rated' for cost and once open/c., cause the switched-mode IC to go mad trying to supply power without reservoir caps and then expire in a small puff of smoke..
I have always hated and mistrusted nearly every switched-mode power supply I've ever seen. Far too underrated. Built to a cost. Lightweight, 'efficient' and so close to being deadly. The first half of my life I experienced lots of electric shocks, but they were honest/expected ones. I feel every SM power supply is just waiting, lurking, to either just die by itself, or preferably, to take someone with it. Bring back nice, bulky, inefficient (hah!) warm, safe tranformers. Good enough for Tesla and Edison, good enough for the world.
 
I'm an advocate of turning off all appliances at the wall, not trusting standby modes. Safer to leave it all off, and it saves power.
 
I have always hated and mistrusted nearly every switched-mode power supply I've ever seen. Far too underrated. Built to a cost. Lightweight, 'efficient' and so close to being deadly. The first half of my life I experienced lots of electric shocks, but they were honest/expected ones. I feel every SM power supply is just waiting, lurking, to either just die by itself, or preferably, to take someone with it. Bring back nice, bulky, inefficient (hah!) warm, safe tranformers. Good enough for Tesla and Edison, good enough for the world.

Well, if thing are not rated right, there's something in what you say, but smps' use less power and less metal, overall they're a good thing - without them your phone would be the size of an airport best seller!

But as you allude to, in a place where you always need to heat the building, 'inefficient' isn't quite the right phrase. Low energy bulbs are only any good when you don't need heating, otherwise it's just heat...
 
I thought this was a bit strange.
Yesterday one of my friends said she had just unlocked her front door when she heard a woman say "Hello". Her husband who came up after rolled his eyes and said there was noone there,
Later when she rang her daughter she said she had been preparing dinner when suddenly a lock appeared out of nowhere. There was nowhere it could have fallen from.
In talking to a mutual friend today she said she was woken last night by a bright light that moved around her bedroom and then down the hall.
I wonder if something is going to happen? Can't involve me as I've had nothing.
 
I thought this was a bit strange.
Yesterday one of my friends said she had just unlocked her front door when she heard a woman say "Hello". Her husband who came up after rolled his eyes and said there was noone there,
Later when she rang her daughter she said she had been preparing dinner when suddenly a lock appeared out of nowhere. There was nowhere it could have fallen from.
In talking to a mutual friend today she said she was woken last night by a bright light that moved around her bedroom and then down the hall.
I wonder if something is going to happen? Can't involve me as I've had nothing.
A lock? Like a padlock or a lock from a door?
 
Without wishing to disturb further details on the voice&lock story above (please, do carry on), today during a walk I was overtaken by a tricycle recombant bike, with a huge partially-furled sail.

The guy riding it looked mean and able, but, is this a unique vehicle? How the hell does it work? With no keel, surely it would flip over? He didn't appear to be a paralympian, at a glance, but the trike reminded me of those skeletal racing things, but with panniers, sun-shades, water-bottle, a solar panel on top and....a sail. Kind of Mad Max.
 
Without wishing to disturb further details on the voice&lock story above (please, do carry on), today during a walk I was overtaken by a tricycle recombant bike, with a huge partially-furled sail.

The guy riding it looked mean and able, but, is this a unique vehicle? How the hell does it work? With no keel, surely it would flip over? He didn't appear to be a paralympian, at a glance, but the trike reminded me of those skeletal racing things, but with panniers, sun-shades, water-bottle, a solar panel on top and....a sail. Kind of Mad Max.


G'day Ermintrude,

When I was a Lad, many years ago, my Dad would take us prospecting for gold. In those days there were sometimes seen men who traveled about the countryside for no reason, (swaggies, or swagmen) other than wanderlust, who carried their Swag (bedroll) across their backs and a billy in their hand.

On one occasion, miles from anywhere we came across this old fella on a pushy, who had rigged a sail on his pushy and was trundling along quite nicely - I've never seen it since, but in this long flat land of ours, which has predictable winds, I could see how this sail thing could be a fairly good idea.
 
It was a padlock but it wasn't any good to her as there wasn't a key.
It reminded her to go and buy one to stop the dog jumping up and opening the gate.
 
...there were sometimes seen men who traveled about the countryside for no reason, (swaggies, or swagmen) other than wanderlust, who carried their Swag (bedroll) across their backs and a billy in their hand.

On one occasion, miles from anywhere we came across this old fella on a pushy, who had rigged a sail on his pushy and was trundling along quite nicely - I've never seen it since, but in this long flat land of ours, which has predictable winds, I could see how this sail thing could be a fairly good idea.
Sounds dangerous - you could sail into a shady coolibah tree and crash into a billabong.
 
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