thing is my oyster

i find it oddly comforting and at the same time vaguely distressing to learn that other people do, in fact, sometimes, particularly when administered the same stimulus, think like i do:

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4176/is_20060712/ai_n16528165

(the stimulus, by the by, in case it isn't clear, being Amelie.)

does anyone else, i wonder, find the implications of calling that particular part of the chicken the 'pope's' or 'parson's nose' (particularly given what *we* call it hereabouts) in any way amusing?

i've always been fascinated with the idea of a/the collective subconscious and how it might be possible to manipulate an individual, a population and/or an entire species through it; people as varied as Adolf Hitler, Carl Jung, castmembers of Saturday Night Live, Bob Dylan, Hugh Hefner, Philip K. Dick, William Gibson and Syd Mead, the Wachowski Brothers, producers of any one of the more commercially successful artists and television stations, Neil Gaiman, the Itchyworms and Mike Carey have all, in their own ways, profited from the idea.

synchronicity is another concept that's always been of particular fascination to me; in a half-assed attempt to employ the two ideas in a single entry (and, perhaps, provide something of a public service), i include this e-mail which i received as i was composing that bit on the collective subconscious:

If you should ever be forced by a robber to withdraw money from an ATM machine, you can notify the police by entering your PIN number in reverse order. For example if your pin number is 1234 then you would put in 4321. The ATM recognizes that your pin number is backwards from the ATM card you placed in the machine. The machine will still give you the money you requested, but unknown to the robber, the police will be immediately dispatched to help you. This information was recently broadcasted on TV and it states that it is seldom used because people don't know it exists. Please pass this along to everyone possible. If you should ever be forced by a robber to withdraw money from an ATM machine, you can notify the police by entering your PIN number in reverse order.

a response to which can be found here:

http://www.snopes.com/business/bank/pinalert.asp

last couple days on the office broadband. i really wish i had something more interesting to put on this blog.

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further synchronicity: Paul just posted this review of the Itchyworms' ubercool Noontime Show over on his recently pimped blog.