Does this happen to anyone else?

Any time I hear or read a word that I've never heard before, I look it up. (Hi, my name is Velocibadgergirl, and I'm a huge dork.) More often than not, I'll see the word again at least once within a week or so of learning it. I used to explain this away by telling myself that the word of the week was actually common, and that I'd just never noticed it before. That didn't really make sense, though, because Hello, I'm a huge dork, and I would've noticed and looked up the word if I'd seen it before. So there is some kind of phenomenon of weird words appearing twice or three times.

Then there's the fact that certain street lights in town and fluorescent lights in stores will go off EVERY TIME I walk or drive under them, no matter what time of night / day it happens. Upon hearing my theory that I somehow cause this, some people will try telling me that many lights are set to go off at intervals. Sure, but I find it hard to believe that 1. they're on a completely random schedule and 2. their completely random schedule coincides perfectly with my completely random schedule.

I know, neither of these are very impressive. This entry isn't really about large, impressive things; it's about a whole string of little things that, taken all together, seem sort of peculiar.

Over the last week or so, there have been a lot of these inconsequential coincidences (Damn, it's hard to spell "coincidence" right after slogging through "inconsequential.").


#1: The Random Song

My car is old enough to legally drive itself, and thus does not have a CD player. The tape deck, sadly, doesn't work. I have to listen to music while I drive or the ADD takes over and my mind starts wandering, so I never drive without the radio playing. Talk radio and commercials are more wander-inducing than silence, so I have all the stations I like preset, and all the second-tier stations memorized so I can flip down to them...Nothing on 103.1, 107.5, or 97.1? Click down through 102.3, 101.9, 107.1, and 96.9. It's not unusual to hear the same song twice in one drive, because so many radio stations play the same stuff (especially currently hot, sometimes crappy stuff). However, if I hit the random satellite station and hear a song that I loved when I was in 8th grade and that I usually only hear once every few months, and then flip to the small-potatoes non-Clear Channel country station and hear a cover version of the same song playing at the same time...that's weird.


#2: The Random Artist

Last week during my night shift at the record store, a guy asked me and a coworker if we knew who sang this song that he couldn't remember the name of, but went something like this. (This happens all the time. At least he didn't offer to hum.) I could almost hear the song in my head, and I knew that I'd looked it up before, but I was drawing a blank. It suddenly clicked, and I figured out that it was the song "Mad World," from Donnie Darko. The other guy working remembered who sang the version in the movie (Gary Jules), and I made a mental note to see if the public library had a copy of they guy's album. They (it?) did, and I checked it out. Three days later, I went to check my MySpace page and there's random Gary Jules as the featured artist on the log-in page. I wouldn't have even recognized his name, if not for the record store guy asking about him.


#3: The Random VHS Tape

A friend of mine is expecting a baby girl in September. She and her husband have a (fabulous, bright, adorable) two-year-old son who is growing up speaking English and German at home. Today I found out that when the soon-to-arrive girl and her brother are older, my friend plans to teach them French as well. I went to my record store shift tonight and saw a copy of Pooh's Grand Adventure on the 3 for $12 video table, alongside a copy of E.T.. Since I have Issues and stockpile things for the children MB and I have yet to conceive, I began looking for a third movie. During my search, I stumbled upon a copy of Disney's Beauty and the Beast on sale for $7.99. A sweet find! And then I noticed that it was the FRENCH version of Beauty and the Beast. If I'd found this tape last week, I'd have been disappointed. Instead, it felt sort of like serendipity.



The Random Observation With No Segue

Sometimes I really feel sorry for Pluto. I was under the impression that scientists had already voted and decided to keep Pluto on the list of planets. Apparently a conference convened in Prague today to discuss that very topic. This article does not paint a very bright future for poor Pluto.

Continuing the theme from above, here's an interesting coincidence. The photo they use on the first page of the article is on my business cards. I think it's mis-captioned, though. They state that this is an artist's rendering of the solar system, including Pluto. Clearly, Pluto is not represented:



In fact, if you asked my friends about this, they'd tell you that when I got my business cards, the first thing I did was show them to everyone. The second thing I did was issue a disclaimer stating that I was not in support of the exclusion of Pluto from the card.



Insert Inappropriate Joke Here

"Frozen Sperm Revive Jurassic Park Dreams"

The best part: "The researchers also tested whether frozen male sexual organs could be transported internationally via shipment on dry ice. In most cases, the extracted sperm produced normal offspring."

How do you explain that one at customs?



Playing: rock playlist on the computer

Reading: too much into things