Speaking of very large birds the other day there was giant, deadly, violent, ostrich cousin running loose in my city. The news decided to tell me this after the entertainment news! "There's a dangerous creature running loose in a certain county, we'll tell you which one and what people can do to survive an attack from such an animal which regularly kills people in Africa after a commercial for Zoloft and a story about a certain actor cussing out a member of his crew a year ago, everyone knows about this but we thought we'd remind you since the movie is opening this weekend, and we want to see if us talking about it can lower ticket sales, because we are power hungry journalists who want to rule the world Mwahahahahahahah. Sorry guys I kinda let that get away from me, but you went to commercial, right . . . RIGHT!?"

On a related (but random) note - has anyone ever purchased something and either the total cost or change comes up as 666 in some form?

So from that poll, the information is reliable. Everyone always gets orange chicken.

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A Rush fanatic friend of mine recently posted a photo of a store receipt from a recent purchase she made. Didn't seem that big of a deal, except that her total came to $21.12.

(NOTE: this blog was originally written on a music board, so they knew that 2112 was one of Rush's most renowned albums)

I find it intriguing how often we find friendly and familiar numbers seemingly wherever we look. Back when I first decided to take the number 46 for football, softball, and street hockey, it crossed my sight on a regular basis. I originally started this essay to share my thoughts on how our subconscious strives to bring the friendly and the familiar into our daily life, but I got derailed by the unfortunate reverse side to this concept.

There are those who feel it is their duty in life to point out how your way of living or your belief system does not equate to theirs, and therefore must be exposed as evil. Yep, I'm talking about those whose subconscious allows them to see and hear things that they fear and hate, thus taking the concept of: "If you want to see something strongly enough, you'll see it" to an extreme is really shouldn't be taken. Same goes for hearing what you want to hear; if you ever find yourself in a debate, and your opponent bases his or her justifications on something you didn't say, chances are you really didn't say it, but he/she certainly heard it.

I've got plenty of examples to draw from. One of my personal favorites comes from my cashiering days. My home store (located a mile from the U of Maryland campus) would occasionally send me to a particular D.C. store on Sundays to help out. I got paid double-time for Sunday work, so I didn't mind in the least. This particular store just happened to be a block away from a Baptist church. Having grown up in a Baptist church-going house, I'm all too familiar with how charged up the congregation gets after Sunday church service, so it was not unusual for me to be preached to by these customers during my shift.

One of my favorite customer exchanges of all time came from one such gentleman:

Steve: "How are you doing today, sir?"

Customer: "Fantastic! And, you?"

Steve: "Doing good."

Customer: "How can you say that you're having a great life when you have not accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal savior?"

To this day, you can still see the scar on the bottom of my chin where my jaw dropped to the floor. How far beyond left field did that comment come from?

Oh, yeah...now I remember...our subconscious allows us to hear what we want to hear. Whether it was actually said or not. This guy was living proof of that concept.

Some people really need to stop doing that.

My mind dove head-first into flashback mode, and it took some doing to get my concentration back to the intended topic.

My friend's receipt experience.

Seeing the friendly and the familiar.

People seeing things they fear.

The unfriendly and the way too familiar.

Uh-oh.

Let's try this again.

My friend's receipt experience.

Hey, wait...I have my own receipt story!

And it happened at the same store as my "great life" story.

What a surprise.

One guy, having come to the store straight from church, went through my line. I rang up his order, took his money, then announced that his change was---and, folks, I could not have made this up on the fly in a million years---$6.66.

He recoiled his hand and retreated out of the store in record time.

I've got a better idea. Some people shouldn't be allowed to have a subconscious.

quote:

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When you said "Rush fan" I thought you were talking about Rush Limbaugh. I'd forgotten all about the band...

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I wonder if there is anyone here old enough to have a problem with 12:07.

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Yeah. You needn't have lived through it, to remember it, and have a problem with it. Even Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto had a problem with it.

(as to 9:11 and 12:07, why can't bad things ever happen on the 31st so we can be free to enjoy our digital clocks!)

I have other reasons for not being fond of 12/8...

*****

They tell me "A113" was the number of the classroom in Cal Arts where a lot of these animation guys first met up.

*****

At home we have almost all flourescent bulbs; my hubby wanted to go green. At least our house has lots of windows.