Miller: A lot o' people don't realize what's really going on. They view life as a bunch o' unconnected incidents 'n things. They don't realize that there's this, like, lattice o' coincidence that lays on top o' everything. Give you an example; show you what I mean: suppose you're thinkin' about a plate o' shrimp. Suddenly someone'll say, like, plate, or shrimp, or plate o' shrimp out of the blue, no explanation. No point in lookin' for one, either. It's all part of a cosmic unconciousness.
Otto: You eat a lot of acid, Miller, back in the hippie days?
Miller: I'll give you another instance: you know how everybody's into weirdness right now?
-Repo Man (1984)

Not too many years ago our friend Bill was talking about a concept he had read about regarding us being in a metaphorical (or maybe not so metaphorical) petri dish with some large creature poking at us, as if all us humans are part of some large experiment by other greater beings.

A few months ago I heard about the possibility that we're all part of some computer simulation like The Matrix, but without our bodies.

There's these coincidences that Stan and I call "Plate of Shrimp" in reference to the Repo Man quote above, where I'll be talking about something and then on TV, for example, the same topic will come up. I'm not talking about current events on the news, I'm talking about esoteric things.

Here's an example of something odd that happened just last night. Stan and I were watching the news and they were talking about the school shooting in Cleveland and it was said the shooter was part of a gang called The Denison Boys. I looked at Stan and said "The Van Buren Boys?" which is a reference to a Seinfeld episode where Kramer and George separately encounter a gang named after the 8th President. Later that night, I stayed up to watch the nightly syndicated Seinfeld reruns, and, whadya know, it was the episode with the Van Buren Boys. Now, maybe someone over at Channel 27 has an equally twisted sick ironic sense of pop cultural references as I do, but I highly doubt it. I suspect these episodes are programmed weeks in advance.

Or are they? Maybe it's Bill's "thing", the creature poking a stick at us in our petri dish, seeing how we'll respond, or Miller's Plate of Shrimp Lattice of Coincidence or Nick Bostrom's computer simulation theory.

These incidences have happened throughout my life, and have started noticing them with much more regularity lately. Naturally, without writing them down, I cannot recount every one--which is why I will START documenting them today. But there is one moment from 30 years ago that was the beginning of it all. I don't know why this one stands out in my mind except it was the first, and soon there were many more just like it to follow:

I was with a friend at a movie theatre in a small mall and I thought I saw a boy in my class named Tom. As this guy got closer I realized it was not Tom. I wasn't looking for Tom, we weren't supposed to meet Tom there, I didn't even know Tom very well, and Tom didn't even live near this mall. But later in the night, guess who I saw in the mall? Tom.

Are you ever driving along a road and you see some man walking toward you, you pass him, go about a mile more and see what looks like the same guy, same physical characteristics, same clothes, walking toward you? Kind of like when Neo sees the black cat in The Matrix...a glitch in the sim program. Or is it a glitch?

Labels: Plate of Shrimp