the weird in the everyday

[dubdobdee]

i met up with former workmates last night which wz nice

one of them, EM, wz delighted to be able to say she has a new bf

this is the bit she felt was quite strange

i. his flatmate is dating someone with exactly the same name as her, EM
ii. her bf had -- very briefly -- also dated this girl
iii. EM2 had applied for the exact same job that EM1 got

my theory which is mine: ok if you are called eg JOHN SMITH this kind of thing is merely not strange at all, but tiresomely workaday; and if you have an unusual name like mine (viz dubdobdee then this just NEVER HAPPENS -- however there is a Band of Potential Peculiarness in the middle, where it's just likely enough and just rare enough to spook everyone

(it also reminded i once had a conversation w.EM when she was at work -- and the world's most loveably teasable person -- in which she wz goin "OMG!" at some bit of actually-not-that-astonishing synchronicity and i was pointing out the amazing torrent of times that synchronicity DIDN'T occur, the REAL omg factor, and she wz ggettin very puzzled)

Comments

Here Be Gormans

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

When I first accessed the magic scrying pool of google I used to think 'wow how odd that of all the Tom Ewings in the world 2 more of them are in the music biz', and then of course I realised I was just screening out the various senators, basketball players, cops etc.

Re: Here Be Gormans

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Though I still maintain that the existence of a REAL ACTUAL BAND called THE TOM EWINGS crosses some kind of probability line.

Re: Here Be Gormans

[anatol-merklich.livejournal.com]

can it be you has FANS or did you find them well before establishing notable interweb presence?

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

we had another better theory of how this clustering was happening which it seemed important to point out to her -- seein as her bf actually already worked where she now works, we suggested he has 1xbig giant list of all the world's EMs and is datin them one by one, as a giant turner-prize winnin project: obv EM2 he had stopped seein when she applied for the job EM1 got (perhaps dumpin her the moment EM1 turned up)

anyway bf is clearly the secret pervy arty brane behind the Gathering and the weirdness is a dfft kind of weirdness

[martinskidmore.livejournal.com]

I remember an account of some composer in 19th C (may have been early 20th) Vienna going to the theatre or opera or some such. He noticed that the number of the horse-drawn carriage that took him there was the same as his ticket number - and when he checked in his coat at the theatre, the receipt had the same number again. He reported this as astounding, but of course this is the kind of thing that statistically will certainly happen once in a while. There are only two coincidences, both short of 1 in a 1000 odds, so short of one in a million probability, and there must have been millions of chances of this happening.