Could it have been a sign?

hipparchia said:
Did I mention once you have seen The Ring (the movie), you become extremely sensitive to circle shapes?
Also, I switched my mobile off right there in the cinema after I saw "the tape". Some phones went off though, and was it a hear-attack moment...:eek: :jaw-dropp :covereyes
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Serves you right for having them on in the theater to begin with. :D

Marc
 
I don't get the coincidence. In the movie a phone rang, and at the same time your power went out? Why is that meaningful (or even interesting) in any way?

Or am I overlooking a big part of the story here? At the moment it reads a bit like this:

"Tonight I was typing on an internet forum and then the cat came in the room with a mouse in its mouth! Weird or what?"

ETA: Actually, I think "Ericka" may not be all "she" seems, so, well, whatever.
 
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My favourite coincidence is from a New Year's Eve party about ten years ago. A good friend of my sister's was there. As was approaching midnight and everyone was chatting, someone jokingly said to my sister's friend that she was a witch. She said something along the lines of "yes, and look what I can do with my powers" and snapped her fingers. As she snapped her fingers, the power went down in a large part of the city (of about 1 million people).
That was hilarious. I hope I remember it correctly - my sister joined the forum recently, so, Maja, do correct me if I am wrong.
The power failure was to do with the fact that everyone in the city had all the appliances on full power just before midnight, but the timing was impeccable.
 
Psi Baba said:
I love that movie. Very original and somewhat obscure--you don't hear mention of it very often. Thanks for helping me decide what to watch this weekend. :)
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Can you tell me where to find it - I can't locate a dvd of it anywhere, other than region 1, which I can't play (I also need a new copy of 'Immortal Beloved' for the same reason :( ).
 
Shouldn't be hard to include an all-purpose Bluetooth interface in all new DVD players. Then moviemakers could deliberately "program" such spooky occurrences into DVD movies....your cellphone would ring...your houselights would flick on and off...your car horn would honk...etc.
 
One year my brothers and I decided to go to the Ky Derby infield for a fine afternoon of alcohol, fast women and pretty horses. My youngest brother and I were students at UofL and my other brother was home on leave from the Navy. We loaded up a bunch of fellow adventurers in the back of a pickup and headed toward the track. Parking is a premium on that day around churchill downs so we put as many people as we could in one vehicle. My youngest brother (the fellow student) was driving down 3rd street with the ladies of our party in the cab and the guys were in the back.

As we came to a red light, I snapped my fingers twice and pointed my index finger dramatically at the light. It instantly changed to green. My Navy brother grinned at the coincidence. His grin faded though when I did the same thing to the next 7 lights in a row. The truck never had to stop at a light until the traffic got heavy near the track. He demanded to know how I was changing the light. I finally let him in on it. My youngest brother and I car-pooled to UofL down that street every morning. We figured out that the lights were timed for 35 mph. We both got pretty good at cruising at the proper speed so that the lights would change just as we approched them. I knew he would do it again out of habit so I simply timed my "point" for when I knew the light was going to change.

Some coincidences aren't.
 
RenaissanceBiker that is a nifty driving trick :D

I wish more drivers around here would pay more attention to the way lights are timed, I live in hazard everyday of the aggressive drivers going breakneck speeds, changing lanes constantly up to the next light only to sit at it as I attempt to get to the light with all parts of my car still attached and undamaged.

We probably all can think of coincidences of one sort or another, again it doesn't make them significant, merely memorable.
 
tkingdoll said:
I don't get the coincidence. In the movie a phone rang, and at the same time your power went out? Why is that meaningful (or even interesting) in any way?
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I've read her post three times, and if I understand correctly, Erika's power went out at just after 9, just as one of the characters was getting a call timed at 9.05.
If the power outage happened at exactly 9.05, that would make it one chance in 720 (the number of minutes in 12 hours); odds like that aren't too high. if the timing was less exact, then the odds would be lower.

I've had coincidences at higher odds than that. For instance, I once went into a shop and bought eight items. The bill came to exactly £8.88. And my birthday is on the 8th of the month!
Can somebody calculate the odds on that?
 
sophia8 said:
If the power outage happened at exactly 9.05, that would make it one chance in 720 (the number of minutes in 12 hours); odds like that aren't too high. if the timing was less exact, then the odds would be lower.
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It doesn't matter what the odds are. The point is, that meaning is assigned to something *after* the fact. We would have seen a nearly identical post, if at that particualr scene at the move the doorbell would have rung in the viewer's apartment, or if it had started to rain, or if the washing had finished, etc.

And for any of those events, there are probably around 50 significant moments oin the move that you could math them to.
 
sophia8 said:
I've had coincidences at higher odds than that. For instance, I once went into a shop and bought eight items. The bill came to exactly £8.88. And my birthday is on the 8th of the month!
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But before the UK went to the decimal coinage, your total could never have come to 8.88, and so the coincidence was totally dependent upon an arbitrary, artificially imposed measurement. And your birthday is only on the 8th of the month in the Western calendar, not in the Mayan or Chinese or Islamic calendars.

So if you had been an Asian person shopping in Hong Kong in 1970, you wouldn't have experienced a "coincidence" at all. You would have bought eight things, your total would have come to some combination of pounds and shillings, and your birthday wouldn't have been the same number as the amount of things you bought.

It's like when the astrologers do their calculations based on somebody's birth moment: are they using Daylight Savings Time, Babylon Standard Time, or what? It's all completely arbitrary and human-imposed.
 
From talking to my sister and her husband, people don't pay attention to traffic light timing because they think that it changes if they think at it hard enough.
 
I was at a family gathering when I was about 16 years old and decided it was boring and that I would rather go drink some beer with my friends. I hitchhiked home and walked the last mile. About half a mile from my house I was thinking maybe this wasn't such a good idea since I was broke and right at that moment I looked down at the ground and there was a 5 dollar bill (enough for a case of beer and a pack of cigarettes). Coincidence or did someone want me to drink beer and smoke cigarettes?
 
chillzero said:
Can you tell me where to find it - I can't locate a dvd of it anywhere, other than region 1, which I can't play (I also need a new copy of 'Immortal Beloved' for the same reason :( ).
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Shameless plug -----> If you just want to watch and not own, check your local library. Most of them lend videos and DVDs - FREE. Also, if it's not in the library's collection, they can usually get it from another library through interlibrary loan.
 
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