Enter with me now a strange world, beyond imagination ...

I call it ... The Twilight Zone ....


(cue eerie music)





So I have to get my wisdom teeth pulled today. First thing in the morning. I'm leaving for the doctor in about half an hour, and I'm up now because I can't sleep anymore. (I'm normally a nighttime person...) I know it's not the biggest deal in the world, but it's the only surgery of any type I've ever had. All week I've been putting off thinking about it, because that's how I deal with unpleasant things -- think about them as little as possible.

This post is actually, primarily, a way to avoid thinking about what's coming up in an hour or so.

Anyway, last night, my wife and I go to the grocery store. And I'm getting to the point where I'm actually having to start thinking about my teeth. A little pain, OK, fine, I can live with that. General anesthesia, though, kind of freaks me out a little bit. Not a lot, but the idea that they can put you completely unconscious and then wake you up again, at will. I don't know, it's a little weird. Plus I have heard that there is always "some risk" with that. Wouldn't want to be the first guy in years to die on the operating table while having his teeth pulled. So I'm thinking maybe just a little laughing gas or whatever. But like I said, I don't want to think about it. It's just not a pleasant place to let my thoughts hang around for long periods of time.

I'm walking down the grocery aisle, minding my own business, and suddenly I realize that my hand has been fingering the button on the left rear pocket of my khakis. Not sure why, but for some reason my hand is back there. The button isn't buttoned -- it never is -- it's just there, up at the top of the pocket, above my butt. Did my lower back itch? I don't know. Anyway, the only reason I notice it is because all of a sudden the button is broken in half. I'm holding half of it in my hand, and the other half is still on the pants. It's a sharp break, and the sharp bit scrapes my hand just a bit as I bring the half-a-button to the front of my body to examine it.

How weird. This has never, ever, in my life happened before. I mean I have had buttons fall out due to the strings getting broken or whatever, but I've never broken one in half. I am sure that I wasn't putting much pressure on it. Just out of nowhere, it broke.

I mean, on the cosmic scale of bad things happening -- not a big deal.
On the scale of strange things happening -- well, I don't know. Is it a big deal?
I'm really interested. Does this seem weird to you? How many people here have broken a button right in half, without trying to, putting at most a very mild pressure on it?

So we walk around the store some more. Pick up a couple of things, trying to decide what kinds of soft foods I'm going to want to eat after I have lost some teeth. How many days worth am I going to need? I don't know, I've never done this before. Maybe we should get some soup, too. OK, let's go to the soup aisle.

And on the way there, the exact same thing. I find my OTHER rear pocket button broken off in half, in my hand. I probably was unconsciously fingering it, wondering what was up. But I absolutely do not remember doing anything in particular to prod it or bend it or anything. Just all of a sudden, once again, I have a sharp half a button in my hand.

Now this is weird. It's never happened before, and now it's happened twice in like three minutes.

We get to the counter to check out, and start talking with the pharmacist. (With only a few items, you can check out there, plus I'm going to have to get drugs tomorrow anyway, might as well chat with the guy for a minute.) He starts telling us about this very strange woman who comes into the store about five times a day. She told him today that this grocery store was possessed by demons or devils or something, and she insisted that they needed to get rid of them. He said that she said she saw a woman on the Montel Williams show (is he still on TV?) who could get rid of the demons. While we're talking, I'm grabbing the other half-buttons off of my pants (the two halves are still sharp, and I know I'm going to play with them, might as well just take them off). And I'm thinking, there's the explanation for my buttons breaking -- it's demons in the store. But then I finally get the other two halves of the buttons off of my pockets, and I hold all four buttons together. They remind me of my teeth that I'm getting pulled -- four hard little sharp things, a little bit off white, a little bit stained looking, like I'm sure my wisdom teeth are because I never get the toothbrush back that far to brush them properly. (That's why they're getting pulled, they're so full of cavities it's easier and cheaper just to pull the damn things than keep filling them.)

And, I don't know, I'm not a superstitious person. I'm really not. You guys know I'm a rationalist type. But it starts to weird me out a little bit. Demons and broken teeth and surgery tomorrow that I'm already sort of freaking out about just a little bit.

Fast forward to later that night. I've lost a few bucks playing poker. (The big negative hands were both second-best hands that I knew were no good but lost a bunch with anyway: a one-card flush with the that ran into the , and a 67 on an 89T board that was up against QJ.) I'm getting ready for bed, I just peed for the last time, and I'm putting my pants back on. I go to button the button and SNAP -- the front button (the only functional button, the one that holds the pants on) breaks right in half. I yell "What the HELL is going on?" or something like that, and freak my wife out even more than I'm freaked, because of course she has no idea what I'm talking about, or what just happened. Then I take off my pants, and I notice something. These pants come with an extra button sewed into inside of the waistband. It never does anything at all, just sits there. It takes no pressure whatever. And that button -- you know it -- is BROKEN IN HALF. It's just sitting there, staring at me, mocking me.

That's all the buttons in the pants. All four of them. All broken on the same day.

Anyway, like I said, I'm not superstitious. But on the eve of any surgery, no matter how minor, where there's always the possibility of something going horribly wrong -- you don't want any bad omens.

So if I never post on this forum again, and you guys find out I died -- you'll know it was the grocery store demons. Somebody call Montel and get those f*ckers out of there.

Too long for me read. Play tighter and more aggresive

Yeah what he said. And dooood seriously, ya gotta stop buyin your pants from Kmart- Kmarts good for some stuff, dont get me wrong- ive bought many peice of tupperware and coffeemakers from Kmart. But pants are a nono.

Hey I thought you were a philosopher? Any analytic philosopher worth his salt knows that you cant even prove that those buttons ever even existed, let alone that breakin em is a bad omen!

EDIT: OH bolocks i forgot, you specialize in religion--- well, okay if your a continental philosopher then id definitely say ya better stay away from buildings with scaffolding, especially if safes are somehow involved (dont ask me how they would be exactly, they sure seem to be in the morning cartoons, which is pretty much where i get 90% of my information from...)

sounds like a conspiracy to me

thats some crazy shit...