Saturday, October 06, 2007

Plate of Shrimp

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 unconsciousness.

That particular piece of pseudo-philosophy is from one of my favorite cult films, 1984's Repo Man. While I don't have much faith in the existence of a "cosmic unconsciousness," I still believe that there is some wisdom in that particular monologue.

Yesterday morning, a morning like most others, I was reading an article that was linked from IMDB's homepage. The article was little more than a best-of list concerning documentaries. At number two on the list was The Thin Blue Line, a documentary I had never heard of.

Later on in the day, I was reading an interview on the Onion's AV Club with director Tony Kaye. In the interview, which was mostly concerned with a documentary that he had recently completed, he mentioned The Thin Blue Line. Having then heard mention of an unfamiliar documentary for the second time in a few hours, I went to wikipedia to find out more.

With that curiosity settled, I thought I would read a little bit about each of the other titles on the best-of list that I wasn't already familiar with. I was almost finished reading wikipedia's entry on the Rolling Stones documentary Gimme Shelter when the very song for which the documentary was named happened to come on the radio.

Simple coincidences? Evidence of a cosmic unconsciousness? Either way, don't be surprised if someone mentions a plate of shrimp in the near future.