Darkoshi

This afternoon while working, I was playing music from my phone in random mode. A fun song came on - "Beep beep! Who's got the keys to the jeep? VRRRRrrrmmm...".

After a bit, there was a sound in the background which I wasn't sure was part of the music or not. Upon pausing the song, I realized it was the sound of rain from outside. It had started raining. I unpaused the song and checked its details. "The Rain" by Missy Elliott, on the "Supa Dupa Fly" album. The coincidence amused me.

When I searched for a video of the song to include in this post, the ones I found were a different version, with the "I can't stand the rain" verse right near the beginning. The version I'd been playing doesn't have that verse until more than a minute into the song. I'd paused it to check on the sound (of the rain) before that point, which is why it amused me so much.

I finally found this video with the song matching mine. It includes the song lyrics in the description:



I played the song again while writing this post, and it rained again briefly!

I may not have realized before that the "I can't stand the rain" verse is not Missy Elliott's voice, but rather a sample from Ann Peebles' 1973 song

First big set of coincidences:

Yesterday afternoon I searched for "Who is Nurse Ratchett". Qiao calls me that jokingly sometimes, when I'm helping him with medical stuff such as after his surgeries.

It turns out that "Nurse Ratched" is a character in the movie "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest". So I started reading about that movie and the book it was based on. I watched some video clips. I've probably seen the movie before, but I didn't remember it well.

I started watching this video about the book and movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BHR6xTmwC8
At 2:20, the video mentions that Ken Kesey, the book's author, took part in an experiment at his university. It was a covert experiment being done by the CIA, testing LSD on people; part of what was called "Project MK-ULTRA". The video says "And if you think it's shocking that the United States government would use its citizens as guinea pigs, look it up. It was part of a project, project MK ULTRA. Google it."

So I duck-duck-go'd it and started reading about Project MKUltra. Depressing stuff. The world sucks and has always sucked, don't you forget it.

(I didn't even think of it til just now, but Qiao rewatched Bourne:Ultimatum yesterday evening. That's a coincidence too, considering how it deals with covert CIA "behavior modification training -- which involved torture tactics and psychological manipulation to muddy agents' moral compasses.")

Anyway. Today at work I was listening to music on my phone, in random order like always.

This song came on: "Psience", by Psychophysicist, from the Album "Deepnet" (disk 2).
It's a long eerie song, with a small amount of speech; a man's voice recounting something:
"We had been really chasing a phantom, if you will, an illusion that the human mind was more capable of manipulation from the outside, by outside factors, than it is. We found out that the human being is an extremely complex thing. There were no simple solutions. We got trapped a lot of times with complexities and illusions that didn't exist. But you've just got to bear in mind that these were very strange times."

It sounded oddly like what I'd been reading about yesterday.

Sure enough. I've looked it up now, and the quote is attributed to Dr. John Gittinger - CIA Chief Psychologist 1950-74: The Rise of the 20th Century Mind Control Agenda

This is a clip of that part of the song, if you're interested:

Video title: VA - Deepnet
Posted by: Psychedelic Superbeast
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAxcOFOiSmI
Date posted: Sep 4, 2019

(That's the only clip of the song I found on YouTube. The original CD is from 1996. Someone posted it 5 days ago. What's the odds of that?!! This keeps getting weirder!)

Later, while driving home, I turned on the radio to NPR. This segment was playing:
The CIA's Secret Quest For Mind Control: Torture, LSD And A 'Poisoner In Chief'. It's about the person who ran MK-ULTRA!!!

..

2nd smaller set of coincidences (things breaking / not working):

1. At work, I accidentally dropped my phone from the desk to the carpet. The phone seems ok, but the audio cord for my headphones was plugged into the phone at the time, and its plug got bent. I bent it back, but a wire must have broken, as sound doesn't come out of the right channel anymore.

2. When I got home, that NPR episode was still playing, so I hurried inside and tried to tune the station on one of our radios. I couldn't get the station to tune in! I tried another radio and couldn't get it to tune in there either! I went back to the car... no problem tuning in there, but the segment just ended. Oh well. But why can't the inside radios pick up that station anymore? It used to be one of the strong stations!

I tried tuning the station on the FM Radio app on my phone. That works, but only when I'm holding the phone in a certain position.

3. I wondered if I could tune into FM radio stations on the TV. I think I've come across that option before, haven't I? I checked the channel list and TV menus and didn't find FM radio there. So I duck-duck-go'd how to get FM Radio on TV, and the search results mentioned apps.

Ah! I switched the TV to the Amazon FireTV input, which has apps on it. We don't use that input very often. But the FireTV box wasn't responding to the remote. Sigh. This always happens when we want to use it. I unplugged the box and plugged it back in. The remote still didn't work. I checked its batteries. They are dead. That's odd. Then I notice that the battery contacts in the remote have white powdery stuff on them too. ARGH. I hope the remote isn't ruined. Now I need to open it up to clean it up as well as I can.