A virus with shoes from outer space.

[hirez]

What is the term for the concept that I can only describe as 'smoking a tab to make the bus come' ?

The performance of an act in order to make Sod's Law work in your favour. Or, if not in your favour then applying conceptual leverage in order to ensure the least unfavourable outcome.

Edit: ok, so it seems like I'm explaining this badly. Imagine, if you will, the act of going out for a potter. If you do not take a coat, it will rain. If you do take a coat, it will be warm and sunny. Loud and Muphy-tempting statements to all + sundry along the lines of 'Gosh I do hope it rains because the countryside smells so much nicer when damp' as you peer out of the window won't work...

... I believe I am quoting wholesale from 'Three men in a boat'.

The sensible answer is either a somewhat waterproof technical top, or not giving a flying bugger about getting a bit damp.

Comments

[mr-tom.livejournal.com]

But Murphy's law is recursive.

[pir.livejournal.com]

Sacrificing a cancer stick to the bus gods.

[sarah-mum.livejournal.com]

Urban Morris?
Modernist sacrifical action?

[hirez.livejournal.com]

You're single-threading this. Since the initial concept is an effective mimetic defence to 'the game', it's relatively trivial to generalise that out into multiple potential end-states where the conceptual going-wrongness can be applied in anti-phase.

Thus you end up either with a residual amount of Murphy Radiation or the end of the universe. Have you never spent time with mad and/or tiresome people?

[sarah-mum.livejournal.com]

The specific case is Benson's incantation of summoning of course.

[quercus.livejournal.com]

If you smoke Player's Navy Cut, does the boat come in?

[chiller.livejournal.com]

If "sympathetic magic" is where you carry a gold coin around (for instance) in order to encourage money to come your way, then what you are practising is homeopathic magic.

[the_axel]

I don't know that there is one.
An important part of using it is that you have to not realize that you are using it long enough for it to work.

At least for me (back in the day when I smoked) - if I lit a cigarette to summon a bus it didn't. I had to light it without thinking about the bus. It's a Zen thing.

A bit like the opposite of The Game when I think about it.

[bogwitch64.livejournal.com]

Like when the hubs washes the car and then it rains fifteen minutes after he finishes? Or planning a picnic during a drought and having it be the ONLY rainy day all summer?

Yeah, I know that law, whatever it is.

[alien8.livejournal.com]

you'll be needing one of these : http://www.shuttvr.com/shop/productdetail/Shutt-Race-Cape/

join the forum and get more % off... :) (they're a lovely company btw)

[drumiller.livejournal.com]

antipathic summoning? Though I agree, you can't usually pull the trigger on the summoning process, you've got to be more unconscious about it, or else the bus never arrives.

[serpentstar.livejournal.com]

Either superstition, or chaos sorcery, depending on your chosen reality grid.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

We-ell, maybe. But bunging a spare tube in yr saddlebag when off out for a ride doesn't quite count as superstition.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Wouldn't that mean carrying about an atomic-scale raincoat? Which is pleasingly Third Policeman.

"I int no 'omeoparf. I likes birds, me."

[serpentstar.livejournal.com]

It does if you are bunging the spare tube there with the specific intent of summoning a sharp object into your tyre at a random moment during your journey.

[chiller.livejournal.com]

Nah, an omeopaff is one of them killers, but just of the gays.

[neefsck.livejournal.com]

The problem being is that it only works if you're not thinking about it.
In Melbourne - when waiting for a tram, train or bus, you light a cigarette without thinking and the transport in question turns up.
HOWEVER!
If you're *thinking* about it when you're lighting up that cigarette, if you're lighting that dog end with the express purpose of making the transportation arrive faster, then its not going to happen.

[mr-tom.livejournal.com]

Ah, OK. So you need a precipitation fetish[1] that is sufficiently functional to be non-tokenistic?

Fortunately, the cycling industry now makes pac-a-macs that are so ridiculously expensive that they can no longer be considered part of the weak lemon drink collection. Allegedly.


[1] Not of the tedious whips'n'chains variety, Molesworth.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Exactly so, and in multiple senses of the word.

[bmlg.livejournal.com]

Unsympathetic magic?

I practice it frequently, but the success rate is low.

[reddragdiva]

OTOH - hey, cig.