So I was reading yesterday about how the Big Bang might be something that's occurred numerous times over the lifespan of the universe. And somehow that's morphed in my head to this idea:

What if you take the New Age-y idea of "We Are All One" and maul it with the anthropic principle so that the universe must exist to support me because I'm here to observe it?

Then what if existence is just one big meta-novel? There's one story and the Divine plays through the narrative, each time in the form of a different person, or "character," in the story. As a result, deja vu is where you have been there before, but in someone else's chapter. The "glitches in the Matrix" bit where things seem wrong is because they are wrong, because they were different in someone else's chapter and the minor details just don't add up. Is this due to poor proofreading or a rewrite since the last time that part of the story was played through?

If you want to get a working example of this in your head, read Alan Moore's Voice of the Fire and William Faulker's As I Lay Dying back to back. Or, to put it another way, imagine life as the ultimate MMORPG where God is every single player.

Discuss.

These are the vegetable chips, of course. I'm digging on their new zesty tomato style which are all orange and deep red and such.

The only trouble is when you eat all the really nice looking chips off the top. If you then peer into the bag you're thinking, "Wait…are these chips? Or potpourri?"

This is the shit I think about at four in the morning. And how was your day?

I'm sure everyone's heard about the nude Britney Spears statue in which she's on a bear rug giving birth, right?

I originally had no reaction to this, but now I've been struck by a disturbing thought: what happens, after the apocalypse, when our descendants have built a religion around this damn thing?

"ALL HAIL THE BEAR FERTILITY GODDESS!"

Puts that bayou scene in Call of Cthulhu to shame, doesn't it?

Well, that's depressing. We handed Regina Spektor the Chazzies for Best Artist and Song, and then she went and hobbled her own sound, if the MP3s that are out now are any indication.

"Better" completely loses her keys. And it basically sounds like…well, a song that any other female vocalist would put out. The magic's just been drained out of it.

In "Fidelity," she sounds like she's been imprisoned by the (what sounds like a) canned beat behind her and just wants to bust out and go nuts. But she can't. The "and it breaks my ha-hahaha-hahaha-hahahaha-heart" thing which has been known to work live just sounds ridiculous and phoned in.

Now I can see her taking the next step, which is the same mistake Tori Amos made in–if memory serves me correctly–her Boys for Pele tour: touring solo but using a recorded backup band for the songs that "needed" it. I would have much preferred to see everything done with just a piano. It felt cheap otherwise.

I'm never one for musicians to stay the same from album to album, but when they chuck what made them special out the window, it's always a sad day. If this is the new album, then I'll just ignore it and listen to Soviet Kitsch and Bull Moose over instead. "And it breaks my heart, and it breaks my heart." Yeah, mine too, Regina. Sorry.

Get the live versions of both songs instead.

My author's photo is me locked out from a series of communications dishes. This would have been the ultimate next step in that idea. Shame I wasn't there to take my own pics.

Found via MAKE Blog.

The variable city. Packed to the gills then empty.

In Spain one can find a linear city all along the coast built for tourism, a section of land that becomes the most crowded region in Europe, but just for a short time. It’s a city for only three months in summer, when thousands of people come looking for the sea and the sun. The rest of the year it becomes a ghost city, a city without any a function, with no people and no services.

Found via We Make Money Not Art.

I've taken part in Subgenius devivals before. Apparently this makes me a pervert and mentally ill and not fit to be around children. Now this might be the case, but certainly not because I've been associated with the teachings of J.R. "Bob" Dobbs.

All the details on how a woman lost custody of her child because she's a Subgenius are here at Boing Boing. If this is accurate–and I'm waiting for some more information before I pass total judgement on this, seeing as how in recent months, partial stories being accepted as gospel on blogs and in the media has become a serious issue–then Rev. Magdalen needs all the help she can get.