S: Exactly. Despite the fact that we can both agree that such a quiz is patently absurd because the tenet that it pre-supposes...that the outcome of a plane flight is contingent in any way upon the physical appearance of any of its passengers…is nonsense. But we both know on another level, in a way that transcends 'sense', that a plane carrying a passenger (or many) dressed like a clown is simply unlikely to crash. Why? Because plane crash wreckage with huge red floppy shoes strewn about it is unthinkable. It just doesn't fit.

A: Probably why so many people fresh from being diagnosed with terminal cancer have fatal car accidents or get mugged or raped or what-have-you. It's not that they're dazed by the news and therefore unobservant of their surroundings…it's more that they're thinking, I'll bet, on some level, why bother fucking me up any further now? I already have cancer! The cancer is my protection! It's like driving around all day with the parking ticket on your windshield. They let their guard down. Don't you think?

S: I have a friend who has always, as long as I've known him, talked like a well-informed cancer patient. He had the ease with jargon and he had the cadences down…he just was really good at reeling off technical specifications of any kind and probabilities and outlooks with this clipped, confident, guardedly optimistic voice…and then he got cancer. And there was no break in the flow of the way he communicated; he was verbally unchanged before and after. It's like he hit the ground running as far as cancer was concerned.

A: Can you invoke a probability with words? And if so, isn't that essentially what we call a 'magic spell'?

S: There's no physical reason that lightning can't strike the same spot ten times in a row. What argues against it happening is the Narrative Field. Statistics are a narrative, essentially. Don't statistics pre-suppose some kind of connection from one moment to the next? But without consciousness, which supplies the narrative, what connects the first coin toss to the fiftieth? As far as the inanimate coin goes, each toss might as well be its first…there's no physical reason why there shouldn't be a string of 5,000 heads (or tails) in a row. It's only the Narrative Field that prevents it! It's really almost frightening.

A: I just got back from jogging and am reading this: you're right. It's frightening. This Narrative Field stuff.

S: Speaking of which. I'm finally reading UNDERWORLD by Don Delillo...it's monstrously good. This guy's I.Q. just hums off the page. I'd say Philip Roth is the better storyteller but Delillo is the bigger genius. His books burn your fingers. Delillo isn't really telling stories, he's writing almanacs the use for which we will be informed of at a proper point in the future. His books are paper brains. Any minute now, in fact, I'm going to go take a long hot bath and read more Underworld.