A few years ago, I was a woman. I'm the only one who remembers this, but I know it's true.

This is a tricksy topic for me, because this happens daily to me. I don't know why, maybe I'm just "special". *cough* maybe *cough*. Anyway, I remembered that I was doing functions today in my calculus class, when my friend tells me that we doing derivatives. Then, I get home, and could have sworn I had one black dog and on white. I have two black dogs, apparently. Also, as I said, this happens a lot.


And I remember you being a woman as well, Dr Dred. I remember well.
Fucking shadow people, messing up my brain! Where's my shotgun?

False memory can definitely freak you out. On some news station not long after the Sept. 11th attacks I saw a computer simulation of an airliner crashing into Tower One and it triggered a memory of a news program I had seen years earlier. Just after Microsoft released Flight Simulator 98 (which should actually make it 1997, right?), some old guy made a big stink over it, saying that someone might use it to train to fly an aircraft, and I remember these words exactly, “into a skyscraper in New York or something.” Remembering this actually made me angry, wondering why the airlines hadn’t taken any precautions to prevent this sort of thing from happening when obviously the idea of doing it was nothing new. With a public demand for non-stop media coverage but only a finite amount of information available, I assumed that someone would soon find the old interview and reshow it, maybe find the guy if he was still alive and do a, “Why didn’t anyone listen?” sort of thing. But weeks and weeks passed and that never happened. I’ve since made several half-assed attempts to find online references to the interview, but there’s such an ocean of news coverage to sift through that even if it were there, there’d really be no chance of me coming across it. Still, the producer at the time, the guy giving the interview, hell, the cameraman, somebody would surely remember the interview upon hearing of the attacks and push to have it replayed. Yet five years later I’ve never heard anything else about it. I am ultimately forced to come to the conclusion that the interview never took place. That the entire thing was fabricated inside my own head while I watched a news program, and was then passed on to my conscious mind as a sure-as-fact memory. That’s almost just as disturbing.

I've had two specific instances of this.  What's funny is that the first is the exact one mentioned in the JDatE sequel - Richard Pryor.  When I was reading and the subject was first brought up in the story, my mind immediately shot to Richard Pryor... and sure enough, that's the exact example they brought up.  When I saw the stories talking about his death, I was confused, because I specifically remember reading and hearing about his death years ago.

The other one I have is Gerald Ford.  I honestly remember him dying quite a while back and had completely forgotten about it.  And sure enough, here he is this last year, and he dies.  Crazy.

Nah, it's not that they want us to be violent. They want us to be accepting of violence as a normal thing. They want to change our mindset so that we don't even think of trying to stop them because we don't even see anything wrong. Horrors become everyday events.

Or maybe they just like the non-linear, free-roaming gameplay of Grand Theft Auto.


I've had a "reality revision"-like experience before. It wasn't a big thing but it was still pretty weird.

Anyways, it goes like this: me and my friends were making characters for Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) and one of them wanted to be this specific race, the air gensai. However, he didn't have the book that it came from and he didn't know the rules off the top of his head. So I'm like "No problem, just check the System Reference Document (SRD). I've seen it there before" (for those that don't know, the System Reference Document is basically all the info for D&D that has been released by the manufacturer as open for all). He look's at me like I'm crazy and says that he highly doubts that. We check the SRD and sure enough it isn't there. The thing is, that's where I learned about the air gensai from. I had never seen the sourcebook that they came from, only the SRD. I even remember clicking on their picture and thinking that they looked pretty cool. Since the SRD is available on the web, I used the Wayback Machine and Google Cache to see if maybe the air gensai had been there and just had been taken down. No such luck. Couldn't find it at all. So, basically, I learned about something, knew what it looked like, and rules concerning it without actually ever seeing it. Weird.

I distinctly remember when watching TV was nothing but a side activity, something you did when there was literally nothing else to do. Now I see people (my family) watching several hour-long weekly shows like a goddamn religion -- Lost, Prison Break, Desperate Housewives, House, Survivor, Jericho -- and if they know they'll miss one, A SINGLE ONE, they'll fucking have it fucking taped so they can watch it later.

And don't even try to talk to one of them when the show is on. "Hey mom, at school today" -- "SHUT UP LOST IS ON WAIT TILL A COMMERCIAL IDIOT"

Does anyone else think that this isn't the way it's been before? And I don't mean 30 years, because that's obvious. I mean, a year and a half ago, watching TV in excess of one hour was simply unacceptable. Now my family will watch two hour-long shows in a row while I shake my head in disgusted disbelief at them.

I remember reading JDaTE a few years back and seeing a reference to something called...a "badgerconda," I think. I loved the idea so much I even named my blog after it.

Then I bought the print version AND THE BADGERCONDA WASN'T THERE.

Damn it, Shadow People! Why must you ruin everything good and beautiful in this world?

Holy crap. That's some seriously creepy shit man. I mean, to everyone else, David Wong wrote that article.

 A friend of mine says that he doesn't see black ants around his home anymore.  There used to be red and black ants, he says, but now there's not a black ant to be found.  I made a joke about the red ants sending all the black ants back to Africa due to racism, then he says, "It's like somebody changed history.  It's like the black ants were never even here."

 I mentioned the Shadow Men.  Don't quite recall how he rolled with it.

 Another friend swears, while driving on the highway, he saw a big patch of shadow in a field where there were no objects large enough to catch such a shadow.  He checks the sky to see if something's flying overhead--nothing.  Not even a cloud.  He saw a shadow that didn't have anything casting it.  (More likely a "sighting" than a "history change," though.

It's not rated PG-13?