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Underground > Temple >

Mirror Realms, or Who Makes Dr. Pepper?

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18:26 / 05.05.03

This is a semi-serious "act as if" thread.

I grew up in the world where Dr. Pepper is made by the Coca-Cola corporation. My friend, we'll call him "Chris", also grew up in that world. One day, however, after he had been fasting and meditating for many days and was in a liminal state of awareness, he felt that he could shift worlds. He was sitting with a friend at the time, and both he and his friend (who had not been fasting) felt some sort of atmospheric change when Chris made the effort. Thereafter, he and his friend found that Dr. Pepper was in fact made by PepsiCo. They took careful note of this phenomenon. When Chris told me about this event, he asked me who made Dr. Pepper, and I responded, "Coca-Cola". After some "fact" checking, however, we found that we were both now in a world where Dr. Pepper is independently owned.

Another friend of mine lives in the world where Dr. Pepper is made by Cadbury-Schweppes, and because she is a staunch materialist, people tend to be pulled into her world for the duration of contact with her.

My friend Tina grew up in a world where bamboo absolutely cannot grow in Florida, which I find strange because I grew up in a world where it can, and does, all over the damn place. Grant-- Does bamboo grow in your Florida?

What the hell is going on here? This seems to be more systematic than mere difficulty verifying certain "facts". Tina also postulates the Interweb exists in all the worlds, and is the same entity, which is why there are so many contradictory "facts" on the interweb.

So who makes Dr. Pepper in your universe? Have you ever switched? Are there other cues that we can compile, so people will know when they've swapped universes?

Nietzsch E. Coyote

20:17 / 05.05.03

Tina also postulates the Interweb exists in all the worlds, and is the same entity, which is why there are so many contradictory "facts" on the interweb.

I like this idea.

I switched 'verses about a year ago. I will have to check with my friend who switched with me to see what the cues were.

15:04 / 06.05.03

I've got a Buddha Belly in the front yard and two Gigantichlors in the back. I'm going to be moving, and am considering planting either Balinese Black or something with a vibrant yellow stalk in the front yard.

Yeah, bamboo grows here. The park near my neighborhood has huge stands of the 40-foot-tall runner-type bamboo.

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02:14 / 07.05.03

Thanks, grant-- we're at least in the same universe with respect to bamboo. N. Coyote, how did you know that you had switched?

Who's your Tzaddi?

21:35 / 13.05.03

What an utterly delicious concept...!

22:49 / 13.05.03

Umm...

Dr. Peper is a failed company, or at least I thought it was, the original plant, which they tore down in '96 because it was falling apart, was in Dublin Texas, 20 min. from were I went to high school. And Bamboo doesn't grow in soil, it grows in gravel and water, or at least I thought...

Spyder Todd 2008

12:26 / 14.05.03

I suppose that since everything you experence and encounter composits (bad spelling) your universe, then all it would really take is a shift in mindset to jump over the multiverse's barriers. I've only shifted once, and at the time I though I most of made the whole thing up, but with other people saying they can do it too...

Gods, existence is a weird place.

17:30 / 14.05.03

Hm. Now that you mention it, I recall having done some particularly powerful workings back in the day when I was first getting into magick. It was with some friends, with the intent of shifting worlds, as you put it. We were hoping for a bit more like a porthole opening up where we could walk into a world where magick worked like it does in the fairy tales, but now that you mention this I suspect it did actually work better than we thought. I mean, not long after that my life started to change radicly and magick became a notably present factor in it. So, I think we did manage a bit of shifting there.

Dr. Pepsi indeed.

17:52 / 14.05.03

DR PEPPER, DR, PEPPER and RED FUSION are trademarks of Dr Pepper/Seven Up, Inc. ©2003 Dr Pepper/Seven Up, Inc.
TM and ©2003 Fox and its related entities. All rights reserved.
X-Men Character Likenesses: TM and ©2003 Fox Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

20:31 / 14.05.03

. And Bamboo doesn't grow in soil, it grows in gravel and water, or at least I thought...

You're thinking of "lucky bamboo" which isn't a bamboo at all, it's a water lily relative. That's the stuff people buy in fishbowls at Kmart. Regular bamboo grows in regular dirt... it's a kind of grass, actually. Requires copious amounts of "turf builder" (nitrogen rich) fertilizer.

My Mom Thinks I'm Cool

02:49 / 15.05.03

when I was a kid (when was that? junior high maybe) I was SURE that Athens had won the war against Sparta. I even knew reasons why (superior navy and something else). I had talked about it with other people and can remember specific conversations to that effect. Then I got to college and learned that the Spartans won that war. I was convinced I had somehow crossed universes and had no idea why.

Finally, one day in a fit of rage I stopped talking to people about it and looked it up in a history book. It turned out that there were three wars and each side won (sparta won twice I think.) So...yeah.

Just now, looking at the Dr. Pepper here at work, it's canned by Cocacola and owned by Dr. Pepper the company. same thing?

There's also the case of the Pit and the Pendulum, which everyone else in my class claimed we had read as Freshmen. I deny that this happened and (re?)read the story and it was never familiar, not one word. they claim they remember talking to me about it though. I dunno. could be faulty memory but my brain usually works much better than that.

don't remember ever conciously trying to change universes but it's likely I did...I'll think on it.

03:35 / 15.05.03

I'm certain that when I first saw it, Moscow on the Hudson ended with Robin Williams -- or was it Yakoff Smirnoff? -- playing saxaphone on the street in front of the Astor Place 6 train. But apparently, it's in mid-town somewhere.

But why couldn't we just have been wrong?

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03:18 / 17.05.03

It happened AGAIN.

In the world I come from, all the pongidae (Chimpanzees, Bonobos, Orangs, and Gorillas) are tool users. All of them. Chimpanzees and Bonobos are best at it, or at least use the most complicated tools on the most regular basis, but gorillas will use sticks to get at objects, make umbrellas of leaves, etc.

I KNEW this, though I couldn't have cited you examples.

Today in Old World Prehistory my classmate mentioned that Pan sp. (chimps and bonobos) are the only tool-users among the Pongidae. I objected, and the rest of the class, professor included, looked at me as if I were a bit off my cart.

What??

If a wild crow placed in a laboratory can make a tool by bending a coathanger to get a piece of food out of a narrow-necked bottle, a gorilla, granted not the genius of the pongids but smarter than most birds, anyway, can bang things with sticks.

If switching worlds is caused by a change in mindset, it must have been somebody else's mind.

Some notes: Dr. Pepper does exist, though it may now be a different company. If it is fused with Seven Up, it's Pepsi, because Seven Up is Pepsi. If it's canned by Coke, it can't be a Pepsi product, nor affiliated with Seven Up, because the soda companies are so at war with each other that my college can't serve Pepsi products because we have a Deal(tm) with Coke.

Qalyn-- we can't just be wrong because we're gods, man. Get with it. :P

18:17 / 17.05.03

And gods can't be wrong?

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22:56 / 17.05.03

Sure we can, and probably are. But I have this nagging suspicion that this phenomenon is a little too widespread for the explanation to be quite so simple, and that suspicion is what I hope to dispel (or confirm) with this thread.

I'm not suggesting this has to take the form of literal alternate universes, like you open up a door one day and there's you, standing outside the McWomble's fast-food veggieburger joint picketing to save the squash. More like the subtle manifestations of a paradigm war, perhaps.

I'm plagued by the suspicion that I'm missing something important-- probably a manifestation of some undiagnosed low-grade paranoia-- and maybe tracking shifts in the battle of worldviews will help me get at it.

Or maybe I'm lying and the thread only exists because I'm curious.