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

Comments

[mr_tom]

But Murphy's law is recursive.

[hirez]

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?

[mr_tom]

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]

Exactly so, and in multiple senses of the word.

[pir]

Sacrificing a cancer stick to the bus gods.

[sarah_mum]

Urban Morris?
Modernist sacrifical action?

[sarah_mum]

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

[quercus]

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

[chiller]

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.

[hirez]

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

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

[chiller]

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