This is outrageous...

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians break down Gaza-Egypt wall, walk into Egypt to get food, supplies, in defiance of Israeli blockade.

People are starving behind the ghetto walls.

Israel is rapidly losing whatever moral superiority the holocaust gave the Jews.

Israel, j'accuse!

What are the odds?

I just had a good laugh on Wiktionary, because of a remarkable coincidence.

Our fiction class is reading Cloud Atlas, a novel by David Mitchell. (No, I never heard of him, either.)

Anyway, as is often the case when reading, if I come across an unfamiliar word that I am not able to contextually reason out a meaning for, I go to the dictionary.

Of course, in this digital age, I don't actually own a dictionary anymore... or any other reference books, for that matter. No, when I need to look up a word today, I go to Wiktionary (http://en.wiktionary.org), the free Wiki dictionary, edited by users.

So this evening, I was reading Cloud Atlas, and came upon this sentence:

Attentive conversation is an emollient I lack sorely aboard Prophetess & the doctor is a veritable polymath.

Now, I had no idea what an emollient is, so I went to the Wiktionary entry on the word emollient. Here's the entry:

emollient, Noun (plural emollients)
IPA: /ɪ'mɒlɪənt/

1. something which softens or lubricates the skin

• 1993: It must be most painful to have a hard rod thrust into the nether orifice. That was a most painful punishment you had for the King in your play. Painful but fitting. -- There are emollients, Kit said, oil, butter and the like. The pleasure is considerable. -- Anthony Burgess, A Dead Man in Deptford

2. anything soothing, or that makes something more acceptable

• 2004: Attentive conversation is an emollient I lack sorely aboard Prophetess & the doctor is a veritable polymath. -- David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

Now, definition #2 seems most apt for the context of this sentence. But then I read the example sentence, used to demonstrate how the word is used in a sentence.

I busted out laughing!

Not only was the book I am reading the source of the sample sentence, but the very sentence I was reading!

I've never had a coincidence like this happen before while looking up a word in the dictionary. The odds against this happening would have to be pretty high, I'm guessing.