Ok. Okay, okay. Ok, I have to start this out with an OK or two. Okay? Ok. Okay...
Okay, here goes. Just now, as I'm writing this, about two and a half minutes ago, as of right this second, I was walking down the street that I walk down all the time to get back to my apartment from Kroger. It's almost 4 o'clock a.m., so it's dark, but that usually doesn't bother me because there are street lamps and other stuff that makes light, so I can see where I'm going without any problem.
Because I've always got my head (which contains my eyes) angled downward at something or another, I rely on my peripheral vision alot, which ain't interesting at all, usually. Anyway, who cares. I'm getting off the subject.
I'm walking and reading or dictating or something, or making a blog entry. I was writing about... um... insomnia. That's what I was doing. I was dictating a blog into my phone about insomnia, as I was walking, when I noticed a dark movement on top of the darker dark. Your peripheral vision is good at doing that, by the way... detecting slight variations of light intensity, that is. It's because the light gathering cells in the peripheral part of your retina are comprised mainly of rods, as opposed to cones. Rods and cones. The differentiated, light gathering cells of your retina. Rods are sensitive to light intensities, and cones perceive color. So your peripheral vision is much better at perceiving different shades of dark and light. Damn. Anyway.
So there I was, doing what I just said I was doing, utilizing the amazing natural bio-features that just come with the whole package for free when you're born; that mind-flabbergasting nanotech that's built into my eyeballs, like 'twern't jist nothin' budda thang at all, and I saw this black kid. That's what I saw, a black kid in the dark. A black kid, in the dark, head down, eyes down, shuffling along, slowly, without a shirt, with a collar on his neck, and a rope emerging from some undetermined place out of the shadows and attached to the collar, holding a garden hose, and watering a lawn.
Recap - young black boy, shirtless, downcast, roped and collared, watering a lawn with a hose, slowly.
Now, you whoever might be reading this, tell me. WTF was that all about??
Friday, July 24, 2015
Inspiration. Oh... and dirty prions
I get a lot of inspiration from my dreams. No, I ain't taking about 'I have a dream' dreams, or 'Your achievements are only limited by your dreams' dreams, or 'Follow your dreams' dreams, or 'Don't just dream it, do it!' dreams, or 'The only thing separating your dreams from your future is YOU' dreams. I ain't talking about those kinds of dreams. Sure, I guess it's ok to have those kinds of dreams and to do the whole 'work toward it until you achieve it' thing, but that ain't what I'm talking about here at all. Except where it applies, like when you dream about something and then you want to actually build what you dreamt about. Like what I'm about to talk about here. But other than that, it doesn't apply at all to what I'm talking about.
What I'm talking about is the g'nite sleepyhead, the fuzzy dark no time passes part of it, then the waking down... and a real dream happens. It can be in clear HD color, or it might be channel 4 in the boondocks and barely watchable.
Over the course of our lives, the 1/3rd of it that we spend unconscious, and the 1/6th of that 1/3rd that we spend dreaming, add up to years and years of just being sound asleep and dreaming. Years and years, for every one of us. We are, none of us, different. Each and every one of the seven billions of us spend up to a tenth of our lives dreaming.* If you live to be 90, that could be nine years, just dreaming. Nine years of your life that are stored in your memory as dreams, which are just as real to your neurons as the 66 years worth of memories that you actually experienced wide awake.
What I'm saying is, that's where I get my inspiration. From the real dreams, not those... I don't know. The ones that don't happen because you're asleep.
I dream about flying a lot. A lot. I dream that I'm flying, and it's always so super super awesome cool and awesome. I love it every time I dream it. Then, I dream about skating on roller blades, really really fast. Just skating so fast, and it being so effortless. Those are my main frequent euphoric dreams... my flying and skating dreams.
So. Finally! The point of all this bullshirt. The flying dreams are the reason why I want to build a hang glider, and the skating dreams are the reason why I want to build bionic boots.
Ok, that's all.
*Except for those of us with FSI; that is, Fatal Sporadic Insomnia. Or even worse, the kind that gets passed down to your kids. FFI, or Fatal Familial Insomnia. It's all about spongifying your hypothalamus with bent proteins called prions. That sucks. And that's a horrible word... prion. It just sounds evil in purpose. Pry, like it's going to pry you open, and on, like it's going to just get it all on you, and you don't want it on you.
What I'm talking about is the g'nite sleepyhead, the fuzzy dark no time passes part of it, then the waking down... and a real dream happens. It can be in clear HD color, or it might be channel 4 in the boondocks and barely watchable.
Over the course of our lives, the 1/3rd of it that we spend unconscious, and the 1/6th of that 1/3rd that we spend dreaming, add up to years and years of just being sound asleep and dreaming. Years and years, for every one of us. We are, none of us, different. Each and every one of the seven billions of us spend up to a tenth of our lives dreaming.* If you live to be 90, that could be nine years, just dreaming. Nine years of your life that are stored in your memory as dreams, which are just as real to your neurons as the 66 years worth of memories that you actually experienced wide awake.
What I'm saying is, that's where I get my inspiration. From the real dreams, not those... I don't know. The ones that don't happen because you're asleep.
I dream about flying a lot. A lot. I dream that I'm flying, and it's always so super super awesome cool and awesome. I love it every time I dream it. Then, I dream about skating on roller blades, really really fast. Just skating so fast, and it being so effortless. Those are my main frequent euphoric dreams... my flying and skating dreams.
So. Finally! The point of all this bullshirt. The flying dreams are the reason why I want to build a hang glider, and the skating dreams are the reason why I want to build bionic boots.
Ok, that's all.
*Except for those of us with FSI; that is, Fatal Sporadic Insomnia. Or even worse, the kind that gets passed down to your kids. FFI, or Fatal Familial Insomnia. It's all about spongifying your hypothalamus with bent proteins called prions. That sucks. And that's a horrible word... prion. It just sounds evil in purpose. Pry, like it's going to pry you open, and on, like it's going to just get it all on you, and you don't want it on you.
Monday, July 20, 2015
No grapes
Okay, so I'm at Albertsons after work, looking for those little personal watermelons, because I can actually walk one of those home without breaking my back. Oh, and they didn't have any kind of watermelon at all the other day; not even the cut up pieces in the plastic tub thingies. I had been fairly perturbed about that at the time, so I was glad to see all kinds of watermelon this time.
HOWEVER...
I'm also looking for some grapes, but I can't find any grape hides, grape hairs, or any traces of grape at all, high or low, beneath, betwixt or behind anything or anywhere. And since I'm pretty much always carrying on a non stop conversation with myself, my opinion of the situation just tumbled out of my mouth hole, without any kind of real conscious thought or decision... like blinking, or breathing, or sucking back a snot. You know. What happens when the primitive part of your brain buried underneath the homo habilus australopithecus and crocodile parts kicks in. Behold, ye troglodytes. The R-complex or whatever.
What I said was something like this:
"What, no grapes? What the fuck (pardon my french)? The other day it's no watermelons, and today it's no grapes. What kind of chickenshit (scuse my portuguese) outfit are these guys running?"
Then I found the grapes and...
...made away with me to the checkout counter.
...propelled myself toward the checkout counter.
...budged myself in the direction of the checkout counter.
...sauntered aggrandizingly over to the checkout counter.
...inflicted myself upon the checkout counter.
Any of those descriptions will do.
The guy is scanning my items and typing them in, shwoop, shwoop, beep beep beep, chika-chaka DONE, chingle changle ching-a-ling, there's my change, I'm through here, and then the checkout guy says:
"I gave you the 89 cents a pound price for those grapes" (they were white grapes, by the way) "because we're out of the red grapes. Since you were looking for the red grapes. So I just gave you the price for the red grapes."
? thought I. What the heck was he talking about? My befuddlement was pretty much total, so I said, "Uhhhhhhh..." for a while.
THEN I UNDERSTOOD. The checkout guy had HEARD me. He'd heard my private discourse over by the uh... over in the... what the heck is that section called... the produce aisle! He'd heard me bitching about the watermelons and grapes! He'd heard me say the chickenshit outfit thing! He thought that I'd decided to settle for the white grapes because they were out of red grapes! What kind of random off the wall out of the blue corntastic craptacular cheese-o-matical hyperbole of serendipity had just squeezed itself into existence out of the infinite and ever collapsing cloud of fluctuating wave forms comprising the whatchamacallit of quantum probability?
I fully expected right then for the Earth to spontaneously transform into a quagma of strangelets and swallow itself up into a false vacuum of non existence. Right now, at this very minute, I still can't quite believe that hasn't happened yet.
HOWEVER...
I'm also looking for some grapes, but I can't find any grape hides, grape hairs, or any traces of grape at all, high or low, beneath, betwixt or behind anything or anywhere. And since I'm pretty much always carrying on a non stop conversation with myself, my opinion of the situation just tumbled out of my mouth hole, without any kind of real conscious thought or decision... like blinking, or breathing, or sucking back a snot. You know. What happens when the primitive part of your brain buried underneath the homo habilus australopithecus and crocodile parts kicks in. Behold, ye troglodytes. The R-complex or whatever.
What I said was something like this:
"What, no grapes? What the fuck (pardon my french)? The other day it's no watermelons, and today it's no grapes. What kind of chickenshit (scuse my portuguese) outfit are these guys running?"
Then I found the grapes and...
...made away with me to the checkout counter.
...propelled myself toward the checkout counter.
...budged myself in the direction of the checkout counter.
...sauntered aggrandizingly over to the checkout counter.
...inflicted myself upon the checkout counter.
Any of those descriptions will do.
The guy is scanning my items and typing them in, shwoop, shwoop, beep beep beep, chika-chaka DONE, chingle changle ching-a-ling, there's my change, I'm through here, and then the checkout guy says:
"I gave you the 89 cents a pound price for those grapes" (they were white grapes, by the way) "because we're out of the red grapes. Since you were looking for the red grapes. So I just gave you the price for the red grapes."
? thought I. What the heck was he talking about? My befuddlement was pretty much total, so I said, "Uhhhhhhh..." for a while.
THEN I UNDERSTOOD. The checkout guy had HEARD me. He'd heard my private discourse over by the uh... over in the... what the heck is that section called... the produce aisle! He'd heard me bitching about the watermelons and grapes! He'd heard me say the chickenshit outfit thing! He thought that I'd decided to settle for the white grapes because they were out of red grapes! What kind of random off the wall out of the blue corntastic craptacular cheese-o-matical hyperbole of serendipity had just squeezed itself into existence out of the infinite and ever collapsing cloud of fluctuating wave forms comprising the whatchamacallit of quantum probability?
I fully expected right then for the Earth to spontaneously transform into a quagma of strangelets and swallow itself up into a false vacuum of non existence. Right now, at this very minute, I still can't quite believe that hasn't happened yet.
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