i guess i'm weak?

After careful consideration, i've decided to start a sleep blog.

1) why?
2) what?
3) who?
4) where?
5) when?

1 - Why?

well, it occurs to me that sleep is one of the most important activities carried out by most every sentient animal on the globe. did you know you can go longer without food than you can without sleep? you can. but still, we don't really know why.

i've been reading a lot this month, both new books and old favourites, and i've noticed that in classical literature there's always references to sleep and dreaming, while in modern literature the topic is rarely broached. (when i say classical literature i'm referring to those works published before thomas edison permanently altered our view of night and day). Shakespeare, for instance, as well as Dickens both refer to sleep and dreams quite often, as do most religious works such as the Bible and religious texts/folklores associated with Eastern religions. Hell, i'm pretty sure i've even read Greek philosophers that touched on it. I've been thinking about it for several hours now, and the recent works of fiction i can recall don't generally discuss it. it's definitely not mentioned in most of the (auto)biographies i can remember... apparently we don't really think of sleep being that important to our lives these days.

but, of course, whenever the topic is introduced, there is unanimous agreement that sleep is vital to a healthy, well-balanced lifestyle. all i want to do is bring sleep into the forefront of discussions. Over the course of our lives, we spend a greater proportion of our time sleeping than any other activity, with the possible exceptions of working and raising children. despite that fact, we don't talk about it... i think that's part of the reason we don't know so much about sleep - ever since the 24 hour day started and we began our leap into the industrial, technological and information ages, sleep has been sacrificed for the benefit of our other commitments. no wonder it's estimated that at least 1 in 5 Canadians suffer from some sort of sleep disorder.

so that's why.

2 - What?

Are you not paying attention? it'll be about SLEEP.

Basically, i intend to post, each day, a brief summary of :

• Where/When I slept
• How long I slept
• Whether I slept well
• How I woke up
• Details of any dreams/nightmares, if I remember them.

3 - Who?

me and anyone who reads it. Comments will be most welcome... what might you comment on?

• Problems falling asleep
• Solutions for problems falling asleep
• Your dreams/nightmares (who knows, maybe one night we'll dream of the same thing)

4 - Where?

i'll have to make a new blog. i haven't done that yet. i'll tell you when i have.

5 - When?

i probably won't start until the new year. it feels like a 2006 idea.

everything is timing

*this was conceived/written between 2:00 and 4:00 AM; wednesday, december 21st.*

walking home in the cold, snow falling and NO ONE on the streets... it's like being in a snow globe - tranquil and safe, with only the sounds of our footsteps slinking into my ears. i could be listening to music, but for once there's no sound to drown out. it's exhausting sometimes, walking everywhere, but i can't stop. in some strange way i feel that walking keeps me connected to the world, that if i were to ever commit myself to driving i'd lose that appreciation for one of the underlying facets of ancient human history... whatever has happened, wherever and whenever it took place, people walked. it's what we evolved to do, and in exercising even such a basic skill i feel it helps me realize some of the potential that we take for granted. through walking, i feel linked to those for whom it wasn't an inconvenience. back when there were no cars, no planes, no trains... when walking was all we could do, we did it, and so began the population of the world. walking was our first way of connecting with ourselves, with the world, with animals and plants we'd never seen, places we'd never been.

i can understand why it bothers you. regardless of where i am, as soon as i step out the door, the music goes on and i set out, ears teeming with melodies to drown out the idle grumbling of traffic and airplanes, horns and sirens. strange that such antisocial behaviour makes me feel a connection to others.

Tonight, none of that is necessary, it's so quiet.

walking with you, we never have anything to say to each other. i almost feel like listening to music while we're together, mainly because even when we do have things to say, we never say them. ironically, the two types of silence are the only ones i can stand nowadays... winter is when the nights become our nights, because even walking in silence, coats whipping in the bitter cold, we're the only two on the streets. Here, our need for solitude intersects with our need for companionship, an aggravating circumstance destined to lead to pleasures equalled only by the misery that is sure to follow.

but this time was different, this time you had something to say. hand in hand or arm in arm, it took the comforting mantle of silence for me to be able hear the words pass over your lips. you swore it had been that way all along, that all this time i'd been ignoring the obvious truth delineated by all the words that hadn't been said.

at home settled into the crook of my hips, you breathed it quietly on my neck while we tried to fall asleep. maybe i just wasn't listening, maybe it didn't register because i was too busy thinking, but i heard it said it to you, only to find that you were already asleep, perhaps dreaming of someone who walks the walk AND talks the talk.

timing is everything.

8 bar butterflies

have you ever been at a concert and felt yourself shivering in time with the music? i don't mean cold shivering, i mean the anticipation of knowing there's a chorus coming, or really being into a song. you know, when you're so into the song that your body literally prepares for the next length... Stars played "Your Ex-Lover is Dead" tonight, and i could feel a shiver/shudder pass up through my spine every few bars or so... sort of like when you're going down a steep hill on a roller coaster, and you feel the rush from the loss of gravity move through your entire body.

music always seems to affect me this way... ever since i can remember picking up purple by STP, that tingle's been around... i felt it the first time i listened to last of the ghetto astronauts, the first time i heard bob dylan... i remember almost dropping my discman outside of HMV when i first bought beautiful midnight, and the first time i heard shampoo suicide? forget about it. i smoked a hash cigarette with jimmy shaw tonight, and i can arguably say it was the best time i've ever had chilling with a musician... even whiteman was a little weird, jimmy just seemed to be cool... as if he was relaxing with old friends from his neighbourhood, which, i guess, he was. it was an amazing finish to a bizarre but even more amazing night; the best part was that i thought it wasn't going to happen.

sorry Danny - i'll make you some chocolates or something.

what would you do

if you woke up in the morning and read\heard\saw that astronomers had discovered another solar system exactly like ours, with all the same planets and moons in the exact same orientation as our own?

now, i'm not saying that's the case, but i just thought of it right now, and i think i'd freak out something fierce.

i just want to forget it...

*this post was written between 4:15 and 5:45 am; Sunday, December 4th, 2005*

My mind is racing. Trusty mechanical pencil. Must remember to double space. it'll make it easier to read tomorrow. and fuck the margins. lying here on the futon it seems so clear to me now. is this why i've been so excited to do mushrooms for so long? the words have been missing, huddled under 2 (two) blankets, with one tealight and liquid honey in my ears, i've found that quiet voice!

When faced with models of cultural evolution, it's often a valued approach to visualize (personify) the perceivable species as a whole. population ecologists do it all the time. microbiologists do it, too. it's my career choice to make pointed claims about the nature of our very defenses by extrapolating data on a small, but presumably representative subset. (not sure if that made sense, i AM on mushrooms, you know.) An example.

PART I

i find out that 85% of all the cells responsible for Tron taking place inside the body (let's call them "Tron cells" - say it with me, now!) are "groovy." it is a well established technique to apply this observation to the rest of the cells, used as a null hypothesis, to either be proved or disproved.

PART II

Hypothesis: Of all cells, 85% are groovy.

Now, this will either be proven or disproven. It may seem unreasonable at first, but the point i'm trying to make is that scientifically, stereotyping is a valid tool, provided that it leads to further questions to investigate what may then become known as a "phenomenon."

Here it is again.



Long winded explanation, i'll admit. now i can start rambling.

A commonly recognised example of extinction is the dodo bird. Not sure of it's latin, i don't think it's relevant. We ask ourselves what happened and try to answer by looking at the species as a whole. To follow while i'm going, imagine the thousands of years the dodo lived represented in one single dodo. when the species emerged, the image should be of an egg. When they became extinct, it should be that of an old dodo. It is a simple trick for looking at the success of an animal in its interaction with the environment. When the image of the dodo was at it's peak --> when the dodo looked its strongest, what were the actual birds doing? what other animals were around? were they hunted? were they predators? Did they tie their shoes or use velcro?
Flip flops? why, that's ridiculous, they're already a goddamned bird! but you get the point. On a geological time scale, the lifespan of a species provides specific timepoints where you can see the optimal growth considerations, interactions with other forms of life. Altruism, mutualism, symbiosm, parasitism, it is all available for study, at whenever the species hits its' peak. but there's a rule. let's call it "The rule."

ONLY. ONLY ONLY ONLY. if you can see from the beginning through the end. fossil records are good enough for some things, but there has to be SOMETHING.

i have no idea where we are, we could actually be the generation of space monkeys, breathlessly waiting for our glorious unification with the future, and we can force all of the pettiness, wars are done, pollution isn't a problem and global warming is referred to in textbooks as "a problem we fixed." but we already had that. We already lived in peace, the original humans who discovered fire and worked in pairs, then groups. who learned that they could adapt, and build, and cook, and fight, and LEARN. we've done al lthat. Now we depend on what's causing the pollution. there are so many of us, we ARE the new pollution, and there are clear signs of the earth's distressed attempts to right the boat. now that war has been introduced, let's go through this image process again.

Form an image in your mind. it should be of a human baby. Let's call him "Tom," no, "T-dAwg." your image is a girl? then how about "Tracy?" no? ok, how about "T-dAwg?" good? good.

T-dAwg is a drooling infant. prehistoric humans amble around, bumping into things and weebling around. T-dAwg is a toddler. We've learned how to find and take shelter, to move around. T-dAwg learns how to speak. we discover fire. (booyah.) t-dAwg is an awkward teen. Gettin there, but now the dirty stuff is starting to attract our attention. T-dAwg is a rampaging, nubile adult. T-dAwg immediately sets to dispersing lil T-dAwgs everywhere possible. Fast forward a bunch of millenia. Bender (WWII). you get the idea. But, in true bender form, we got drunk and messed up the place, a bit. T-dAwg has a failing liver. (Ozone). T-dAwg is short of breath. (Global warming). T-dAwg has been cuttin' hisself! (Us!)

remember "the rule?" i've got time for you to scroll up and look.

i have no idea what T-dAwg looks like. I'm a hair on T-dAwg's head, or, perhaps more accurately, i'm as small a bit of T-dAwg as Tron cells are of us. i can't know that, and not being able to know that is driving me up the walls. if you were to ask me, on any given day, to take what i know of the dynamics of human genetics, cultural, social and technological evolution and creat e an image of T-dAwg, i see a frail body on several systems of life support! it's only a possibility, and this isn't an attempt to whip up an alarmist frenzy. the problem is that COULD be it. we COULD only be a tiny first step in an enormous evolution, we could be a heartbeat away from a giant race of murderous radical transforming robots landing and ending life as we know it!

but these are questions i can never answer, because they can only be answered after we're gone. and that is simultaneously the most unscratchable, unforgettable itch.

(but remember, i AM on mushrooms. i mean, i think it's a miracle i wrote anything)

because i'm dumb as rocks, but i can bake a cake...

as i've always done before, i was reading up on some of the current intelligent design debate... for those of you not acquainted with the specifics, intelligent design is a theory that boils down to the belief that the complexity inherent in life on our planet is clear indication of a sentient creator. as i've always done before, i finished reading news and turned to science and nature.

i don't think intelligent design holds any water. the only reason i mentioned it is because pictures like this make me understand why people can.

at first, anyway.

why kosher's not so bad

"if i ever become a tranny, i'm gonna change my name to 'bertrude.'"

The hebrew hammah, Reverend D. Thunder