A dream without a dream

There is a white coffee cup with a wide blue band around it hanging from the string under a sun hat. The hat is pink and has a white ribbon around it. There are real roses woven into the ribbon. One of the roses has a hammock strung from one edge of a petal to the other side. Laying in the hammock is an Emperor penguin. It is lying on its left side facing away from me with it's beak pointing upward in relation to it's body. The penguin is reading a book with very old leather binding.

Ok, so now that you're totally confused here's what's going on. I experience two phenomenon. One is very rare and is called hypnagogic hallucinations or hypnagogia. The other phenomenon that I experience is constant and is called "closed-eye hallucinations".

Basically put I have extremely vivid hallucinations that manifest immediately whenever I close my eyes. Sometimes these hallucinations are full sensory hallucinations with sound, smell, etc. but they are usually just visual. They are very vivid and rapidly evolving. The scene I described above evolved in the span of 10 seconds or so.

I think they are interesting. I think they tell me something about myself as I tend to just let them run their course and do not try to affect them with conscious direction. I just close my eyes and enjoy the ride. My wife, on the other hand, is somewhat disturbed by them. As such I don't generally discuss them and have given up the habit of describing the evolution of the scenes as they are happening. Still I think that some of them are interesting enough to share so that's what I'm doing. From time to time I will post here with descriptions of these scenes. As they are immediately available to me I should have no excuse not to blog regularly.

And just to whet your appetite a bit I'll close my eyes for a few seconds before heading off to bed.

There is a sloping grassy hill that drops gently into the bank of a river. The hill becomes the tip of a crocodile's tail. The crock starts to walk off to the left and swings its tail as it goes. The tail comes toward me and blocks out all the light leaving me in darkness. First a coiled cord appears glowing green like glow in the dark paint. The cord is then filled out into a telephone. The receiver lifts off the pone and points toward me. Then the ear piece starts to twist clockwise and the mouth piece twists counter clockwise as the middle is "wrung out." Blue and pink musical notes start to fall from the wrinkles as the handset is wrung.

And then I open my eyes to finish this blog and say good night.

Garmin Nuvi 205

For the most part this blog is just a ranting and raving spot for me. However, I sometimes run across a product or piece of software I really like and I figure I should share that with the one (maybe two) people who read this thing.

We just purchased our first vehicular GPS system. Because we don't travel a whole lot and don't have much money to spare we went simple and chose the Garmin Nuvi 205. I figured "GPS is GPS and I like the Garmin name." It turns out we made a fine choice and I couldn't be more pleased.

I would urge anyone who travels to get one of these units. You can always lend it to a friend or family member when they travel (just make them swear on something important that they'll remove it from the car EVERY time they leave the vehicle.)

Bottom line though is that this thing guided us through Los Angeles as if we had lived there for years. We found food, hotel, gas and shopping with absolute ease; we were redirected instantly when I couldn't fight traffic fast enough to make a turn; we took strange and unknown off ramps for puppy potty breaks with the knowledge that we would most certainly be able to rejoin the freeway; we knew when we could afford a leg stretch or meal because the ETA is constantly updated; it even encouraged us to save on gas with an "eco challenge" game that monitors your driving and rewards you with points for accelerating and decelerating smoothly, using cruise control and keeping your speed under 65.

We are doomed

I was at Wal-Mart about a week ago and was standing in line in front of a couple of "skaters." They had the long and grungy hair, loose clothing and they had the long and lazy drawl to their voices reminding me of Keanu Reeves in every movie he's ever done (but especially Bill & Ted)

So these two were looking at the candy and one of them asked the other "Should I get two of the regular size or one king size?" And the response was "The king size 'cause of the tax. It's only tax on one thing instead of tax on two things so it's less tax"

I was barely able to complete my purchase as I was concentrating on both not laughing out loud and also on not finding out if it was possible to slap the stupid out of them.

All I could think (once I could think again) was that we are doomed because these two will some day vote. But then again maybe they'll vote for reduced taxes for multiple item purchases...

Crafty Devils

What do 14 square feet of framed drywall, 36" of 1x3 lumber, 15 feet of 16 gauge galvanized wire, 38.25 square feet of cardboard, a kitchen table and two wooden chairs have in common?

That's what's required to keep our puppies confined to where we want them. It's amazing how crafty puppies can be at 7 weeks old.

I'm in charge here

I was at Burger King the other day (I must recommend their vegetarian burger as it's made with a morning star branded patty and sweet sauce. Quite tasty) and a woman walked in with a little girl who couldn't have been more than 5 years old.

Immediately upon entering the girl announced that she had to go to the bathroom and led the mother directly to it.

Once done in the bathroom they approached the counter and the little girl proclaimed that she was going to order for herself. She placed her order with the employee and then went to find a table while her mother ordered for herself.

When their food had arrived the little girl again had to use the bathroom and would not take no for an answer. Her mother told her to "just go" and stayed seated at the table. The little girl would have none of this and stood her ground until the mother relented and accompanied her to the bathroom.

Upon returning to the table and getting situated the girl decided she wanted to sit in a booster chair so the mother got up and got the chair and got the girl into it.

After this they were quiet for a while and my attention wandered until just before they left. That was when the mother, in response to something the little girl had asked, replied "because I'm in charge."

Something deep inside tells me that whatever that comment was in reference to that the little girl got her way in the end.

Stocking stuffer idea

I just had an idea for a stocking stuffer. I went down to a local store here ("Just Imagine") and purchased a few pieces of Pyrite. You should be able to find them at mineral shops, museums, educationally centered establishments, etc.

Pyrite is an iron sulfide that is the color of gold. It usually looks like small crystals all bunched together or like a fine lava stone.

Tomorrow I'll be going to our local dollar store to find some black play dough. I'm going to pack the play dough around the pyrite and allow it to harden (Might bake it to speed up the process) to give it the look of a lump of coal.

The "coal" can then be broken open to reveal the "gold" center.

If you're worried that the play dough might work itself into the crevasses in the pyrite you might try wrapping the pyrite with plastic wrap before packing the play dough around it. If you do it this way I'm not sure I would recommend baking it for fast drying.

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Update: OK, so here's how they turned out. I ended up wrapping the pyrite in aluminum foil so that I could bake them once encased with play dough. I baked them which took several attempts at 450 degrees for half an hour at a time. It smelled REALLY bad too. However, I was using a dollar store knock off so that is probably the reason for the smell and for the difficulty in drying it. The stuff was also very difficult to work with and had a plastic, slimy feel to it.

Once dry it had a rough texture and some cracks in it which gave it the look of a lump of coal. Unfortunately I wasn't able to find black and I only had a black marker handy so it only ended up MOSTLY black. The kids still loved it and were thrilled to find "gold" in their coal.

So...tips for those interested in doing this? 1) Use name brand play dough or find a recipe for some online that you can make and dye yourself 2) Bake it until you're sure it's done all the way through as mine got a hard shell but was still soft on the inside the first couple of baking sessions. Longer baking time won't hurt anything and a little burning isn't an issue as it's supposed to be black anyway 3) Wrap your "gold" with aluminum foil 4) Use colored dough instead of painting or coloring it after baking as it gets on your hands when breaking it open.

Our rapidly accelerating universe

So there are these super smart guys sitting around looking at data collected by telescopes and getting paid good money for it. These smart guys have noticed that it looks like the galaxies that are furthest from the center of the universe are accelerating. This is contrary to what SHOULD be happening. Because these galaxies have lots of matter behind them (relatively) and there is no apparent pulling force in front of them they should be slowing down.

Now these super smart guys are often incapable of uttering the three words "I don't know" and so they immediately started brainstorming to figure out why this would be happening. They have, to my knowledge, come up with four theories. 1) Our galaxy is in it's own "time bubble" (and yes they used that term.) 2) There is "dark matter" that is causing the acceleration (dark matter being this invisible thing that they THINK they can detect with their telescopes.) 3) A strange alteration of space/time when energy levels become extreme (which is strange because I was just sitting here thinking of writing this exact blog entry when I came across this web site ) and 4) Giant space faeries with giant space brooms sweeping the path clean in front of the galaxies (OK I made that last part up.)

I have a more simple explanation. I think they look like they're speeding up because they're actually slowing down. I LOVE it when my brain comes up with these things. But here's the thing. We have to dive into the shallow kiddie pool end of Einstein's relativity theory (so don't be scared.)

First off, everything in the universe is moving. Nothing is actually still. We are on earth which is spinning and orbiting the sun which is orbiting the center of our galaxy which is hurtling through space. You get the idea.

Now, Einstein says that as we approach the speed of light time is altered. For simplicity we'll say that someone orbiting the earth VERY quickly might experience 1 day while everyone on earth might experience 10 years in that time.

This idea goes both ways. The astronaut would look down and see a year pass on earth in only 2.4 hours his time. At the same time, if someone on earth could see the astronaut's watch with a super powerful telescope they would see that it takes a whole year for his watch to advance 2 hours and 24 minutes.

So here is where I get my light bulb moment. This time relativity thing shows that something moving more quickly than you appears to YOU to be progressing more slowly through time. It also shows that something moving more slowly than YOU appears to be progressing more quickly through time.

So let's look at the most simple answer here. These very distant galaxies have been spinning through space for a very long time. They have the drag of gravity behind them. They are SLOWING DOWN but since everything flew out of the big bang at the same speed(don't take me for an evolutionist because of that term. It would take another whole blog post for me to explain how the big bang is not contrary to divine creation)our galaxy has not encountered as much friction or gravitational drag as these distant ones have and is, therefore, traveling more closely to its original speed at time of creation.

So we are moving more quickly than these galaxies which means that to OUR perspective they APPEAR to be progressing through time more quickly than us. Since speed is equal to distance/time and time is being perceived incorrectly by us they appear to be traveling more quickly than they are. And since they're slowing down more rapidly than we are that time difference is becoming more pronounced and therefore makes them appear to be speeding up.

Weird isn't it?

Next problem...if they're slowing down more rapidly than we are that means we're going to run into them eventually...I wonder what the braking distance is for a galaxy our size.