Thoughts on Humanity's Destinty, Doing Something Meaningful, and Children

Thoughts on the destiny of humanity:

I think I have a hard time intellectually thinking and accepting that I primarily believe humanity is innately shaped to follow the pattern of a ponzi scheme. In an abstract sense, all of our actions, from humanities greatest breakthroughs, to all our routine actions big and small, are all just part of this desperate attempt to continue the inflating instability of own own existence.  Encoded in our DNA, guiding our instincts, compelling us so.  And rather than see the bubble burst, and with it our comforting illusion, we do everything we can to just try to and keep patching up our lives, and as a result, the aggregate life of humanity as a whole, together, to keep it going for another day.  

Contradictorily, I believe as a whole however, we all want a structured world, in one form or another.  One that encompasses order, continuation, predictability, stability.  Our simple minds want to believe there are well-defined rules to life and the universe, and that we can achieve great things by figure out from these what's the most stable and safe course, somehow.  But in reality, more times than not it seems, anytime I analyze any facet of human behavior or history, in the grand scheme of things, we wind up creating is the illusion of order, short-sightedness, and instability.  And we're just helping mankind move towards burning out in an ephemeral flash that's typical of ponzi schemes and viral patterns.  We try to build things that achieve order, and believe in them, but we never quite can.  So we lie to ourselves more often than not and say we have.  I want to believe, we want to believe, if we keep flailing maybe we'll stay alive forever.

Thoughts doing something meaningful:

I sometimes think I should save the world, think that I should be doing something amazing or preventing the inevitable decline of civilization, but I've come to realize: fuck all that.  I'm dependent on the system; I don't want to change it.  I don't think if I wanted to, I could realistically anyway.  Well, I suppose some optimistic little voice in my head says maybe I could do it if I aligned every aspect of my being and drastically altered myself.  But like, that's not realistically going to happen without something radical happening.  So for the most part, I've given up.  Someone else can be a hero and I can stop pretending like I really have that much control or responsibility over fixing all the world's problems.  It's a fucked up place in a lot of ways, but that doesn't mean I need to do anything too self-sacrificial to try and do something about it.

Thoughts on having children:

With that being my view of the grim state of the world's current affairs, and bleak prospects of it getting it better, why would I want to have kids?  Why would I want to subject someone else to this harsh and eroding environment?  I'm not sure.  It seems cruel.  Tell me, truly, how many of your peers are really optimistic about tomorrow?  And even if they're optimistic, how many of them do you think really believe that, that they aren't just adopting that mindset as way of rejecting the more fatalistic view? How many do you think are desperately believing in something you think is false?  From my viewpoint, not many people think the world is all that wonderful.  From most people I talk to, maybe at the surface sure they'll put on a smile, but most everyone I talk to gives me the impression that they'd be more inclined to agree that the world is unfair, cold, and hateful and probably isn't going to get better.  No doubt I can imagine plenty of people disagreeing with that statement, but it'd probably stem from an interpretation of basic facts or lack of knowledge on either behalf.  They probably believe something I think is wrong.  And I'm not trying to say there's a possibility I'm wrong, rather I'm usually I'm right and I know it unquestionably.  Feel free to correct me, I welcome knowing when I'm wrong; it means I'll be right more often.  But to get back to my point, most everyone who's not deluded would agree the world is not in a wonderful state of affairs, and it's probably going to get shittier.  And as such, I feel as if in a way, even if I wanted to, I have some moral obligation NOT to bring someone else into this crumbling world.  Would it be be cruel and unusual punishment to bring a new life into a world when I think it has a good chance of being a miserable existence?  Is that not wrong?  Torture seems clear-cut wrong to me, so why would that metaphor not extend to bringing someone into a tortured life?  

I guess it's hard to draw the line of what qualifies as a "tortured life," but I guess that doesn't matter, from a personal standpoint anyway.  In my own personal decision to have kids, I suppose the real questions I should be asking myself are: How miserable do you think the world would be when/if I had kids? Would their lives be worth living? Would they be happy?  Would you be happy?  But the questions I really want to ask myself are, and have a really hard time answering are: Would they not just be another resource-sucking child contributing the world's overpopulation problems?  Would they bring a net positive to man's existence?

I suppose that's encapsulates my struggle: I think the world's a fucked up place, and is going to get shittier, but I don't think it's going to be a super duper terrible bad to the point where life would not feel like it's worth living.  And even if it were, who am to deny anyone a chance to exist at all.  After all, it would be quite hubris to assume I know anything, to assert I could predict the course of humanity and the ultimate outcome our decisions.  Maybe, just maybe, despite how viscerally it feels, despite how often I contemplate pitfalls and downfalls of humanity, and so rarely does it evoke optimistic inducing thoughts.  But, maybe, just maybe, there will be days for humanity after I'm gone, and they won't suck.  And maybe, I can take solace that effectively, long after I'm dead, that if I truly want to impart real impact effects on the universe, it will probably not come my own personal lasting accomplishments, but from the aggregate of accomplishments brought forth by my influences reflected in my future descendants.  Maybe they'll do something nice and have nice lives too.  

But probably humanity will just die off in a blink of an eye as far as the universe is concerned, alone, and ultimately without much of a real point.  I think part of me doesn't want to accept that either, that it all doesn't really matter.  But I'll never be able to squash the lingering doubt that maybe it does.

There and Here Again

I’m sitting in the office. Procrastinating. Which is rather unwise considering that I’m fairly behind schedule. But I need a mental break, and I think this is what this will provide me. It’s a better- or at least feels like a more worthwhile distraction than my usual tendency to read online articles-- which has preoccupied the vast majority of my “spare” time. I say spare, because really it’s just time that I’ve spent at work not doing actual work. Or "spare" time I’ve spent at home without a more meaningful activity grasping my attention.

My life is going pretty well. I’m happy. I’ve been for awhile. If I had to pick, I'd say the greatest negativity I’ve been feeling recently is the absence of impetus. I really don't have something right now pulling me. The last thing I had was getting a new job, but that endeavor has been swiftly vanquished. And now I'm back without a great compelling cause, but I cannot say with anything more than a mild degree of certainty that this is anything nothing new. It's rare I actually want to accomplish something and I don't, and quickly. Case in point, my most recent "push" in life has been getting a new job, and it didn't take long to satiate that urge. So, save for the perpetual hard-wired pursuit of women, my life has been on auto-pilot for a long time.

Speaking of which, the relationship with Tessa continues to be one of those things that work out so well you almost take it for granted. I occasionally have to stop and reflect on just how wonderful we really have it, how functional and unperverse our relationship is, and how rare such an arrangement is. Our relationship is very similar to my general mental state, where the “worst” times are laughable in the grand scheme of things. The core is rock-solid stable. Though, I almost feel that the term rock-solid hardly applies. In a way, it implies that there is a storm to be weathered, the elements and life thrusting and trying to erode an extremely resistant foundation. But that's not applicable to us. There are no tempest-like fights brewing or to even be encountered. So it’s hard to even measure the resilience, since problems are non-existent for all intents and purposes. Nothing has come even close to being an issue, as everything is resolved effortlessly. Our most extreme worst of times is one of us being slightly annoyed at the other and wanting to be left alone for a little while. If that doesn't signal eminent disaster is right around the corner, I don't know what does.

So, I feel in the grand cyclical nature of life I’ve wound up in a similar place I was a few years ago (see the part about my chat with George), just further along the path. My relationship is already spoken for. Financially, I’m very well positioned and my new job entails blissful, stress-free working environment. My social life is strong; nothing I’d call flourishing or overflowing, but I’ve got plenty of friends, and open avenues of friendship I could I expand upon if I so desired. I admit I haven’t maintained every single friendship that’s crossed my path, and certainly have let a few go stale, but none that I’d say I’ve exactly closed the door on either. There’s simply a limit on the amount of intimate personal connections one can maintain without overextending yourself (or are simply worth that level of maintenance), and that my personal friendship capacity simply waxes and wanes with time and circumstance. In short, my circle of friends is very adequate.

So, I'm now here again: a point where it's difficult to describe how I feel with the entirety of my personal Maslov’s Hierarchy of Needs fulfilled. It’s almost akin to feeling as if I’m in a void, without any of the usual negative implications. I have nothing to run from. Nothing really extremely compelling to run towards either. I’m practically floating in space, with the only tug being the nearly imperceivable pull of time. Where to go from here... where to go from here... Will I be posting this very same message in a couple of years?

Creative Writing Entry

I read a little too often a site called reddit. I recently started a thread for creative writing inspiration. So, if you'd like, check it out and read some of my random writing.

Catchup Crap & Random Thoughts

It's been far and away too long since I've updated this. I have a feeling I'm getting in the habit of saying that. I suppose I can be a broken record too! Ha. But, I'm going to redeem myself with another freewrite, hopefully bringing people up to speed on what's going on in my life and what's going through the thought processes, but probably, I'll just wind up on some tangent instead.

Let's start with today. It's been raining like we should be investing in archs. I dont' really mind though, since it's not snow, but it made my commutes quite long today. However, the weather itself did wind up working its way into a nice flirtacious conversation I had with a cute cashier at trader joe's. Too bad I think she was probably like 18. I find that the girls who go to and work at Trader Joe's tend to be more attractive than normal. I dunno though! Maybe I just like the store and it's more crowded than most others.
This entry is sucking horribly thus far. Does anyone find this crap remotely interesting?

I suppose I can always deviate back to the topic of conversation that perpetually rolls through my mind and that's myself, my self improvement, how I think I think different than most other people, and my push towards being more “gregariousness.” Tim told me on Saturday at the Boston Blazers lacrosse game that he is using me for my general gregariousness. I find that hilarious, considering at the heart of it, my inclinations are to be a very shy person. I have the heart of an introvert and the skin of an extrovert. But alas, pain is power.
Oh yeah, here's an excerpt from a conversation I had with Tox the other day. I find it sums up the thoughts I've been having in regards to my life since I've been writing in this conversation, since I've had that conversation with my brother way back when:

(9:58:36 PM) dizdique: do I look like that kinda tool?
(9:58:49 PM) dizdique: who derives happiness from such a singular source
(9:59:26 PM) dizdique: no. I'm toasty. So fucking relativisitic that I get joy from so many sources that they all kinda become insignificant next to each other and to achive and sense of absolute value becomes a fucking act of futility
(9:59:41 PM) Mike Smith Toxicology: you seem like you're very clever in how you go through life
(10:01:47 PM) Mike Smith Toxicology: you do what you have to do to be "successful" from an outward perspective, because you recognize there are hoops that no man can avoid if he wants to have a minimum of comfort and happiness

but you don't buy into most of the social construct bullshit, and you mostly choose the path that maximizes your own satsifaction and success, avoiding the pitfalls of pursuing one or the other to its fullest

basically you're a walking talking Venn Diagram
(10:04:48 PM) dizdique: damn
(10:04:49 PM) dizdique: thank you
(10:04:59 PM) dizdique: that's often how I perceive myself
(10:05:11 PM) dizdique: I didn't think I made that aspect of myself blatent
(10:05:14 PM) Mike Smith Toxicology: haha
(10:05:17 PM) Mike Smith Toxicology: I'm just that good
(10:05:19 PM) dizdique: and I've never had someone else comment on it so succinctly
(10:05:27 PM) dizdique: well, comment on it it at all
(10:05:30 PM) dizdique: most people just praise me
(10:05:38 PM) dizdique: which in some sense is flattering but also sickening
(10:05:44 PM) dizdique: it's like, is my ruse really working that well
(10:05:51 PM) dizdique: do people not see through this thin guise?
(10:05:51 PM) Mike Smith Toxicology: hahaha
(10:05:57 PM) Mike Smith Toxicology: I know what you mean
(10:06:05 PM) dizdique: do people not fucking realize that even though I'm successful I'm just a fucking ant amongst giants?
(10:06:23 PM) dizdique: I'm not really effecting change, sure, compared to you I'm a god, but compared to the idols of society I'm nothing

This touches upon so many points of self-reflection. I truly do believe that I think incredibly different than most of society. What I've read about autism/narcissim/sociopaths, I really think that my mind ticks quite a bit differently than most others. I'm quite glad about it too, but it doesn't come without and downsides either. But I don't think I experience emotions in the same way that most other people do. I don't really get extremely emotional. I am not driven that impulsively. So while I'm capable of seeing the (irrational) emotions, instincts, and mannerisms of others, I don't really relate entirely. Fortunately, I'm not completely off the rocker and do have some emotional capability, but for a long period of my life they were misunderstood and mostly repressed.

That isn't to say that I'm a very wildly emotional person now, I've just been able to let myself experience them once again. They are still entirely under wraps. That's why almost nobody hears me being a mopey or upset person. That's why people think I'm generally outgoing and a bubbly person. It's why I'm capable of talking to complete strangers. I'm just good at putting on a facade. I'm good at blending in and slipping through the cracks of every group, so that nobody perceives me as a threat. By being noticed you are more easily ignored, at least, that's what I find.
It's hard to really relate to other people what the mush of a man I am. It's hard to really transpose my abstract thoughts into something that will interest and entice people, but that's where my mind is a good amount of the time. It's how I really feel emotionally too. Most things in life are rather just bland to me, but to the rest of the world they're spicy and exciting. I have to play along and give the impression to others that that's how the world is to me as well, and that I can show them even more interesting and new parts to entertain them, but that's not really what I ever want to resolve or talk about. Most things tangible are already solved. It's the unknowns that fascinate me. The ability and power to be a charasmatic person. The inner workings of society and code and writing and people's motivations. Those nebulous concepts. I like to wield those. Unfortunately, I am not good at being a complete hermit so I get the compulsion to interact with the rest of the world in the wake of sadness otherwise and I socialize.

I'm boring myself writing about this so let's switch topics.

I've been working more and more on talking to new people. As I said before, I was commented on my gregarious nature. It's due in part that I've been thinking about more and more how I want to be a leader. How I want to be able to more easily manipulate my feelings and be an outgoing and sociable person and at the same time not hate myself for being phony. In short, this requires to make myself into an interesting person, who has interesting stories, and/or at least have interesting things to talk about. After all, people are just perpetually bored walking through life, seeking entertainment, and it's a much more special thing to have entertainment personalized in the form of a conversation than it is to derive through secondary means like television or Internet, but, also more risky. Plus, all guys like talking about girls, and talking about how to talk to girls, so, at very least, I need dem there braggin' rights. Isn't my source of motivation wonderful?

So, let's see, what else has been going on in my life. I visited Columbus, OH on a customer visit. I wound up staying with Stevie for the weekend which was awesome. I went snowboarding in VA, while hanging out with my old high school friend Jason Richmond. I also snowboarded over Valentine's day weekend. Tutoring has been going fairly well. I went to a party in Amherest this weekend, which was a nice little deviation and reminiscent of the old college day parties. Oh wait, the parties in college kinda sucked for the most part. Haha, oh well.

I've been really slipping on my personal goals. I haven't written in this journal, nor studying a language since I've been back. I haven't even been doing my pushups and situps daily, mainly due to the fact I bruised my ribs learning to snowboard. Whatever, it was worth it. It was fun as fuck being able to go down the hill without hurting myself! I really need to get a firmer grasp on accomplishing shit. I even went to far as to creating goals for myself awhile back. Let's go revisit those to see how much progress I haven't been making:

1.Become solid with French, Portuguese, Spanish. Practice 6x a month
1.Wine Riot is in April! Gotta get decent at French by then.
2.Go snowboarding. Should be easy considering you've already made travel plans.
3.Maintain exercising. 3X a week is good. Be able to do 50 pushups / 100 situps daily by year end
4.Write your own fictional story
5.Develop the personal goal tracking website
6.Get a raise at work
7.Go traveling again, probably south American
8.Learn a new technical skill and/or ability for programming
9.Learn more math skills
10.Finish my magnum opus for TM
11.get new walrus painting
12.stop all your bad habits: scratching psorisis, biting callus, finger nails

Hmm, well, we're done with 2.5 months out of 12, and I've accomplished the snowbarding bit. I've thought about all of the above consistently though, which is a good sign, but haven't really made particular progress on any of them. I think I should also add to the list start my campaign to be elected for president. I've got 12 years until I'm 35, so if I start now, it'll give me plenty of campaigning time. I should also add to that list writing in my blog at least 2x a month. I have, at least, been writing fairly often in my own personal journal. Maybe I should publish that as well. I'd probably need to edit it a lot, and considering it's now 52 pages, single spaced, that's a fuck-ton of reading. Any volunteers?

I guess I've been thinking about women a lot as well. I've been reconsidering what role I really want them to play in my life. The way I think about it right now I'm a fairly hot commodity. I'm a moderately attractive package for women, and I'm only going up in life. So, in essence, I think I'm fair market value for a woman that's:
a) Highly Attractive
b) Someone that is around the same point in life as far as self improvement goes. Someone who would be motivate me and push me as well as I her. Someone that's actually trying to continue improving in life, and not someone looking to cling to greatness. I need some balance, I can't always be the fucking teacher, but as fucked up as it sounds, I feel most people I encounter don't have much to teach me or methods to motivate me.

So that eliminates like 99.9% of the girl population damn quick. Tim told me I should probably look into older girls, which makes sense. It's just hard because I'm generally attracted to younger, slim girls. Oh well. When I'm seeking someone and something that's not a distraction but a means of amelioration, I am gonna have a hard time.

Maybe I should make a website for autistic dating. Or a website to rally the youth of america who are too young to be elected, but want to run for office someday. Or maybe I can actually work on my personal tracking website. Or maybe I can make a webcomic and become famous like xkcd. I'll probably wind up finishing at least a half dozen trackmania maps before any of those things happen. This is where having an excited partner in one of these projects would greatly help! Self motivation is tough.

Anyway, I fasted today (for health reasons), so I'm looking forward to going to sleep to wake up for breakfast. I've felt that I've been in a rut as far as self control and productivity in general (which I give myself minor consolation in that I have been relatively busy with life-events), so, I'm going have a week of sobriety. I've been tracking my mood & alcohol/other stuff consumption on a site medhelp.org and the results are fairly stunning. A cunning stunt of consumption... or something.
Yeah I'm done now. Hope you liked this random brain dump crap.

40 minute brain dump

30 Minutes of Work. No Reward. Sleep is my escape. It's the only thing right now that will allievate the burden of this exercise. I hope one day it's no longer perceived to myself as a burden. I can extract some joy from the stress it provides. I can be happy that I've exhausted it. But I feel that day will never come and I will be forever trying to attain it, miserable and uninspired. Yeah, probably, but you know what:

It's for the best.

You don't want to be a lazy slug who can easily manipulate his own happiness. You try to achieve happiness by overcoming challenges. You can remove all the challenges from your life, or make them much more trivial, aka, lowering the bar, but that's not going to make you happy. It's providing the illusion of happiness. It's making you content. You are winning the consolation prize. Human by nature by default seeks perpetual improvement. It's why if you had a direct neural link to stimulate happiness in your brain you'd press it all day, at an ever increasing rate. It'd make you happier despite the fact you've done next to nothing to achieve it. If you can derive satisfaction from an insubstantial activity, then you are deceiving yourself and being a self consuming disease, a virus of your own body and mind. I've always somewhat known this, but I don't think I've ever put it into such explicit words in writing: Pain is necessary. It's good to make yourself miserable to attain the sweetest happiness. Once you get to the next level, keep climbing. Keep struggling. If you are slipping downwards, gain solid footing, restore your homeostasis and push on. But never stop, otherwise, you might as well just die and get it over with. If you aren't going to get any further than you are now, what's the sense of keeping on going? Don't put up with this charade.

Ah, this thought chain. I want to call it existential, but it's even more nihilist. I don't know what to call but this is how I feel: Life is so devoid of solid meaning. We need to use intangible / imaginary concepts such as happiness and emotions to give ourselves a semblance of certainty and morality on the world. But honestly, these things are merely the stepping stones to what makes us human: are ability to act way beyond them. To be able to name them, see them, describe them, understand them, and hopefully overcome them. The self examining recursive nature of our thought processes may just be the only thing that makes humans unique.

But it really makes it tough to live life. What really excites me? What really surprises me? What inspires me anymore? Not much. I appreciate being able to seeing things, but rarely do they effect great emotions in me. I can find the beauty in the aesthetics of a building or sight, but life-changing? No. Not even close. I've become a sponge. I soak absorb so many ideas and reject so few, so it's hard to really find something that much different in my diverse eco-system of a mind. I refuse to let myself be surprised due to my own ignorance, so I must be in a constant state of improvement and expansion. Exponential growth of the mind. Ah, humanity. Wanting and expecting more than is likely possible and only really being happy once the nearly impossible has been achieved.

So why did I really go on this trip to Brazil? I honestly can't tell you what the exact mindset I was in when I bought those tickets. I feel like I was probably high, but the specific thought processes and the hopes and intentions of what I'd get of it? No, those I can't remember exactly. Perhaps I never really thought them all the way through. Perhaps I just had this nebulous notion that it was the right thing to do. I suppose I could scour my journal for details to shed some light on this mystery, but it'll have to wait, it's hypothesis writing time.

If I had to go off my vague notions, I'd say it was to challenge myself. To screw myself over. In some senses I knew I was becoming entirely too comfortable with my life. Becoming addicting to my routine of medicrity—well, perhaps not mediocrity but of doing a routine that didn't really meet my full potential. Something that let me be comfortable, perhaps even live a nice easy life, but not something that left me feeling fulfilled. Nothing that allievated that notion in my mind that I was being a waste of life. The belief that I was selling my own mind short, letting parts dwindle and die off due to negative self-perceptions and my various methods of circumventing them.

Yes. I needed to fuck myself over. Make myself really panic mentally. Make myself really uncomfortable, confused, at the fate of my own wits and intuition. I don't do that very often. I'm a meticulous planner or a cautious experimenter. It's rare I can't undo what I've just done. It's why programming feels so safe to me. There aren't any dead-ends or undoable actions assuming—well, there are substantially less. The turn-around time to redeem any mistakes is pretty quick and relies entirely on your own ability to solve a problem. It's not that bad.

Because honestly, I don't like talking to people. It makes me uncomfortable. I hate speaking in general. I don't like talking for a long time. When I'm speaking, I want to make a point, and quickly. I feel as if every breath I'm expending is wasting someone else's time unless I'm starting to make perfect sense quickly. But it's funny, I don't really feel that way when people are talking to me at all. I enjoy listening to people speak, it's a time when I can just go into data-retrieval mode. Why do I have these seemingly hypocritical views? Does my reluctant to speak come from the fact that I'm greedy with my own ideas? It does seem “safer” to be a listener than a speaker, indeed, you cannot offend someone by listening to them, but it's easy to say something that will make people rather uncomfortable. I suppose that may be one of the reasons why people enjoy speaking to me, or why I get called “approachable,” I'm seemingly the most nonjudgmental person there is. Nobody can offend me, so people probably feel quite comfortable saying anything around me. I guess that means people are just as self conscious as me about speaking, but they just feel the need to get a lot off their chest. Haha. I'm self conscious about speaking and really don't feel compelled in the least to say shit unless I feel it's pertinent.

I really wonder what drives people's desires to speak? Is it just a method of externalizing your own thoughts? Hey, you, buddy, do thinking for me and transmit it back in English. Oh, I like that idea, I'll use it. Thanks for sparing my brain some effort there, as it was easier for me to ask you and quickly assess the quality of the idea than uniquely come up with one on my own! You're the best (I hope)!

Ah, what the fuck am I talking about. I want to talk about the trip. Yeah, the trip. It was pretty good. I tell people it was amazing, but that's really what they want to hear. I don't think it was tremendously awesome by any stretch. It could have been a lot better. What the fuck is wrong with me. I had a great time and I still say it could have been tremendously better. Most people would say that I'm being too harsh or negative, but I don't feel that in the least. I guess most people don't understand that I can be 100% satisfied with a trip, feel I got lot out of it AND somewhat regret that I didn't do it better. These are not mutually exclusive emotions. I feel it's very healthy to have the second, more negative, emotion, as, it will only push me to have a better trip next time. So, thank you for yielding a negative emotion Mr. Good emotion. You're the best! At least it's a genuine feeling!

Genuine feeling, what a funny term for me to be throwing around. I guess I sense all too often that there are imitated or unsubstantiated feelings in people all too often. Imititated ideas are easy to understand how they come to be, by merely copying someone. But unsubstantiated feelings tend to derive from being the erosion of an idea into a mind, fitting the square peg into the round hole by using a mind trick to pretend it's not there. Or even worse, entirely removing the faculties for identifying what's a round hole and a square peg. Yes I'm making lots of references to humans in gov't nationalisms, religious followers, and double-think in general. I think such attributes were a necessary part of evolution of the human organism.

If you really think about it, human beings have become a giant organism that's more or less taken over the world. We even have specialized cells (people) that control such huge facets of our life (govt's and/or anything that may be true in conspiracy theories), which are more or less unaware of the whole. Without the coordination and growth of other cells would the human organism grow to its current size. There's an enormous about of interdependence amongst all the cells, and failure of a large group would have major rippling effects on the other portions. The scales of size and time are just a bit different.

Just as it's impossible for a cell in my toe to really directly talk and know what's going on with a cell ear, humans are often out of reach of one another. Yet we're all on the same ship (environment) sharing the same body.

Dream Log night of 10/08

Lots of dreams last night. I dreamed Obama was entering one of my class room's and taking Q&A. My class wound up asking him way tougher questions than the media does. (not part of the dream) I woke up to found out he'd been given the Nobel peace prize, wtf?

Another dream, which I believe was one of my first of the night. There's a beginning to this dream that I'm not remembering but... what I do remembered started off with me driving in a city-scape similar to boston. I needed to go to an ATM to pickup money... which I get the impression was for drugs. When I was nearby the ATM, there wasn't any convenient parking nearby. However, there was an ally, which I pulled down, and had some yellow barred spot (like where you're not supposed to park) where I figured I could park for 5 minutes while I went to the ATM. I knew at the time it was a calculated risk.

Soon after parking, some hobo wound up stealing some groceries that I had. When I asked for them back, the woman sounded all snobby as if she were entitled to steal from people “in better situations from her.” I don't remember the exact conversation. I'm pretty sure she was trying to convince me to give her money afterwards, which I may have even done. I'm not sure how my opinion swayed.

For whatever reason, I wound up following her back to her Shanty shack place or whatever. There were lots of hobos there. They all seemed quite friendly and what not. For some reasons I was even trying to flatter them explaining how hobos “have a lot of culture and always great stories to tell.” WTF Brian. It was a generally happy time, and I left the place without much of an issue, though, still without my groceries. For whatever reason, I'd given up on them at that point.

When I got back to my car, I was saddened to find that it was not only blocked in, but completely surrounded by other cars. Ulgh, pretty shitty. In order to get to my car I had to crawl under piping and squeeze through tight spaces. Once I got there I was appalled to see my car up on jacks, in the progress of being stripped or something... there were 4 people there doing it. While I was still halfway under a pipe, one of them came over to me. I tried to scare them away, but it was to no avail. I think the one hit me with a monkey wrench or something, but it didn't really hurt. I'm pretty sure I started crawling away at this point, considering how outnumbered I was.

Then, somehow it kinda broke to a news break or something in my mind. And I realized that the 4 people stealing my car were 4 of the hobos from before, just now looking slightly different. The scene broke away almost like a player profile for a spots game or something with just them visible and the background cutout. I was infuriated and felt completely betrayed. I remember somehow afterwards peering at them from above, as if sitting on a high up platform, but I don't really remember much past that.


Earlier in the night I had a dream about visiting someone's house. I don't know where or why, but it had a vaguely familiar atmosphere similar to the couple of homes I visited in Rochester. I can't say I can I knew anyone there, which was strange, yet I felt rather at comfort. I was sitting on a couch eventually, when someone sat down next to me. Oddly, they wanted to lay down, and immediately asked if they could lay down on me, to which I let them. They weren't like obnoxious, but it definitely had some homo-sexual connotations and atmosphere which I was plenty of aware of in the dream.

Eventually he sat up and we began talking. I believe he asked who I was. I knew who he was: Erin's uncle. (I'm pretty sure she doesn't even have one of those). Anyway, my answer was “I used to date your niece for 2.25 years.” To which he replied, “oh the old one, haha! Now she's been dating some other one for 4 months.” To which I replied “As if I cared!” causing the whole room to laugh with me. It felt like I was just masking my feelings with laughter though, as in some ways it made me kinda sad to know she was dating someone else.

Now that I'm conscious again though I really don't give a fuck. I'm guessing the dream was pointing out to me that there is still some residual emotional attachment even though I haven't talked to since May or so. Weird how that works.

Night of 10/03/09 dream log

Only remember two dreams last night. Wasn't really in much control of either of them, but they were rather interesting.

The first one involved me going to some party walking distance away from my apt. in Boston, but certainly the landscape didn't match. I just had that impression the entire time. I'm not sure what sparked me getting there, but even so, I was there. It seemed like some big street celebration or holiday parade. Anyway, I was wandering around the anarchy that was the party, not really interacting with someone. I didn't want to stay there too long, my pretentious vibes made me think “jeez these people are all so young.” While I was on my way out so me extremely retarded looking and sounding person was asking me if I had alcohol to spare him or knew where the beer was—I forget which, but I was just only extra disgusted by him, politely told him no, and went outside.

It was nighttime, and many people from the party were now laying on the grass outside. It looked cozy so I did it myself. Of all the people in the dreamworld, I ran into Ashley Bloom and Ally Strong, who seemed like bestest buds still. We all had a very friendly conversation and started laying down together. It was funny, we wound up being in a big cuddle pile. I remember them asking me where I lived, and I said “New Jersey” and then later correcting them and being like “oh no what the fuck, Boston... still. I live in Boston.” Either way it was just a nice big cuddle pile that was rather cozy.

Eventually, I started talking to a big black guy, who was surprisingly polite and well spoken, despite what he was about to say: “Yeah, we're going to run the train on these girls. You're more than welcome to join us if you'd like. We'll be upstairs. Sound like something you'd be interested in?” Haha, what the fuck! I felt really weird and confused, so I awkwardly declined and the girls went off downstairs. I almost feel like the guy was a little disappointed and didn't expect me to turn down such a generous offer, but they went off, and I decided to head off on my own home.

I was walking home, past the pile of people still laying in the grass, and down the street. At this point, I was approached by a pretty, but young girl, who asked me “Could I lick your shirt?” She tried to get in close to me very quickly, I felt like I was going to be robbed or something and got very defensive and kept her away. I think I was screaming at her that she was something like a “Russian slave girl” who was trying to get me to buy her or something. She kept following me for a little bit, and even her pimpette princess start chasing after me, but I ran faster than they could. When I finally had a safe distance from her and was hidden behind some fencing box thing, I saw her again and yelled to now just the manager-pimpette-fugly monster “WHAT THE FUCK, what do you want from me?! I don't want to buy someone.” She reluctantly told me “well we're just the transporters.” as if that was somehow going to change things. Oh well, she stopped pursing me regardless.

By now, it was getting light outside, it was dawn of the next day. I was still walking home. I saw a few kids and a family outside who saw me, obviously distraught, and asked me what's up. I told them something like a crazy russian princess was trying to attack me—even though that wasn't exactly what happened. Either way, they emphathized, and told me I should inform the police. There just happened to be a postman though, who, for some reason, they were treating like a police officer. So, I did as well and told him what happened

He immediately assured me that I should go down to the station and file a report. He would take me there. He was upset about that meaning something like “well, that means we'll have to get on 90” which, I suppose solidifies my assumptions that the dreamscape was taking place in Boston, as that actually makes some sense. Either way, the car ride was very brief, and I don't remember it too much, and we arrived at “the station” which wasn't a police station at all.

It was instead almost like an office from the game FarCry overlooking a big field. I knew something was wrong. Anyway, next time I turned over to look at him, he clearly was not a police officer and was being more like a vampire or monster with red eyes. I was more like agitated that I still wasn't home by now, or filed a real police report, afterall, I didn't even want to go here in the first place. So then, rather than frightened or anything, I knew what needed to be done: kill this mother fucker. Somehow I had my trusty new Kitchen knife, Wurstoff or something, and I stabbed that mother fucker in the neck making short work of it.

That ends this phase of the dream.

My second dream phase started off in my manager's office, Matt. Though, we were more in a building resembling LiveTechnology than anything that is currently at Nuance. Either way, he seemed agitated about something, and I think even Dave might have been having a meeting with him. Either way, he was going somewhere far away, and I didn't know where exactly.

So somehow I get home, I'm sitting in front of my computer. It's now definitely nighttime. I'm looking at my cell phone, and realize somehow that if I send myself a text message with the country name that I'll be instantly teleported there. Pretty cool power. So, for whatever reason I type in the name of the country Matt was traveling to. Like magic I'm somewhere completely different.

I'm not sure what country it was, if I had to guess, it'd be Germany, Sweden, Australia, or Iceland. It was night time there as well, which probably makes little to no-sense considering it was night time where I was on the east coast initially, but that'd of been hilarious of my dreams actually took that into consideration. Either way, I started out wandering around some outdoor party. It was a pretty big festival, with plenty of people, bon fires, and a generally happy atmosphere. I couldn't understand anyone really, since they were speaking another language.

So, after wandering around for awhile, I was checking my cell phone trying to figure out how to use it again. My cell phone in my dream was way cooler than my current one. It had video emails, which I had a few of which I think were rather sexual in nature and I quickly skipped over. I'm fairly certain I got the impression they were from Kira, which makes sense, because when I got her voicemail last time it was pretty unexpected. Anyway, I was approached by some 2-3 guys who wanted to take a look at my phone. Knowing I just wanted to teleport and be done with it, I didn't let them. I tried to move away.

The more I resisted, the more confrontational they became, eventually grabbing me. Fortunately, another guy came to my assitance, demanding that I be let go and he had a metal pole by which to enforce such a demand. His friends reluctantly let me go, and he gave a short talk to them. However, he wasn't completely my friend either. They all seemed to bore some aggression against myself and Americans in general. When I gave a speech on how I just wanted privacy and be able to look at my messages in peace they almost seemed insulted. I either jumped or was tossed onto dinner table and started fleeing away.

But somehow, I was now indoors. So there weren't too many places I could flee to. I fled to the back right corner of the room where some blonde girl was telling me how I was going to be able to keep running for too long. People were getting suspicious and were going to soon start asking me for my papers. I still couldn't figure out how to get my cell phone to send me a text message. She asked me where my father was from, and I told him “Queens, New York” And she as if agitated by such a response replied “How am I supposed to know where that is?!”

To which I all too obnoxiously replied “Well, uh, I'm sure you've heard of New York City, and there are eight Burroughs to it. Queens is one of them. That is where he's from.” (even though there are only 5 borroughs...) She clearly felt humbled by such an initially succinct and sufficient for anyone who thought it through initial answer I gave her. To which she responded with “Well, you wouldn't know where the Plains of Rjorvak (or something like that)” are now would you? I didn't even respond.

Either way, as if by magic, all her anger now subsided and she was just hugging me. It felt really good to be held.

The dream ended there.

I wonder if these dreams are just telling me I have a big desire to be smushed.