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I'm not too scared. They've been doing it for decades, and the worst it has caused is a bunch of nimrods to think the US government created AIDS to kill blacks.

On the flipside, the Farewell affair blew up their pipeline, established more Russian products as dangerous and faulty, and possibly caused Chernobyl. Ignoring that last one, I think USA wins here..

Just wait until the Russians see what we did to their EHF transceiver technology. So much bad math in those sheets, and they've only recently gotten around to trying it out. I miss those days

I think it goes beyond that. It's the Brave New World method. If the onslaught of information is so saturated with not only contradictory and conflicting information, but with unrelated items, as well ("Movie star talks about butt plugs on Leno, then we'll hear from Tom who has been following the latest on the leaked nudes fiasco..."), you won't have the mental resources available to engage yourself on the matter long enough to for an opinion; let alone speak out in support of it. Postman refers to it as the "And now... this!" of our media.

And this is floating in a dingy amidst a piss ocean of entertainment media. I've never seen movies and TV shows shot out of the corn hole at such a rapid fire.

Holy hell. I leave for only a few months and come back to find this?

There's treachery afoot.

Postscript: I'm training for my first marathon, and today I managed to still make my 5 mile with flatulence that would easily be mistaken as the 7 trumpets of Revelation. I thought I would get joy out of crop dusting the neighborhood, but soon found that thermals trap your fumes and cause blowback. I threw up.

Here. I wrote this song for you:
http://youtu.be/kmmPFrkuPq0

Trying. The only time I didn't want to slay people was when water skiing this morning. Physical activity helps, but I think it better I go hiking by myself. Not that anyone wants to hang with me right now.

Actually had one friend say "maybe just cut back instead of completely quitting?" And she's a non-smoker...

I'll be here if you need me --> http://youtu.be/cAQSZhazYk8

Day 4 of no smoking and I can't sleep and I wonder how many windowpanes I can make it through on the first dive. Anyone else quit smoking without harming yourself or others? I have failed to do so and I need pointers.

Back in '08, maybe '09 (can't remember for sure) Cain dumped a zip file of some pretty enlightening books (or "unlightening", depending on your point of view).

I read the vast majority of them,  many of which would have been damn near impossible to find otherwise. I was hoping that we could have a new one with different titles and similar themes, pretty please with whisky on top?

Had one of those blessings in disguise late Friday night. I thought I had totally f'd my computer when I was trying to be a cheapo and make a 990fx chip run on my old 890 board. So, I decided to go through my old drive and do some extra backups of the important stuff. Found an abandoned project I had started on Lucid Dreaming, although I was a bit resistant to the term "lucid."

But one entry I had noticed that really caught my attention. In it, I was trying to expand upon the notion of paradoxical sleep, and what the implications of bringing your waking consciousness into the sometimes chaotic realm of your automated consciousness.

Ok, initially I copied and pasted a friggin' wall of rambling text, but I think it's better if I just give you my conclusion: The paradoxical state, or dreaming, is simply the conscious mind pulling together hundreds of stimuli and memes from a magnitude of waking states you've experienced in your life, while attempting to file away the most recent stimuli in a manner of not just compiling for later retrieval... but for a reference point to analyze the "new" data. It's when your teacher uses a metaphor or a mnemonic device to teach you something complex and novel, but your brain is doing it at such a rate of speed, it forms a narrative (albeit, barely coherent). It's the only time when the mind's temporal analysis is no longer linear because it's analyzing newer and old data as the same. When people are "lucid" they aren't bringing waking consciousness back into the dreams with them, they are simply engaging in the only true form of metacognition, that being, the mind watching the mind reading itself.

One sentence summary: The idea of being awake in your dreams is an instance in which the mind truly recognizes itself as process, rather than a state.

I bring this to PD'ers attention because I finally got around to reading the Common Walls last week. I recalled, when I was active in dream work, analysis and building lucid experiences, that during my waking life (what the LD community refers to as CR, or Consensus Reality) in the days following a lengthy state of awareness while dreaming that I sometimes had a lot of trouble playing along. Like when you're doing a redundant task (Chopping olives, painting a wall, data entry, etc.) and occasionally come out of your day dream and ask yourself "Ok, what am I doing here?" and find yourself unable to perform a simple set of steps you had just been doing over and over again at a rapid pace, not two seconds prior. One of my journal articles noted arriving at lunch with a friend, being handed a menu, and suddenly I had no idea how to make a decision of what I wanted to eat. Was I even hungry? What do I feel like when I'm hungry, and how have I made this decision in the past? When I read these words, they signify what I will be served, but what happened to the impulse that usually ignites when I read one of these words and say "That is what I want to eat?"

Pulling away from the idea of dream awareness, where do you find yourselves in this almost paralytic level of analysis, realizing exactly how little you understand or know, but rather, initiate your responses and actions without too much conscious thought?

I think you're pretty much right about that, Rog. I feel like in each interaction, the wheels were turning and they were thinking "Man, I need to impart some sort of wisdom to make this conversation a valuable one."

But in situations like these, I don't want anything. Everything that was of value was spilled onto the bathroom sink. Just let me know, somehow, that I'm not the only one who feels beaten down by this. After that, shut up. Just wallow in it with me. There's no reassurances, just a new nothingness. Maybe at some point I'll need a hug, but stop with the armchair psychiatry and office poster philosophy.

Anyway...thank you, everyone, for the kind words.

I spent a good amount of time on the phone with his wife. Hardest thing I've ever done. We didn't say much, we just recalled a few old stories and shared long exhales and quiet in between. It's almost like she and I were doing our best to convince each other that we witnessed him, and it wasn't just our imagination. I don't know. I just hope none of those people said any of that dumb shit to her. She's really fragile right now. She's lost two members of her family in less than a year. She said the last thing she said to him was "Don't forget the stuff in the dryer." It seemed like any other day, this morning. Now, it's just completely fucked for her.

My wife is driving out to try and help. She texted me a bit ago and said "I hope [son] and [daughter] are in bed. I'm not ready to see them" and that hit me pretty hard.

Have a good night, all. I'm going to stare out the window for a while.

A few hours ago,  I learned a good friend of mine committed suicide. In addition to heartbroken friends such as myself, he leaves behind a wife,  son,  and daughter.

He was one of the last great people I know. They certainly don't make them like that anymore. He was a wood carver, and had made some of the most beautiful works I have ever seen. He had lost a 2 year old daughter early last year,  and hadn't really come back from that.

I'm pretty shaken up, but what's really getting to me is the stupid things people say. "He was depressed and wasn't seeking treatment...", "He wasn't coping with the loss well," and "I'm shocked, but not surprised."

What the hell is it with people? Why do they say shit like that? Why say anything at all? If we simply spent 10 minutes in silence on the phone,  I wouldn't have thought anything of it. Even a "man, that sucks..."

I wish he was here. He was the type that would call this shit for what it was. I remember around Christmas when a relative asked him "How many kids do you two want?" Yeah, asking the guy going through his first Christmas without his youngest. His reply, "All of them."

I'm hurting, but after these conversations, I'm angry too. I'm starting to see the shitty support system he had. Why are we stuck with such dipshits, this day and age?

Sorry... Just needed to let loose. Take care PD'ers.

Only thing I didn't think to ask... did the piss not freeze because he had that much alcohol in his system,  or does urine have a lower freezing point?

Spoke with a neighbor this afternoon who is also an EMT. The story isn't really that exciting:

Lady across the street has a live-in BF who drove home absolutely shitfaced. The car with two wheels on the curb was his parking job. He got out and started taking a piss in the middle of the road. Cop drove by and pulled over to address the situation while he was pissing. Guy ran inside. Police officer politely rang the doorbell after another arrived and the guy shouted that he had guns inside. OK,  now it's just been taken to that level, and more cops arrive. Girlfriend walks out and says "he doesn't have guns, just go in and get him. The guy tried to make a daring escape out the upstairs window, but inadvertently went through the window. Somehow, no injuries,  but the window was smashed (didn't see the glass because of the snow, I guess).

When I looked up, that was the scene. The guy was in the back of the cruiser at the time, and they were waiting for EMT to arrive to verify he hadn't sustained any injuries. The guy was shouting "Let's get some tunes, man!" because he was drunk and bored. I suppose the one cop thought it would be funny to oblige.  Regarding the belt, they didn't have an answer. Only guess was maybe they took it as a precaution because they'd take it at the holding center to prevent a suicide.

So, yeah. That's my Neighborhood.

I finished the book, if anyone cares.

I'm trying to finish a manuscript that's due on 12/31... Of last year. Through the shades there's flashes of red and blue, and I peek out to see four cruisers. It's the Colored Light Brigade and they're all over the place. I can't figure out what's going on. Here's what I can see:

-Something is wet on the road, a big puddle, and doesn't look like anything splashed (but not water, because it's 22 degrees out, so it would have frozen)
-Some older looking lady has a belt in her hand and is talking to one officer, and he doesn't have his notepad out, or seem like it's an official thing
-One car is parked, but with two wheels on the curb, can't see any damage
- No road flares
- occasionally,  someone will point up at the top of the house across the street and people will look up
- One of the police officers reached in his car and started blasting that "Burning Heart" song that was in one of the Rocky movies,  and everyone started smiling,  then one walked over and appeared to be chewing him out until he turned it off.
-Nothing smashed or broken is on the pavement
-A little girl came out the front door of the previously mentioned house and everyone yelled for her to get inside,  almost like they were worried something would happen

What the hell is going on??

Clouds are more fragile than other meteorological objects,  because they were born that way. Have a little compassion.