How Mindless Blathering Saved The World...
I've got several ideas here. I could pick up loose ends and finish off stories that were left hanging. I could turn my brain off, shut my eyes, and start typing.
I dreamed I was working on this, it was much easier in the dream...
Threads of various stories squirm through my dreams.
A fairly petite blond with glasses comes over to me and hugs me. I hug her back and then wake up worrying, wondering who she is and why I thought I knew her. I lie there, fading back into dreams, see a black and white farm-scape with shadows appearing, taking shape and form and then shooting off toward the upper right hand corner, up and out of the frame around what I've begun to believe is a cartoon. shape after shape forms into something I can't quite grasp and then shoots up to the upper right hand corner of the cartoon and out of the frame, out of sight-
I thought I was awake, I could feel my aching body, I could feel the burning pain of my toe as the aspirin wore off. I wondered how I could be awake and watching these dream images at the same time. And why was this scene in black and white? I never dream in black and white.
Time passes oddly in dreams.
There was darkness, punctuated by a sense of movement.
And then I was waking up again, replaying images of a house that I thought had belonged to my grandmother. I looked out of a second story window, saw my friend, Larry, typing away in his ground floor apartment. I turned around and realized my kitchen was clean, now that I was the only one living there, since my sisters, brother and mother had moved out- and I thought I should call Larry on the phone and invite him up for coffee.
I thought, for several minutes, wondering about time lines. This was my grandmother's house and my family, without my father, lived here for years. I thought I remembered that my grandmother had died. I wondered if my mother had officially inherited the building. I wondered when that might have happened.
I had a conversation with my sister (Sharon) and she joked about all of her belongings that we had crammed into her washing machine and anticipated being able to ship it to her.
I realized I was sitting in a recliner, snapped my spine a bit to the left, felt a nagging pain go away and 'felt' the title come into my head, "How mindless blathering saved the world." I thought about the date, was today the fourth or fifth? should I begin to write a NaNoWriMo novel this year? Probably not, There is much too much schnarr on my plate. I don't have the time. I don't want to fail. I've been fragile lately...
I relaxed and watched a colour scheme for a web page come together, put a graphic logo at the top, and started thinking about typing.
I forgot about pain, I drifted off into dream land and forgot about writing, forgot about everything for a while... woke up in this world, felt a cat jump onto my lap, climb my chest and continue on up and over my shoulder and jump to the couch behind me. I drifted away again. I heard the boy. I heard Cathi. I sighed and drifted away. The colour scheme came back into my mind, into my dream. I got up and hobbled to the wash room. I hobbled back to the recliner. I sat down. The colour scheme nagged me until I got up and hobbled to the computer.
I began looking through the templates for web pages. Of course, none of them were quite what I wanted, so I kept looking.
Then I settled on one and started trying to modify if. every time I tried to save what I'd done, it warned me that I hadn't set any editable areas and asked if I was stupid enough to want to continue. I grumbled back in funny made up four letter words and continued.
When I had pretty much the look and feel I wanted, I chose "Save As-" and maneuvered through reluctant menus until I had what I wanted. Then I saved a copy on the web site and had to maneuver through another set of hoops- got it right and checked it, and yeah, I had a start.
The "Content" still read, "Lorem epson......" or whatever, and I was completely exhausted, but I had my start.
Now I have to save again, go sit down and rest so I can function in my 'real life' later. But hey, I've got something to show here, don't I?
Trance Music :
The only recorded piece of music that was ever guaranteed to give the listener 'Cosmic Consciousness' finally had its lyrics translated.
We should note that the musical piece "Sha-Longg Vina Vite Ma Hallonn" is a curiosity whose results could not be repeated anywhere but on certain spots on one inhospitable planet in the Noory-185 system.
Scientists have been able to measure the results, more or less, by witnessing the demonstrable 'powers' developed by listeners, but they have never been able to explain 'why' or 'how' these listeners develop their abilities.
Neither have they been able to explain why every attempt to duplicate the music and the voices of the original recording have failed. There is speculation that the combined effects of the timber and resonance of the original instruments may have something to do with the effect of listening- but only when the cd and the listener are in the right place- on the right planet. Another odd finding is that the cd (copies made on most computers work, while copies made in most commercial cd duplication systems do not-) must be played on a 'compatible' sound system. Ear buds do not work, some stereo head phones do work, mid priced speakers on most mid priced stereo systems work best with high end and low end speakers and components usually do not.
What truly baffles most scientific types, is the fact that a cd (most MP3 recordings do not get the desired results) can be played repeatedly for days, weeks, months at a time anywhere but on this one planet without the "Cosmic" results, while listening to three to fifty nine repetitions on that one planet (at one of several "right" latitudes and at one of several "Harmonically correct" longitudes...) can produce anything from 'overwhelming euphoria' to transient invisibility, levitation and any of a number of "Psycho/Spiritual 'Powers'."
...
The translation?
The singers on the original recording have been described as 'bored, silly college girls trying to become sorority sisters in a sorority that was never renowned for producing members with exceptional intelligence, creativity, academic achievement, or philosophical acumen.' Apparently, somewhere between three and six young women, giddy with wine, were recorded by an upper-classman from the audio-visual department of an obscure university whose notes called the singers "Emily Sue's Parrots". ((There is no evidence that the initials E.,S, & P. were intended to indicate Extra-Sensory Perception.))
The lyrics? "Hoamy Na-Hu Ahmin Schnarr-ahh Kahnna A-ooo Gonz Appahr-aht."
The title translates to "He only cares about his E-Phone." This phrase is repeated sixty three times with varying intonation and 'splitting harmonies'. The fact that it contains (in the original language) the sonic phrases "Ahm, A-ooo Hu and Hoam may or may not be significant.
Dreams, dreams and more dreams...
The boy has been stalling in the mornings with "I had a weird dream last night-" (He has a weird dream almost every night, it's become part of his morning routine to try to keep the world of school and school bullies and bullying teachers and the spectre of school work and the even scarier spectre of home work at at least an arm's length.)
He's been dreaming a lot of the MMORPG he's been playing (Massive Multiplayer Online Rold Playing Game). I have to hear "for some reason..." several times a morning.
Which isn't that bad- considering...
-The other night I dreamed about a role playing game world. I knew that what I was seeing was happening in a role playing game, I knew I was me, watching this- (I don;t know how close to lucid dreaming this might be.)
-One character came upon another character who was looking into a mirror. Mirrors in classic role playing games have been important. There are monsters whose stare can turn you to stone if you look directly into their eyes. If you have a mirror ready the monster will turn itself to stone when it sees its reflection, stares into its own eyes. There are no such monsters in the game we've been playing.
-The character who would have been my 'avatar', the character I was supposedly controlling, traded mirrors with the character he came upon. I don't know why, I don't know who initiated the trade.
-My character then examined the other character's mirror. This mirror was older, more used, had lost part of it's case, or border, or frame (I expected to see a shiny silver coloured plastic case around the mirror, which I suppose should be weird, being that the role playing game was supposed to be taking place in a mediavel world.)
-As I watched, I zoomed in on the edge of the mirror and saw something moving toward the avatar's finger. something silvery and metallic pierced my character's finger. I zoomed in even closer and saw the object that had pierced the avatar's finger- It was a kind of swiss army knife like jack knife with many many blades (etc) and it had an image of popeye the sailor man etched into it's metallic side. The knife/object seemed to be trying to decide which blade to use, which weapon or virus or herd of nano-bots to inject into the avatar's finger.
-I didn't sleep long, this whole dream may have lasted 5 seconds or 5 minutes in real time. I woke up and told Cathi (beside me, trying to get to sleep herself) about the dream I'd just had. She groaned and complained that she would really like to get to sleep. I thought about it, and no, she wasn't one of the culprits who had spent too much time and energy talking to me while I was trying to get sleep, so I whispered, "Sorry-" and tried to squirm into a slightly more comfortable position, tried to fall back into dreamland, back to sleep.
-In other recent dreams I have been working on designing the look and geography of the game world I've been working on for years, thinking, for instance, that I could, fairly easily, design a kind of trench, or open path with a more or less flat surface and be able to insert that into a world where flat surfaces, trenches, and similar features don't seem to be an option.
-Shrug, More later...
( (2,151 words)I probably will not submit this and or actually participate this year.)