Dairy of a Madman

There are confluences surrounding you every day. Coincidence or kismet or destiny — who is to say what the truth behind these twisted path crossings really is?

Perhaps there is a point to finding out the truth behind these links — point of fact, it’s getting at the currents that run underneath the visible, tangible world that drive me to notice these things.

I find myself digging, stretching, reaching, and searching everywhere for these confluences, looking for the truth behind it all. Not so much the meaning of life — not really the meaning of anything, I suppose. The story of life, though. The way that everything comes together and enmeshes, reactions and repulsions.

In the same way that LOST throws out mysteries for which viewers scream for solutions, the universe has it’s own sequence of numbers, it’s own hatches and labyrinths of tunnels, it’s own Others. For me, there are no spoilers sites, no insider leaks, no guarantee, even, of a series conclusion that neatly wraps up the plotline and reveals all the answers.

There’s no guarantee of a prestige.

There is a thrill that comes with finding the connections, of pulling the important meeting out of the air, of recognizing that off all the puzzle pieces that you come across every minute of every day — that this is a piece of the puzzle you’re working on. And maybe you don’t see where the puzzle piece goes, or even have any idea what the overall image is, but you’ve got a piece, a new piece, and you’re one step closer to solution.

It’s tantalizing to find these fragments of the equations, but frustrating again when you realize that one step closer to the solution doesn’t mean anything if you don’t know how many steps away you are.

This week’s discovered connection, coincidentally, is some combination of Steven Hall’s The Raw Shark Texts, Christopher Hitchens’ God is Not Good, and The Prestige. Magic, untruth, and conceptual virii and creatures of idea. Where does it all lead?

To more reading and watching, if nothing else.

There are bookstores — I’ve been in them — that are treasure troves crossed with nightmares. You never know what you might find, but that’s primarily because you have no idea where to start looking — and gods help you if you are in search of something specific. There are boxes everywhere, on and under shelves that sag threateningly under the weight of piles of who-knows-what. Card tables are set up haphazardly, forming makeshift aisles. The walls of the maze are made up of even more books, magazines, and VHS tapes that probably have some vintage porn recorded on them.

Continue reading “Information Architecture”

Sometimes, the signs of depressive episodes aren’t typical, or nearly as conscious as you (I) would expect.

I’ve had an increasing number of incidents over the past few years of 24-48 hour stints in bed, not interested at all in getting up to face the world. It’s not nearly as aware as that, though; I’m not pulling the covers up over my head, shutting out the world and horrified of what lies outside in the light. It’s much more casual, a shrug of the shoulders when faced with the choice of returning to sleep or rolling out of bed. A shrug of the shoulders means that the solution that requires the least effort wins, and very little in life requires more effort than falling back into unconsciousness.

I never really thought too much about those long sleeping periods (usually, a few days out of a month or two). Before, I wasn’t getting nearly as much sleep as I should, and so those long sleep periods seemed to me to be a catch up period. Now, though, it’s a lot easier to recognize as what it is — depression of some sort, whether seasonal affective or bipolar.

Something to look into, though — the source of the depression, and why it’s manifesting itself like this.

(This is probably not something that is followable; in fact, I imagine it’s going to sound utterly nonsensical when I look back on it once removed from this train of thought. But it’s bouncing around in my head, and even if it turns out to be another abandoned dead end in my Quest for Ultimate Understand of the Universe Around Me, it might make for a good short screenplay.)

Matter and energy are interchangable, yes? Neither can be created or destroyed, only converted back and forth.

Boy, if that’s not true as I remember it, then the rest of this falls completely apart…

The brain is driven by electrical current. Our thoughts, feelings, dreams — everything about us boils down to a series of electrical impulses jumping from neuron to neuron.

So when we die, what happens to this energy? It has to go somewhere, right? And perhaps this energy is imprinted with some part of ourselves — the same thoughts and feelings and dreams that that energy helped shape for X number of years. This is probably not a new thought — it certainly flows along with the ideas of reincarnation and past life regression.

But then, take it a step further, and split that energy, mix it in with the rest of the energy floating around through the universe. Some of it might become light eventually, or power a jet headed for Boston, or kinesthecize (that’s totally made up, I know) a comet moved through space. Some of it might mix with other energy, though, and eventually become part of another person, shaping their thoughts and feelings and dreams. And maybe part of an animal, too.

Maybe this helps explain kindred spirits, and pets that feel so naturally connected to you, and why some people feel like old souls and some don’t…

And maybe I should start my meds again.

ABC News: Humans With Amazing Senses:

Fourteen-year-old Ben Underwood of Sacramento, Calif., is one of the few people known to use echolocation as a primary means of navigating the world on land.

Hints of synaesthesthia as well, with non-visual stimuli triggering the visual portions of the brain…

(Spotted via Warren Ellis)

Teen arrested after mom found in freezer - Crime & Punishment - MSNBC.com:

…People close to the family described the teenager as very quiet and a good student, with no history of violent behavior…

Seriously, everyone: if they ever somehow miraculously manage to track down the secret burial ground where I’ve hidden the bodies (not to mention connecting the evidence, no matter how badly decomposed and tampered, thanks to a flame thrower, gallons of lye, and my own napalm-like recipe of gasoline, packing peanuts, and toothpaste), I want you all to say this about me when talking to the media:

Yeah, we wondered when this was coming. I mean, he had a clean life and his background checked out, but we knew it was only because he paid the right people and killed the rest. For chrissakes, he almost failed out of high school, and anyone that anal-retentive who listens to heavy metal well into their thirties has some problems, you know? Frankly, I’m just surprised it took you pigs this long to catch him. He’s not that smart, you know. Hmmm. I guess just lucky…

Fine. For the sake of my mother, who hates when I joke about such things as me finally breaking the Green River Killer’s record for “Longest Trail of Bodies Left by a Single Unidentified Person” : I’m not joking.

Okay! Alright. Stop hitting me. Statistically, you really don’t have to worry about me. Most serial killers are between 18 and 34, male, single, loners… And see? I turn 35 this year. And I’m not really single, at least in the sense that I’m fairly sure that CL would notice if I were gone for long, unexplained stretches of time. Of course, I could always blame that on her blood sugar problems…

Hang on. I’m just making myself a little note, here.

Okay, I’m back. Where was I? Oh, yeah. No worries about me, unless you look at the fact that I like to defy common knowledge based on statistics. Or unless you consider that I might have gotten started years and years ago — say, when I was between the ages of 18 and 34. Or if you think about the fact that it’s middle-aged men that have sudden bursts of anger that translate into massive body counts, usually in the workplace.

But seriously, it could happen.

No, I just like keeping people on their toes, making them wonder a little here and there. Oh, and don’t fire me. And CL, you might think twice about this before you ever have an affair. Or leave me because I’ve started talking back to the voices in my head at really audible volumes. Or burning my dinner.

*I’m kidding here, people. I promise. Of course, by kidding, I mean, “tossing the idea out there to see what kind of response I get, just in case I ever decide that, hey — maybe a prolonged killing spree followed by a nomadic life on the run punctuated by occasional random homicides (just to stay in practice for the eventual invasion of the alien overlords from Sirius that the voices assure me will happen in my lifetime)… Yeah, that sounds like a really good way to break the monotony of a Saturday afternoon.”

British child psychologist Lyn Fry, an expert on feral children, has travelled to Ukraine to meet a girl brought up by dogs.

23-year-old Oxana Malaya from a village in Ukraine is a feral child, one of only about 100 known in the world. When she was three, her alcoholic parents left her outside one night and she crawled into a hovel where they kept dogs. No one came to look for her or even seemed to notice she was gone, so she stayed where there was warmth and food.

Most days, 6-year-old Aubrey Matthews spends her energy fighting a brain tumor growing behind her eyes. But the first-grader managed to foil crimes and chase an arch-nemesis through Boise on Friday, serving the city as the superhero “Star” with assistance from the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Idaho, The Idaho Statesman reported.

[more: Idaho girl becomes superhero for a day]

BBC - Radio 4 - Frontiers 17/05/2006
When time seems to fly or drag, it’s nothing to do with our internal clock speeding up or slowing down. It’s how the brain processes time-related information that generates the illusion.

When a person’s life is in danger, a phenomenon known as ‘time-dilation’ can occur. This is when, during a car crash for example, time seems to slow down or become frozen.

In these cases the body’s internal clock speeds up when facing a potential catastrophe, so that it can take in more information more quickly and function more effectively in an emergency.

This is also a phenomenon actively sought by elite sportspeople, when they get ‘in the zone’.

Some of the chemicals in the brain, such as dopamine, can affect our perception of time. Deficiencies in these chemicals can lead to brain disorders.

Can I cause another person to dream?

Studies show that you can bring about a dream in another person. One way is by holding an open bottle of perfume under the sleeper’s nose. Another is by whistling. A third way is by blowing air across the sleeper’s face with a fan. Someone else can also affect the content of a sleeper’s dream. For example, turning on a light produces happier dreams. And darkening an already bright room can induce nightmares.