Dream Stuff

Who wants a cosmic latte?

2009-11-04T10:14:00.000-08:00

I just love astronomy -- physical science in general. It can even tell us what 'colour' the universe is. I say, I rather like the name they picked for it, "Cosmic Latte".

You can check out the full page here, which I have set as my home-page.

Back into the swing of things

2009-09-16T20:43:00.000-07:00

I'm finally getting back to school, which is awesome, since I always seem to become a bit of a solitary old grump during the summer. I'd hate for the two people (if that??) who read this thing to think I was neglectful of my blog because I was in a funk -- au contaire, this summer was pretty fun. I did a lot of swimming at this marvelous beach that not many people in town seem to know about or visit. The waves are awesome and the water is always warm. I'm sort of already looking forward to next summer (GAWD what am I saying?!?)

Anyhow, I am still glad to be back to school. That's where I tend to perk up a bit. Will blog more as the semester goes on, as long as my school work doesn't keep me too busy (although if it does, I can always procrastinate by writing something here...)

The grass is always greener...

2009-05-31T08:22:00.000-07:00

When I am in university, I often think about how nice it will be when summer arrives and I don't have to worry about the pressures of school. Then again, whenever summer comes, I yearn to begin the fall semester and get to all of those neat sounding classes that stare at me every day from the list I have stuck to my refrigerator.

Now I'm in summer, and the green grass of the university is looking ever greener from this side of the fence. Of course, it's snowing right now as I'm writing this...which is neato and unnerving at the same time...so it's an odd summer so far.

Yes, I know...

2009-05-14T15:06:00.001-07:00

...it's been forever. I know it's been forever because a few of my friends have reminded me that I've been slacking off a little where my bloggery is concerned. So, I am here to make an entry, and hopefully, amends.

I could go into a rather self-indulgent tirade about my emotions, or how I did at university this year, or something else, but I'll save the juicy stuff for further entries...not that there is much 'juicy stuff' in my life...although I have to make it seem as though I have something for my readers to follow...right? For now, I'll just say that I have a wisdom tooth coming in at the moment, and it's really bugging me. I'll have to make an appointment with my Dentist. I just had a wisdom tooth extracted a few months ago and it wasn't nearly as bad as I had expected...actually, the lisp caused by the drugs that numbed my jaw, and the extra saliva I wasn't able to swallow because of those drugs, made for a pretty fun drive home with my mom.

But whenever I go through tough times like those recounted above, I just think about slapping my troubles away with the SlapChop:

Extrasolar planets and stuff

2009-03-09T16:58:00.000-07:00

Thanks to the Planetary Society as well as many other individuals whom I have neglected to look up simply because I am so darn excited about this, I can now keep track of extrasolar planets on my desktop! I, one tiny little ape on this floating bit of rock flying through the proverbial wilderness of the Milky Way Galaxy, can see what other star systems look like, what planets and stars compose them, how long their years are...the feeling I get from that is a mixture of awe, excitement, wonder, pride and curiosity.

In days gone by, when I was quite involved in lots of debates (which took place over the internet) about whether or not God existed, I sometimes was accused of deifying science. Maybe those people were right about me...I find it difficult to tell now. I do not think about science as if it is something which ought to be worshiped. Instead I tend to think of it as more of a tool, along with a number of others like history, philosophy, etc., which we humans have invented in order to find things out. I (borrowing the idea from Daniel C. Dennet) like to group these disciplines together, as is done in German, as Wissenschaft, which refers to systematic study in science or scholarship, which can be taught. What I suppose I do regard with a sort of religious reverence is what science and all of those other disciplines have collectively revealed about ourselves and the world that we're a part of. So, I guess I don't really deify science; if anything I am religious about the fascinating facts we've uncovered about our existence.

So, that was my little speech about science and how cool it is, inspired by the great folks that made the Planetary Society's extrasolar planet catalogue available to nerds like me. Have a look at this catalogue here.

Lucid Dream

2009-02-13T13:27:00.000-08:00

A few nights ago I had a lucid dream shortly before I woke up. A lucid dream is simply a dream wherein the dreamer knows he or she is dreaming. It can be very fun doing his sort of thing -- my dream was one of those really fun dreams:

I found myself in a coffee shop on a bright summer day. Seeing the blue sky made me happy, and I thought of how I had been seeing more and more blue skies as we approach spring. Then it dawned on me that the weather outside the coffee shop was like a day in June. "How could that be? It's only February!" The explanation, I realized, must have been that I was dreaming.
With this knowledge I went out of the cafe into the sunlight. This had been my first lucid dream in several months, so what happened next surprised me: I began concentrating on the sensations I was feeling; the sunlight beaming on me; the air going in and out of my lungs;* the pattering sound my shoes made on the cement (which was of course, only made out of dream stuff); doing this exercise helped to heighten my awareness. I was now very aware that I was dreaming -- the reason I say this is surprising is because I would always forget to do this in many of my subsequent lucid dreams.
Once the idea that I was in a dream was set firmly in my consciousness, I decided to attempt to fly, which is another thing I have always been bad at in my dreams (I could never seem to get over the fact that dream gravity isn't real gravity). However this time, I suppose due to my "increased awareness" exercise, I took off with no troubles at all, and raced upward and to the south. Apparently the coffee shop I was in was a dream replica of a real cafe which lies downtown from my house. The dream geography roughly matched the geography of the real town in which I live, so as I went south I traveled over the lake. Now, oddly enough, the sun was starting to set (brilliant sunsets are common in my lucid dreams), and I noticed several larger-than-you'd-expect boats cruising on the lake. I made a number of passes over them -- I later figured that, judging from how these boats seemed to move relative to me as I passed them, as well as how large they appeared, that I must have been traveling very quickly.

This continued until I woke up to the sound of my alarm going off. It felt nice, since this experience is usually very fun, and this is the first time it's happened to me in a long time =)

*To quote Morpheus from The Matrix, as he says after kicking Neo's ass in the dojo, "You think that's air you're breathing now?"

Darwin Day

2009-02-12T06:36:00.000-08:00

Today is the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birthday, and the third "Darwin Day" that I've observed so far...I don't do much -- usually just a blog entry or something, just to let people know that this day actually exists.

Why observe it? Well, I guess because it is not a religious holiday, so I don't have to reconcile any of my secular tendencies with anyone else's religious traditions for this particular holiday...PLUS it's a day on which I have an excuse to talk about some way cool science (which I have always liked to do since I was a kid). So basically, this day sort of formalizes these traits that I have...which is nice since there are fewer people who seem to share interests like mine that there who do.

Unfortunately I don't have time to say much myself, so here is a link to some way cool science you can watch on Google if you like.

Fedora, uh huh

2009-02-10T12:19:00.000-08:00

Yesterday the fedora I ordered from the USA (which, come to think of it, has been suspiciously absent from my blog...) arrived, and today I got to test it out in real world conditions. It stayed on my head in spite of the wind and several falls (due to the freezing rain we had last night).

It's black, made of felt (so it matches my coat), packable(!), and comes with a felt to brush it with. *Grins*

I shall continue to wear it proudly in bad weather, all year 'round!

Exercise bike, uh huh

2009-01-29T06:18:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I finally went to the store and purchased the exercise bike I have been after -- actually it wasn't exactly the same model that I had picked out earlier, but it was comparable, and about $10 cheaper. Altogether it only came to about $100, so it fits my starving student budget perfectly. This morning I thoroughly broke it in, and discovered that I am not quite as out of shape as I thought I was. (Since New Year I have been walking more, doing simple toning exercises and I also have been trying to eat a bit better.)

It's been so long since I've actually exercised (like, exercise exercised) that I forgot how good it feels to finish a decent work-out. So although the year is still young and I have famously had to eat my words when it came to getting into shape in the past*, I still feel confident in declaring that this is something I will be sticking with.

In high school I was a sickly thin 170 lbs ("Sickly?" you ask -- keep in mind I am 6'2 1/2" tall) and at my all time high (which I rocketed back up to after I was rather ill in the late spring) is 235 lbs. So, I'm thinking I would love to slim down to a lean 200. I feel good, and feel I look good, when I'm thinner but not too thin (basically I just want to lose the beer/pop/pizza/hamburger gut that's been growing on me all summer), so I shall make this my goal, and we'll see if I can make it.

*This is hardly as delicious as it sounds, by the way.

I'm an addict

2009-01-24T06:22:00.000-08:00

I just woke up and took a look around my room, and I notice that, despite the recent top-to-bottom cleaning job that I performed last week, my room is literally littered with books. They are scattered all over the place, like empty bottles might be scattered over an alcoholic shut-in's floor, or cigarettes might litter a chain smoker's favorite ash tray.

A recent trip to the school library has made it even worse! You see, I have a pet project on the go at the moment that I needed research material for. (...updates on this will follow as the project starts to materialize further.)

So, today is the day I admit I have a problem. My name is Josh and I am addicted to books...but I don't need help! *shifty eyes*

Singing

2009-01-16T05:59:00.000-08:00

I would like to learn more about singing, but the the problem is that I am a huge chicken, and I am rather nervous about singing in front of people.

See, I got this new guitar for Christmas from my parents: it's a blue Fender electric-acoustic and it's just soooooooooo nice to play. I could probably get a lot more out of it by learning to sing...so like so many other things, I feel like if I write about this stuff here, I might actually make good on this commitment.

Further updates will follow as I learn more songs....maybe.

Days like these

2009-01-14T08:12:00.000-08:00

It seems like I am getting worse and worse at dealing with stress, and every once and a while it catches up with me -- today is one of those days.

To try to remedy the situation, I think I actually will make good on some of the New Year's resolutions I made earlier. For starters I want to exercise more, be it with that exercise bike I want to buy or just by walking more or something. I've also successfully (so far) given up drinking and smoking cigars...not that I really did a whole lot of that sort of thing. In fact that is why I decided to give them up, since I figured it would be easier than everything else (and it has been! Huzzah!)

Most importantly, I want to find a new job. I'm the sort of guy who gets bored pretty easily, and now is as good a time as any to make changes in my life...so, the hunt for a new job has begun.

Hopefully all this stuff helps a bit.

I wish I had a view like this

2008-12-30T07:01:00.000-08:00

I wish I had this view out of my house, but alas, living space in Earth orbit is both rather expensive and in rather short supply.

In other news, my Christmas was, without a doubt, the most un-Christmassy feeling Christmas ever. I've thought about not celebrating Christmas before, but I always abandon my Grinchiness as December gets closer...something about not sharing that 'Christmas spirit' and all the efforts at giving and at loving that go with it strikes me as unbelievably empty, even for someone like me. However this Christmas was stressful enough to make me wish I could just have fast forwarded to Boxing Day and spent my money at a good bookstore (which I should add was the only place I got to spend money this Boxing Day, since everything else in Sudbury was closed, thanks very much City of Greater Sudbury...)

Sparing the gory details, I just hope that next year is the year that Christmas finally feels like a holiday instead of a chore. Not that I have much of a right to complain about not feeling Christmassy enough, being an atheist and everything...but like I've already written, enough of Christmas was borrowed from other traditions (December 25th, Yule logs, Christmas Trees (Santa was not even Red and White until Coca-Cola started using him in their ads!), and many other things were borrowed from pagan religions), that if I wish to appropriate it from the Christians, I should feel very justified in doing so *sticks out tongue*

Anywho, now I can look ahead to next year.

New Year resolutions

2008-12-18T11:31:00.000-08:00

I never make resolutions for the new year because: a) I hate the way the holidays turn people into strange, holiday-zombies; b) because it is just an arbitrary spot in the Earth's orbit anyway, and; c) because I know I'll never, ever, ever keep any New Year resolution anyway. But this year, I am actually thinking of promising myself to get into shape.

This summer I managed to drop a few pounds, but with the pressures of school I neglected cooking nice, healthy food at home in favour of eating snacks and fast food, so all the wight I lost in the summer is back, and then some. However I've been thinking that since I like to go cycling so much in the summer, I ought to get an exercise bike. That way I could go for a ride in my living room while watching the news or something.

So that settles it. In January I am going to buy myself an exercise bike and use it once a day.

My resolve is strengthened

2008-12-17T14:13:00.000-08:00

I finished my last exam of the semester a few hours ago, and it feels so darn good that I think, with all this newfound free time, I shall surely be able to commit to not being a big unhealthy slob over the holidays. In fact tonight I made myself a pretty neat-0 chicken and vegetable stir-fry, and just last week I used my wok to make some chili from scratch (just like mom!)...the next time I make these things, I think I shall take notes and maybe put the recipes up here on this blog for anyone who is interested.

Here I am killing time like this...

2008-12-16T13:13:00.000-08:00

I have to walk to work and it's sort of cold and nasty out, which is alright...I just hate those last few minutes before you have to leave for work, but when you also have nothing else to do. Those times (like right now) drive me to boredom (and blogging too, apparently).

Anywho studying for exams and hanging with my friends one last time before I go home for Christmas holidays has been keeping me just a little distracted from the whole eating well and exercise thinger I was trying to do. Not that I have given up -- I intend to continue, since I have but one last exam to go (woo-hoo!).

Dan Barker being dumb caught on tape

2008-12-11T12:19:00.000-08:00

This is why I stopped associating myself with atheism/free thought/whatever you want to call it culture.

This was just weak -- I am no fan of Donohue or the Catholic League, but Dan Barker's argument just comes across as nothing less than weak. If the Freedom From Religion Foundation wants its sign up, fine. More power to them, especially since this is America we're talking about: probably the most religiously fundamental of all the first world countries, and there are only about as many American atheists and agnostics as there are Canadians, believers and skeptics alike (and when you consider the difference in population between my country and my southern neighbours, that's not a very high percentage of Americans that are non-religious). But to claim the nativity scene is offensive? Offensive? For someone as smart as Barker is supposed to be -- and he is a member of numerous "high- IQ societies" (don't even get me started on those...), including the Prometheus Society, which has stricter entrance requirements than Mensa does -- is an incredibly stupid thing to do, even if it's how he really feels (which I doubt). Why? Because all he does here is play into the hands of Donohue, the Catholic League, and Fox News, and the whole idiotic idea of the Culture Wars that Fox has been promulgating in order to keep paranoid, pissed off religious fundamentalists even more paranoid and pissed off.

For my part, I don't mind the nativity scene. I also don't mind menorahs, mistletoe, yule logs, or having some good ol' Festivus feats of strength. It is ridiculous to call such holiday traditions hateful, or an "attack" and then to demand your own right to do the exact same thing, and that's exactly what Barker is doing -- and I know there are plenty who would disagree with me here, but that sign is more provocative then it needs to be.

The nativity scene isn't hateful toward atheists any more than lighting the menorah should be taken as hateful by Christians. If you ask me, everyone just needs to spend their winter solstice the way the want, and to stay the fuck out of everyone else's hair.

Bill O'Reilly's crazy made up culture-war caught on tape

2008-12-05T12:22:00.000-08:00

He talks about celebrating the winter solstice as if it is some kind of crazy, nut job idea that NO religion on the planet has ever done (...like, what holidays fall near the winter solstice anyways? None...except Christmas, Saturnalia, the birth of Mithras (another savior god who had 12 apostles, whose disciples took bread and wine, etc.), and so on...I guess you get the picture here).

Well, I say good for those atheists for getting their sign put up. I don't really give a enough of a crap to let my atheism dictate what signs I feel should or shouldn't be on display, but whatever. After all, Christianity has borrowed more than it's fair share of the stuff of other religions since the time of Jesus, so I think it's perfectly fair if I want to appropriate Christmas for my own grinchy ends... *evil laughter*

Stuff from the smart (m)asses

2008-12-01T13:05:00.000-08:00

A few days ago I finally got my caffeine molecule mug from thinkgeek.com. I was really excited to give it a quick wash and have a nice cup of tea with it when I noticed the sticker affixed to the bottom on the outside of my new mug. It reads, "WARNING: THE MATERIALS USED AS COLORED DECORATIONS ON THE EXTERIOR OF THIS PRODUCT CONTAIN LEAD AND/OR CADMIUM, CHEMICALS KNOWN TO THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA TO CAUSE BIRTH DEFECTS OR OTHER SERIOUS HARM."

I guess I can use it to keep my pens in or something. Like one of those pen-holder-thingers that you have on your desk. Yeah, one of those...

Okay. I am not the greatest at covering up my disappointment. I was really looking forward to actually being able to drink out of my new coffee mug. Whatever. But what really urks me is that an online store that markets its products as "stuff for smart masses" sells a product that, although pretty neat looking and probably otherwise useful, would only be used by a moron.

I have been up to these things...

2008-11-29T14:11:00.000-08:00

I actually been managing to keep up with the walking and push-ups/sit-ups portions of my "getting in shape" plan! The tricky thing is the eating healthy part. I am not going to lie...I still need to do groceries and I have been obscenely over-dependent on fast food. But then again, this is common for many people my age and situation, so even though I feel like a big lazy slob sometimes, at least I know I'm not the only big lazy slob. Oh well...two out of three ain't bad.

Other than that I've been trying to revive my social life for the holidays. I have gone out with some friends and seen some live music, which is always fun, and always good for rekindling my own musicality - which, as we've seen, was almost snuffed out and was kept on life support by me playing sappy nauseating love songs.

Other than that not much worth preserving has happened. I can't wait for some more snow and some more free time. I have some ideas knocking around in my brain that i really want to try out with my new camera. We'll see how that turns out within the next few weeks I suppose.

Awesome

2008-11-26T13:10:00.000-08:00

It seems that every time I establish a little space of my own like this on the internet, I always have to plug this one video...and with good reason, I should add:

This is pretty much how I feel, and have always felt, about life...it's nice to know that others think the same way.

ZOMG Idea!!!!1!

2008-11-23T12:43:00.000-08:00

So I had this idea: in addition to walking and eating well, I should get back to doing simple exercises like push-ups and crunches and things like that. I used to do that stuff all the time...I used to be able to do fifty push-ups! I don't even want to think about how much lower a number than fifty I could accomplish now. Anyhow not to worry. So, in addition to my other attempts at using this blog to keep track of my efforts at being healthy (mentally and physically of course), I shall now be using this thing to make me feel motivated to do more sit-ups.

Walking and eating

2008-11-22T12:06:00.000-08:00

I've been ably to keep up with my 3-4 walks per week. I'm very pleased with myself, if I do say so myself. Now, the trick will be to start cooking healthy food. I used to like to cook, and I've always wanted to start a kitchen journal to keep recipes that I stumble upon written down in. So, since I seem to be doing alright with the walking, I am also going to start keeping track of my efforts at cooking healthy food in this blog.

This morning's dream

2008-11-21T16:31:00.000-08:00

When I sleep in, I sometimes have very memorable dreams. There are two different sorts of memorable dreams for me: lucid dreams and anxiety dreams. A lucid dream is just a nifty name for those dreams you sometimes have where you recognize that you are in fact dreaming while still in the dream. An anxiety dream isn't quite a nightmare...not in my case at least. Rather, for me, they are just dreams of incredibly anxious situations.

This morning I had one of these anxiety dreams. I was shopping for a new coat. Perhaps I was at the Wal-Mart which is at the mall, I'm not sure.

There arrives on the scene a man who is looking for help, and he assumes from what I'm wearing that I must work at this store. I don't understand this, since I'm wearing my usual jeans with a black tee shirt. Still, he insists that I must work at this store for some reason, and that I must help him. I back away, and he follows. In his please for help, he becomes almost desperate. He has a look of helplessness on his stubbled face, which is framed on the top by a poorly kept shaggy head of hair. I infer from his manner of dress that maybe, he just 'isn't all there', and that this is why he is acting so strange.

Then, like a scene in a bad horror film, more people start to approach me, all with the same helpless looks on their faces. They lurch toward me like zombies in slow motion. I back into a change room not far from the coats that I was looking at earlier. Now I am cornered. The people reach out and grab and tug at the neck of my shirt. They do this not to hurt me, but to bring me back out into the store and get me to help them. They desperately beg me and pull at me, and I just desperately want to be left alone. Then it all fades to black, then to light, as I awaken to the sound of my alarm clock switching on, receiving the morning news on the radio.

I am not of those people that believe dreams have hidden messages in them, or that they are 'letters to oneself', but that doesn't mean I don't believe we can't use dreams to learn about ourselves. Some sleep researchers have even written that dreams are a little like Rorschach tests: we can read into them, finding meaning and insight relevant to us. Not only that, but these Rorschach tests are made the dreamer him or herself...it doesn't matter that dreams are just your brain's way of sorting out the important stuff from the 'junk' in the day-to-day lives of the dreaming person, or that they are just random neurons firing off in sequence, schema activating schema, and so on. For they are still full of things from our minds, and we can use them along with our waking thought processes when searching for answers to our personal quandaries.

I wonder, what could I learn from this morning's dream?

Uncontrollable falling down

2008-11-19T15:57:00.000-08:00

This morning I became well acquainted with the corner of my dresser, my DVD player, my lava lamp, and the floor (in that order). Thus are the results:

It looks worse than it is...it didn't hurt when I fell, and it doesn't really hurt now. The funny thing is I just fell over. I didn't trip over anything, I just fell, backwards, against the wall (hmm...now that I think about it, I guess I was first acquainted with the wall, then the corner of my dresser, etc...)

I was very relieved that my lava lamp survived. I've had it since I was a little kid, and the moment I knocked it off my dresser I thought, as I was falling, "Oh no...this is the moment I've dreaded since I was twelve..." Luckily it escaped this whole nasty bout with gravity and my uncontrollable falling down unscathed.

Dark spaces, icy hearts, and the beginning part to "Solsbury Hill"

2008-11-17T16:07:00.000-08:00

So, I'm sitting here in my bedroom at my computer, playing really sappy lovey-dovey songs on my guitar with all of the lights turned off. It's a sign. A sign of how underwhelming my romantic life must be...my playing of these nauseatingly romantic songs (blech!) must be some kind of lament for romance...or something.

Or maybe my icy heart is beginning to melt? Either way I must seem like a complete dork (because who really has an excuse to have an icy heart at my age? Not me, that's for sure...). Although I'm sure I get some coolness points from being able to play the guitar, right? (Back me up on this one guys).

OR, most probably (and in all seriousness...really, do you think I could have possibly been that cynical?), after being burned once or twice I can just appreciate these songs a bit more. Also I like learning songs...when I think back on it, I realize I haven't learned a new song in a while, unless you count the beginning part to "Solsbury Hill," which is not a complete song, but certainly suffices, in that it is really awesome to be able to play the beginning part to "Solsbury Hill."

Right now it is snowing...

2008-11-15T17:51:00.000-08:00

I love the snow. Lots of people hate it, and that just makes me like it more.

Today I went for a little walk after the sun went down, under the snowflakes, which were lit up by the sulfur glow of the streetlights, and which would rendezvous with their shadows as they touched the sidewalk and began to melt away. It was nice.

So, not only did I get to experience the snow, but I also got to fulfill my commitment of walking more, so that I can get back into shape. Walking to and from the store probably amounted to about half an hour of walking in total.

Anyhow I will now take my leave of this blog and listen to some music while I look out at the snow falling outside my window.

His Darkness

2008-11-14T17:28:00.000-08:00

Why "hisdarknessjosh" for my little URL name thinger?

1) Well, I got "his darkness" from The Sandman comic books, as in, "His Darkness, Dream of The Endless." Dream is just a way bad-ass character, and The Sandman is mind blowingly cool, and I felt like tipping my hat to these things that I love.

2) I am sort of a 'dark' person overall. I dress darkly, black and blue the preferable combination, although I am not adversed towards purple; my hair is dark (except for the red part); I have both a dark sense of humour (I like 'black comedies' just as much as I like Monty Python's Flying Circus); also I've a dark outlook towards most everything (it's hard to be an optimist); and numerous other similar dark things...

3) I like being in the dark. Right now I am sitting in the dark. I also love to go outside when it's dark...less people are there and it's harder to be seen (I don't like crowds), and of course there's almost nothing I love more than looking at the stars on a dark, clear night.

This whole blog entry is entirely pointless, but I just felt like now would be a good time to write something down. Feel free to disregard it.

When will I ever?

2008-11-12T14:52:00.000-08:00

I've been finding myself so busy with school, since it's that time of the year, that I either have no time to myself, or, time to myself which I gain from sacrificing my studies. Nothing big...maybe neglecting to read a chapter or two every week. Still, doing this makes me feel so dirty and wrong...

What's worse is that when I do have time for myself I usually waste it doing absolutely nothing, or, doing something I have already done and could therefore survive without doing a second time (like re-reading old books...that would be my favoured method of procrastinating). I should be going for walks...and I do love going for walks...since I seem to be getting a little soft around the mid-section as of late and could use the exercise.

So I think I am going to try to go for a certain number of walks per week. Maybe three or four good, long walks. I'll be doing some walking tonight, so that's one walk down. I'll keep track of them in this blog thinger, that way I have something to remind me to keep this up...after all, I'd hate to disappoint any followers of this most exciting endeavor of mine.

Procrastoblog

2008-11-09T15:15:00.000-08:00

I have to write a blog for today. If I can get this blogging thing to become a habit then maybe I won't abandon this blog like I've abandoned my other two.

So let's see...

I'm procrastinating on a paper. I only have three more pages to write but I just can't focus right now. So, I decided to watch Carl Sagan's Cosmos. Actually I guess I'd be listening to it now, while I'm typing this. There's something I love about that series...I affectionately refer to watching it as my own version of going to church. You can watch it here, it's totally worth it.

I've also been skipping fourth between that and comic books. But I guess I should get back to my essay now.

Letting the Creativity Flow...

2008-11-08T15:46:00.001-08:00

I'm not going to play innocent, once and a while it is nice to utilize substances to alter your consciousness. I do it sometimes when I have trouble getting my ideas to 'flow'. When I try to write things, like an essay for instance, I have lots of ideas that collect in my head. But when it comes time to write them down I often have trouble making them come out in a well-ordered or coherent way. That's where the pot comes in.

Now I know what you are thinking. That it's dangerous or something. Well, maybe, but not nearly as dangerous as everyone thinks, if the data I have encountered about cannabis use is correct...that's right, I read up on this long before I ever lit up.

Anyhow, just tonight I was doing something like this, and I daresay I managed to get a good way into an essay that is going to be due soon. We'll see how good it turns out to be in the morning. Surprisingly enough, however, when I have done this in the past (smoked, worked, slept, read) I always find that my work is in no more need of revision than it normally is. And usually the sentences flow a little bit better too. I would love to learn why this is one day.

What if I write one blog every day?

2008-11-07T09:49:00.000-08:00

Neil Gaiman has said that the trick to having a successful blog is simply to blog every day for years. I think I'm going to try that. Maybe not every day, but most days, when I have nothing else to do. Why not, after all?

New Blog

2008-11-06T16:13:00.000-08:00

I seem to do this every few years. I abandon an old blog and I create a new one. For anyone who is interested my old blog can be found here.

It was an attempt of mine to have my very own skeptic blog. However I quickly realized I wasn't very good at blogging about that sort of thing. Actually I'm not very good at blogging in general really. Anyhow, I felt the need, for a number of reasons, to start blogging about stuff that was going on around me (you know, the sorts of things normal bloggers blog about), but I didn't feel a change of direction on my old blog would go over very well (don't ask me why), so I decided just to start anew.

I can't really say why I'm continually attracted to the idea of blogging. People who know me (and there aren't many) know that I don't really let a lot of people in. Why should I put this personal stuff out here anyway? You know what? These are pretty cheesy questions that every person who has ever done this has probably asked themselves at some point. Whatever.

I would also like to write the way I think. Usually I write as if I'm writing some kind of philosophy treatise or something, but I think a change in that area would make doing this seem refreshing, in a way...this is how I think: in flashes and in flurries...not thunderstormy flashes, not usually. But nice little sparks of dream stuff (I swear I didn't plan that!) that go away and come back throughout the day and night.

So I suppose that this is just going to be a place to take the stuff out of my head and keep it somewhere, where I can read it back to myself to see what makes me tick...so I suppose. Other people can read it as well, obviously.