Morning meditation:
Today was a big day. Today was the first time I didn't open my eyes sometime during the hour, thinking "surely I set the timer for 3 hours by accident," look at the clock and exclaim inwardly "another half an hour! Holy crap!...I mean...surrendering my impatience, surrendering surrendering surrendering...Okay, all patient now...now how much longer do I have to sit here for Chrissake? Oh yea, half an hour...crap...I mean..."
Well not today. Today I kept my eyes closed the whole time, all thanks to my formidable powers of patience...or was it the duct tape blindfold...holy crap that hurts to take off!
Evening meditation:
For the last three days, sometime between 9:30PM and 12:30AM, I cry like a baby for roughly 30 minutes. No, I'm not mourning the loss of my innocence or making a statement against manly men who don't cry. It's all much more simple: this is Gene's latest instrument of torture, designed to get us to enlightenment ASAP.
The idea is to practice mindfulness (yes, again), and to do it with the view of helping out the lucid dreaming experiment. Apparently mindfulness and lucid dreaming go hand in hand. The latest book in Gene's endless queue suggests picking a simple object (mine is hand-drawn letter A), and staring at it for long periods of time, displacing all thoughts from one's mind - doing nothing but observing that object. The book gives a number of helpful suggestions including: "don't blink." This one, this family has taken seriously. Evening meditation is now a sobfest. Oof, now let me go dump my prune-like eyeballs in some warm water.
Monday, January 26, 2009
Sunday, January 25, 2009
春节快乐 To All Russians
Every family has their little genetic/behavioral advantages and disadvantages. In our family, a popular setback is bad teeth. Gene and Ellen share the gold and silver medals for most unopenable mouths, with me arriving at the finish line in a few more years if everything goes as planned. But now it seems like Michelle is in the running for bronze, with the latest trip to the dentist shortening the distance between us by a factor of 5 or 10.
After I took Michelle to the dentist a couple of days ago, we spent many an hour in a state of open-mouthed shock (disgusting, I know). Our limited savings were quickly headed to Michelle's all-consuming black hole of a dental plan. But something or other thrives in times of adversity, and we (Gene) got to researching preventative measures. Here are some findings:
Finding #1: Genes aren't everything. Cavities mostly occur because of continued presence of sugar in the mouth. No sugar in your mouth, less cavities.
Obvious solution #1: eat and drink through an IV.
Obvious solution #2: get false teeth.
Less obvious and harder to implement solution #1: don't eat sweets. Ha! Talk about unrealistic.
Less obvious and harder to implement solution #2: brush after every sugar-binge, and by binge I mean anything bigger than a single speck of confectioners' sugar powder.
Finding #2: Xylitol. Yes, this sounds like something you're already giving your kids in pill form, but it isn't. Instead, it's a little miracle. Xylitol inhibits the growth of Streptococcus Mutans bacteria - the biggest threat to our great nation's teeth - the main bacteria associated with cavity formation. It's also magically delicious. And as an added bonus, chewing Xylitol gum when you're pregnant with child prevents transmission of the Streptococcus Mutans bacteria to the infant. Also chew it when you're breastfeeding anyone; xylitol is beneficial out of any orifice.
Obvious solution #1: buy some Xylitol gum and chew it till you're either all better, or it rips out all of your fillings, as gum sometimes does.
Obvious solution #2: avoid being the child of a non-Xylitol-gum-chewing mother, and/or get breastfed by a Xylitol user once you're out of the womb and making demands.
Obvious solution #3: eat only Xylitol-rich food. WARNING: this lifestyle correlates heavily with starvation. Fortunately, as we all know, correlation does not imply causality.
Less obvious and harder to implement solution #1: actually research Xylitol and find out if it works. And then when you find out that Xylitol is just a Placebo, laugh at those people for whom it works perfectly, and then go drop $10,000 into your dentist's pocket. Ah, last laughs.
A new song was written today/yesterday, coincidentally by me, called Pei's Chun Jie (Pei's Chinese New Year). Pei agreed (speaking retrospectively from the future) to let people listen to it here. It's an instrumental, so you don't have to be afraid of hearing me or Mario sing.
Hmm, Blogger is being a dick and not letting me upload the MIDI that I specially converted to MP3 and then to video to make it Blogger-edible. No worries, Lablz.com to the rescue! Pei's Chun Jie
After I took Michelle to the dentist a couple of days ago, we spent many an hour in a state of open-mouthed shock (disgusting, I know). Our limited savings were quickly headed to Michelle's all-consuming black hole of a dental plan. But something or other thrives in times of adversity, and we (Gene) got to researching preventative measures. Here are some findings:
Finding #1: Genes aren't everything. Cavities mostly occur because of continued presence of sugar in the mouth. No sugar in your mouth, less cavities.
Obvious solution #1: eat and drink through an IV.
Obvious solution #2: get false teeth.
Less obvious and harder to implement solution #1: don't eat sweets. Ha! Talk about unrealistic.
Less obvious and harder to implement solution #2: brush after every sugar-binge, and by binge I mean anything bigger than a single speck of confectioners' sugar powder.
Finding #2: Xylitol. Yes, this sounds like something you're already giving your kids in pill form, but it isn't. Instead, it's a little miracle. Xylitol inhibits the growth of Streptococcus Mutans bacteria - the biggest threat to our great nation's teeth - the main bacteria associated with cavity formation. It's also magically delicious. And as an added bonus, chewing Xylitol gum when you're pregnant with child prevents transmission of the Streptococcus Mutans bacteria to the infant. Also chew it when you're breastfeeding anyone; xylitol is beneficial out of any orifice.
Obvious solution #1: buy some Xylitol gum and chew it till you're either all better, or it rips out all of your fillings, as gum sometimes does.
Obvious solution #2: avoid being the child of a non-Xylitol-gum-chewing mother, and/or get breastfed by a Xylitol user once you're out of the womb and making demands.
Obvious solution #3: eat only Xylitol-rich food. WARNING: this lifestyle correlates heavily with starvation. Fortunately, as we all know, correlation does not imply causality.
Less obvious and harder to implement solution #1: actually research Xylitol and find out if it works. And then when you find out that Xylitol is just a Placebo, laugh at those people for whom it works perfectly, and then go drop $10,000 into your dentist's pocket. Ah, last laughs.
A new song was written today/yesterday, coincidentally by me, called Pei's Chun Jie (Pei's Chinese New Year). Pei agreed (speaking retrospectively from the future) to let people listen to it here. It's an instrumental, so you don't have to be afraid of hearing me or Mario sing.
Hmm, Blogger is being a dick and not letting me upload the MIDI that I specially converted to MP3 and then to video to make it Blogger-edible. No worries, Lablz.com to the rescue! Pei's Chun Jie
Friday, January 23, 2009
Nostalgia And More Chinese Antics
Had an interesting evening meditation yesterday. I had started reading Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now a couple of days ago, and he emphasized that people live either in the past or in the future but never in the present. He himself is of course a level 6 ninja in this aspect, so I trust him. Anyway, I was doing the surrendering exercise, and I was focusing on some of my nostalgia for a certain girl whose name I will not say explicitly (I will be fair however and give a hint: her name is one of the 24 arrangements of the letters 'c,' 'h,' 'u,' and 'n').
Anyway, I was surrendering this and that, and some of the other, some etc., and also lots of yadda yadda yadda, and I was feeling pretty good about myself, which is of course strictly prohibited by the meditation police. It was going well though, but at the same time it wasn't a relaxing process, it was a bit of a race; I'd surrender one scene, and another would show up with a little sign saying "dwell in me for a bit," and I'd say "good idea...wait! No! I surrender you!" And then I'd sit there waiting for the next ambush.
This game continued for a while, and then I decided to invoke some Tolle magic on myself. Not being a "future" kind of guy, I decided to start with my past, and went ahead and erased it all in one stroke. Of course, I didn't actually give myself amnesia, but I somehow managed to get a feeling of what it might be like to exist in a state of memory loss. I said to myself that I of course have certain feelings about things, but that now it no longer matters how I got to those feelings. Thinking this way, I figured that it would be easier to surrender emotions - they'd have no past to cling to.
I never really got to that second part (surrendering past-less emotions), but I did feel really weird for a while. The state of having no past was odd and interesting, a bit like coming out of the pool into the fresh air. Eh...pretty bad analogy, go ahead and insert your own.
Feeling on a roll, I decided to try one other thing, and inspiration suggested to attempt disappearing myself. I visualized stepping back out of my body, and tried to erase both my body and my mind, dry-eraser-across-blackboard-style. This isn't the first time I've tried this, but it was the first time it gave any sort of result. Usually I just end up waking up from yet another daydreaming sequence where my erasing had seamlessly morphed into fingerpainting, or worse, the dreaded "washing dishes" nightmare.
This time though, I managed to slip into another weird feeling, different from the past-less one, but equally strange. I felt like I was in the background - this is the only way I can think of to describe it. I didn't feel my body at all, and didn't really have a center of mass to my consciousness, just kind of faded. Pretty cool, but very tenuous and hard to hold onto.
Blah. No more.
I woke up today at 7AM and remembered some dream, but then, in a moment of weakness, decided to get some more sleep. And that's the end of that story; dream lost forever. Shame on me. To atone, I took Michelle for a 4 hour vacation to the dentist chair.
MIT finally shut off my webspace a day or two ago, so the previous entry's sound files pointed to nowhere (at the time of its creation). Yesterday I spent a good 5 minutes(!) remedying the situation and throwing my hands up in the air at the various inconveniences involved. For instance, Blogger doesn't allow uploading sound files. Pictures and video are OK, but there's some kind of prohibition on plain old audio. Being, as always, on a tight schedule, I didn't have the time to fight the man on this one, so I just converted my clips to video.
More Chinese learning took place today. I was learning indefinites - things like anywhere, anything, somelobster, nokitten, and I thought the Chinese approach to using these was really funny and simultaneously brilliant. For example, when you ask a Chinese person who's headed nowhere in particular "where are you going, my Chinese brother?" he'll tell you "I'm not going where." Isn't that efficient? Or if he's really not going anywhere at all, he'll say "I'm not going everywhere." This is like something made to order for Abbott and Costello.
Here's a semi-accurate semi-completely-inaccurate Chinese style English conversation for you to see what I'm up against in my quest to learn Mandarin.
Mark: you good.
Authentic Chinaman: you good.
Mark: you are going where?
Authentic Chinaman: I'm not going where.
Mark: not going where?
Authentic Chinaman: yes. not.
Mark: ah...and there is who?
Authentic Chinaman: there isn't who. There isn't everyone.
Mark: and you there will do what?
Authentic Chinaman: there I will not do everything.
Mark: excellent! can I come with you?
Authentic Chinaman: but I'm not going where...
Mark: I'm not going where either. I'm going there.
Authentic Chinaman: I'm not going there. I'm not going where.
Mark: me too. Or was it me neither. Crap. You understand?
Authentic Chinaman: I don't understand everything.
Mark: you everything don't understand? Or you don't understand everything?
Authentic Chinaman: I don't understand everything.
Mark: yea, I'm pretty lost too. Good, I go now. See again.
Authentic Chinaman: see again.
Anyway, I was surrendering this and that, and some of the other, some etc., and also lots of yadda yadda yadda, and I was feeling pretty good about myself, which is of course strictly prohibited by the meditation police. It was going well though, but at the same time it wasn't a relaxing process, it was a bit of a race; I'd surrender one scene, and another would show up with a little sign saying "dwell in me for a bit," and I'd say "good idea...wait! No! I surrender you!" And then I'd sit there waiting for the next ambush.
This game continued for a while, and then I decided to invoke some Tolle magic on myself. Not being a "future" kind of guy, I decided to start with my past, and went ahead and erased it all in one stroke. Of course, I didn't actually give myself amnesia, but I somehow managed to get a feeling of what it might be like to exist in a state of memory loss. I said to myself that I of course have certain feelings about things, but that now it no longer matters how I got to those feelings. Thinking this way, I figured that it would be easier to surrender emotions - they'd have no past to cling to.
I never really got to that second part (surrendering past-less emotions), but I did feel really weird for a while. The state of having no past was odd and interesting, a bit like coming out of the pool into the fresh air. Eh...pretty bad analogy, go ahead and insert your own.
Feeling on a roll, I decided to try one other thing, and inspiration suggested to attempt disappearing myself. I visualized stepping back out of my body, and tried to erase both my body and my mind, dry-eraser-across-blackboard-style. This isn't the first time I've tried this, but it was the first time it gave any sort of result. Usually I just end up waking up from yet another daydreaming sequence where my erasing had seamlessly morphed into fingerpainting, or worse, the dreaded "washing dishes" nightmare.
This time though, I managed to slip into another weird feeling, different from the past-less one, but equally strange. I felt like I was in the background - this is the only way I can think of to describe it. I didn't feel my body at all, and didn't really have a center of mass to my consciousness, just kind of faded. Pretty cool, but very tenuous and hard to hold onto.
Blah. No more.
I woke up today at 7AM and remembered some dream, but then, in a moment of weakness, decided to get some more sleep. And that's the end of that story; dream lost forever. Shame on me. To atone, I took Michelle for a 4 hour vacation to the dentist chair.
MIT finally shut off my webspace a day or two ago, so the previous entry's sound files pointed to nowhere (at the time of its creation). Yesterday I spent a good 5 minutes(!) remedying the situation and throwing my hands up in the air at the various inconveniences involved. For instance, Blogger doesn't allow uploading sound files. Pictures and video are OK, but there's some kind of prohibition on plain old audio. Being, as always, on a tight schedule, I didn't have the time to fight the man on this one, so I just converted my clips to video.
More Chinese learning took place today. I was learning indefinites - things like anywhere, anything, somelobster, nokitten, and I thought the Chinese approach to using these was really funny and simultaneously brilliant. For example, when you ask a Chinese person who's headed nowhere in particular "where are you going, my Chinese brother?" he'll tell you "I'm not going where." Isn't that efficient? Or if he's really not going anywhere at all, he'll say "I'm not going everywhere." This is like something made to order for Abbott and Costello.
Here's a semi-accurate semi-completely-inaccurate Chinese style English conversation for you to see what I'm up against in my quest to learn Mandarin.
Mark: you good.
Authentic Chinaman: you good.
Mark: you are going where?
Authentic Chinaman: I'm not going where.
Mark: not going where?
Authentic Chinaman: yes. not.
Mark: ah...and there is who?
Authentic Chinaman: there isn't who. There isn't everyone.
Mark: and you there will do what?
Authentic Chinaman: there I will not do everything.
Mark: excellent! can I come with you?
Authentic Chinaman: but I'm not going where...
Mark: I'm not going where either. I'm going there.
Authentic Chinaman: I'm not going there. I'm not going where.
Mark: me too. Or was it me neither. Crap. You understand?
Authentic Chinaman: I don't understand everything.
Mark: you everything don't understand? Or you don't understand everything?
Authentic Chinaman: I don't understand everything.
Mark: yea, I'm pretty lost too. Good, I go now. See again.
Authentic Chinaman: see again.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Those Flat Chinese
Morning meditation:
Today was more focused. I think I'm up to 1.2 consecutive milliseconds of consciousness, which sounds low, but feels like an improvement.
Dream:
I'm a sailor on a semi-modern ship. I am looking for a bathroom where I can move my bowels. I find one, but it is completely unacceptable. There are two toilets, facing each other from opposite corners of the room, as if in a duel, and about fifteen people between them, just shooting the breeze (something people only do in bathrooms in dreams). I barely hesitate a second before taking my privacy-sensitive bowels in search of other accomodations. I finally find a private bathroom with a single toilet, lock myself in, and mount the beast.
Lo and behold, this must be a toilet from an amusement park. Sitting on this thing is like sitting in one of those virtual ride machines at Chucke E. Cheese's, except that I don't have a screen in front of me convincing me that I'm on runaway railcar. I try to relax, but it is impossible, my cheeks are gripping the seat with all the static friction they've been storing away for the last 22 years. It's like trying to relax a bear trap. I struggle for a while, but my needs finally give in to the consistency of my failures, and I decide that I guess I don't really need to go. As I leave the bathroom, the next contestant comes in, Brian Voorhis who I haven't seen since middle school. I give him the thumbs up sign.
After this, I teleport to the dock. The ship is leaving, and I need to get on before I'm left behind. I remember what the captain said about the really stupid things sailors sometimes do, and proceed to do one of such caliber that further speeches in this vein are assured for generations to come. Instead of just jumping onto the ship, I wrap my four appendages around some 4 foot diameter column that holds the ship's roof up. Now I'm hopelessly stuck. If I let go, I fall into the water, but there's no way I can maneuver around this thing without help. I can barely move at all. I stick one leg out as much as I can, which is about one inch, and yell for someone to drag me in by my leg. Unfortunately, the other sailors lack the necessary genie powers required to perform such a feat. I realize that my last chance is to get back onto the deck and then try to jump for it. I try and fail, and almost fall off, and then suddenly I'm on the deck in some kind fluke of teleportation. I don't hesitate for instant to thank the Gods, and execute a beautiful running long jump onto the deck. Crisis averted.
End of Dream
I was studying Chinese today, and ran across this sentence: ge1ge1 he1 ka1fei1 he1 de hen3 shao3. Now don't panic! Of course, at first sight this looks like incomprehensible gibberish, unless you're one of the enlightened few (2 billionish). But in reality, it's pretty simple.
Let me give you some brief background: The above is the romanization of the Chinese sentence 哥哥喝咖啡喝地很少. (Romanization = Chinese for Americans). Romanization tells you how to pronounce the words, unlike the authentic Chinese sentence which just hurts your eyes, not to mention your brain. The numbers in the romanization indicate the tone (what to do with your voice) to use with each vowel sound. Tone 3 is for Chinese Jedi Masters, while tone 1 is Ben Stein's permanent residence - flat tone - where your voice doesn't change pitch during the duration of the vowel.
What's special about this sentence is that the first 6 tones are tone 1. Basically this means that you're likely to say the first 6 syllables on one note. When I say it out loud, it sounds absolutely ridiculous.
This reminded me instantly of Galaxy Quest, where the aliens consistently speak in a perfect monotone, with the added benefit of residing on the precise pitch of their voice breaks. Listen to this (Blogger doesn't allow uploading sound files, I had to convert it to video):
Now back to the Chinese phrase. Expect the worst:
I sound even more retarded, but you get the gist.
Madelyn: ur awesome
Mark: wow
Mark: r u learning to notice the obvious too?
Madelyn: yeah, im not good at it
Madelyn: that's how my compliment came to you
Today was more focused. I think I'm up to 1.2 consecutive milliseconds of consciousness, which sounds low, but feels like an improvement.
Dream:
I'm a sailor on a semi-modern ship. I am looking for a bathroom where I can move my bowels. I find one, but it is completely unacceptable. There are two toilets, facing each other from opposite corners of the room, as if in a duel, and about fifteen people between them, just shooting the breeze (something people only do in bathrooms in dreams). I barely hesitate a second before taking my privacy-sensitive bowels in search of other accomodations. I finally find a private bathroom with a single toilet, lock myself in, and mount the beast.
Lo and behold, this must be a toilet from an amusement park. Sitting on this thing is like sitting in one of those virtual ride machines at Chucke E. Cheese's, except that I don't have a screen in front of me convincing me that I'm on runaway railcar. I try to relax, but it is impossible, my cheeks are gripping the seat with all the static friction they've been storing away for the last 22 years. It's like trying to relax a bear trap. I struggle for a while, but my needs finally give in to the consistency of my failures, and I decide that I guess I don't really need to go. As I leave the bathroom, the next contestant comes in, Brian Voorhis who I haven't seen since middle school. I give him the thumbs up sign.
After this, I teleport to the dock. The ship is leaving, and I need to get on before I'm left behind. I remember what the captain said about the really stupid things sailors sometimes do, and proceed to do one of such caliber that further speeches in this vein are assured for generations to come. Instead of just jumping onto the ship, I wrap my four appendages around some 4 foot diameter column that holds the ship's roof up. Now I'm hopelessly stuck. If I let go, I fall into the water, but there's no way I can maneuver around this thing without help. I can barely move at all. I stick one leg out as much as I can, which is about one inch, and yell for someone to drag me in by my leg. Unfortunately, the other sailors lack the necessary genie powers required to perform such a feat. I realize that my last chance is to get back onto the deck and then try to jump for it. I try and fail, and almost fall off, and then suddenly I'm on the deck in some kind fluke of teleportation. I don't hesitate for instant to thank the Gods, and execute a beautiful running long jump onto the deck. Crisis averted.
End of Dream
I was studying Chinese today, and ran across this sentence: ge1ge1 he1 ka1fei1 he1 de hen3 shao3. Now don't panic! Of course, at first sight this looks like incomprehensible gibberish, unless you're one of the enlightened few (2 billionish). But in reality, it's pretty simple.
Let me give you some brief background: The above is the romanization of the Chinese sentence 哥哥喝咖啡喝地很少. (Romanization = Chinese for Americans). Romanization tells you how to pronounce the words, unlike the authentic Chinese sentence which just hurts your eyes, not to mention your brain. The numbers in the romanization indicate the tone (what to do with your voice) to use with each vowel sound. Tone 3 is for Chinese Jedi Masters, while tone 1 is Ben Stein's permanent residence - flat tone - where your voice doesn't change pitch during the duration of the vowel.
What's special about this sentence is that the first 6 tones are tone 1. Basically this means that you're likely to say the first 6 syllables on one note. When I say it out loud, it sounds absolutely ridiculous.
This reminded me instantly of Galaxy Quest, where the aliens consistently speak in a perfect monotone, with the added benefit of residing on the precise pitch of their voice breaks. Listen to this (Blogger doesn't allow uploading sound files, I had to convert it to video):
Now back to the Chinese phrase. Expect the worst:
I sound even more retarded, but you get the gist.
Madelyn: ur awesome
Mark: wow
Mark: r u learning to notice the obvious too?
Madelyn: yeah, im not good at it
Madelyn: that's how my compliment came to you
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Quick, Check If You're Conscious Before It's Too Late
Morning meditation:
Today I was plagued by melodies and lyrics from my own songs. I remember now that this happened on some of the other days, so just go ahead and add it to the general list of distractions. There were a couple of moments when I was thinking to myself - "hey, my mind's pretty quiet, right on, brother!" and then I'd realize that it was because my mind was wrapped so tightly around some catchy scrap of music that other thoughts just didn't stand a chance.
The new 30-day trials are only partially taking. Studying Chinese for half an hour is cake, even an hour is no problem. The lucid dreaming techniques are lagging behind though. I did maybe 20 reality checks today in total, which unfortunately doesn't average out to one every 10 minutes. And there are stretches of hours where I completely forget to do them. But I remembered today that another prerequisite is writing down dreams, so I'm going to start doing that tonight. Surely that'll clinch it.
Gene has also caught the lucid dreaming bug and now has some half-baked get-rich-quick scheme that he insists is exactly the opposite of that (not a get-rich-quick scheme). I haven't decided if I believe him yet, but I'll play along, especially since he reads this blog.
More silly jokes:
People are playing Scattergories:
The Letter: S
Category: Things that grow
Mom: self-awareness. But usually not mine.
Dad: Sri Ramakrishna. You haven't seen "grow" till you've seen my buddy Sri. You don't like it? Fine, then Snigfilunkers. You haven't heard of them? They're silicon-based creatures from the lower East side of the Horsehead Nebula.
Chun: sores. You should really get those checked by the way.
Tina: sadness and self-doubt. Ah, my old friends.
Mark: subscribers. Usually from 3 to 4, but sometimes the other way around.
Mario: sundried tomatoes. What? Why wouldn't that count? Well have you ever kept them on the shelf in high humidity for 6 years? No? Then you're not qualified to judge, are you?
Perry: snotty self-serving scientologists. Those little pricks.
Madelyn: sweet savory strips of seventy percent chocolate. No wait...those disappear.
Pei: single moms. No! Sex drive! Phew, nailed it.
Lucy: sluts. And sexist pigs. HAHAHAHA!
Igor: Rena...hmmm, no, that's 'R'...umm...yea...oh! Suicide statistics! Yay, I'm so happy now!
Question: What would you do with a billion dollars?
Mom: never work another day in my life!
Dad: never see any of you again! God, enough is enough.
Mark: I'd probably take it. Yep, there's at least a 10% chance I'd take it.
Mario: buy some Cheezits. They're on sale now: 10,000,000 boxes for $20,000,000. That's not a deal you miss.
Chun: go to medical school. What? Medical schools are like $30K a year these days!
Igor: buy a really authentic-looking degree. Renata won't suspect a thing!
Tina: oh, what's the point...
Pei: be a single mom. To a really fat spoiled baby.
Madelyn: die of chocolate overdose. And then probably go to work.
Perry: buy out scientology and burn it at the stake!
Frank: invest it. There's no faster way to lose money. Wait, did I say lose or make?
Lucy: ha! Gimme a break.
Question: What do you know?
Mom: lots of things. But please don't ask me to remember them. Gene can tell you which ones.
Dad: plenty, but it's never never never enough!
Mark: hah! You could fill a page with what I know!
Chun: I know exactly what I'm doing. And also how to busy myself every second to eliminate time for doubt.
Mario: that I am the duke of Mario! Or was it earl of Mendiola...wait, was that in the first one or the sequel?
Perry: huh? Let me tell you instead about intelligent design. It's retarded.
Lucy: everything. Name one thing I don't know. I dare you. Wait wait wait wait wait wait wait...except that one.
Igor: I know that if Renata ever...oh Christ, I don't even want to think about that. Brrrghf.
Tina: I know that if you ask me one more question, I'm gonna strangle you.
Pei: not nearly enough. I've already read 600 pages of zodiac today, and I still have no idea.
Frank: money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money. Or in modern jargon: lots of money.
Madelyn: oh, just a little secret. Hehe.
Today I was plagued by melodies and lyrics from my own songs. I remember now that this happened on some of the other days, so just go ahead and add it to the general list of distractions. There were a couple of moments when I was thinking to myself - "hey, my mind's pretty quiet, right on, brother!" and then I'd realize that it was because my mind was wrapped so tightly around some catchy scrap of music that other thoughts just didn't stand a chance.
The new 30-day trials are only partially taking. Studying Chinese for half an hour is cake, even an hour is no problem. The lucid dreaming techniques are lagging behind though. I did maybe 20 reality checks today in total, which unfortunately doesn't average out to one every 10 minutes. And there are stretches of hours where I completely forget to do them. But I remembered today that another prerequisite is writing down dreams, so I'm going to start doing that tonight. Surely that'll clinch it.
Gene has also caught the lucid dreaming bug and now has some half-baked get-rich-quick scheme that he insists is exactly the opposite of that (not a get-rich-quick scheme). I haven't decided if I believe him yet, but I'll play along, especially since he reads this blog.
More silly jokes:
People are playing Scattergories:
The Letter: S
Category: Things that grow
Mom: self-awareness. But usually not mine.
Dad: Sri Ramakrishna. You haven't seen "grow" till you've seen my buddy Sri. You don't like it? Fine, then Snigfilunkers. You haven't heard of them? They're silicon-based creatures from the lower East side of the Horsehead Nebula.
Chun: sores. You should really get those checked by the way.
Tina: sadness and self-doubt. Ah, my old friends.
Mark: subscribers. Usually from 3 to 4, but sometimes the other way around.
Mario: sundried tomatoes. What? Why wouldn't that count? Well have you ever kept them on the shelf in high humidity for 6 years? No? Then you're not qualified to judge, are you?
Perry: snotty self-serving scientologists. Those little pricks.
Madelyn: sweet savory strips of seventy percent chocolate. No wait...those disappear.
Pei: single moms. No! Sex drive! Phew, nailed it.
Lucy: sluts. And sexist pigs. HAHAHAHA!
Igor: Rena...hmmm, no, that's 'R'...umm...yea...oh! Suicide statistics! Yay, I'm so happy now!
Question: What would you do with a billion dollars?
Mom: never work another day in my life!
Dad: never see any of you again! God, enough is enough.
Mark: I'd probably take it. Yep, there's at least a 10% chance I'd take it.
Mario: buy some Cheezits. They're on sale now: 10,000,000 boxes for $20,000,000. That's not a deal you miss.
Chun: go to medical school. What? Medical schools are like $30K a year these days!
Igor: buy a really authentic-looking degree. Renata won't suspect a thing!
Tina: oh, what's the point...
Pei: be a single mom. To a really fat spoiled baby.
Madelyn: die of chocolate overdose. And then probably go to work.
Perry: buy out scientology and burn it at the stake!
Frank: invest it. There's no faster way to lose money. Wait, did I say lose or make?
Lucy: ha! Gimme a break.
Question: What do you know?
Mom: lots of things. But please don't ask me to remember them. Gene can tell you which ones.
Dad: plenty, but it's never never never enough!
Mark: hah! You could fill a page with what I know!
Chun: I know exactly what I'm doing. And also how to busy myself every second to eliminate time for doubt.
Mario: that I am the duke of Mario! Or was it earl of Mendiola...wait, was that in the first one or the sequel?
Perry: huh? Let me tell you instead about intelligent design. It's retarded.
Lucy: everything. Name one thing I don't know. I dare you. Wait wait wait wait wait wait wait...except that one.
Igor: I know that if Renata ever...oh Christ, I don't even want to think about that. Brrrghf.
Tina: I know that if you ask me one more question, I'm gonna strangle you.
Pei: not nearly enough. I've already read 600 pages of zodiac today, and I still have no idea.
Frank: money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money. Or in modern jargon: lots of money.
Madelyn: oh, just a little secret. Hehe.
Monday, January 19, 2009
Breasts, And How To Squeeze Lucid Dreams Out Of Them...Or Was It The Other Way Around?
Morning meditation:
I have the attention span of the Memento guy.
OK, it's time to start more 30-day trials. I came up with two in the 3.7-nanosecond-long conscious section of my meditation.
1. 30 mins or more of studying Chinese per day.
I'm planning on going to China sometime in this or my next life, so it's about time to put some discipline into my studying. Lately I've paid more attention to my love handles than to my Chinese skills (and I pay less attention to my love handles than to my fictional great aunt Propecia. Hmm...I should call her).
2. Start trying to lucid dream again.
Lucid dreaming is a synonym for "stop wasting a third of your life on nonsense, just so you can write it down in the morning for a 30-day writing-down-dreams-in-the-morning trial." It was adopted at the Belgium-based Winslow-Gordon Convention in 1865, when people realized that they have had it up to here(Northern New Jersey, upwards of my head) with saying that long quote twenty times a day.
Normally, you have no control over your dreams. You can lie there right before falling asleep and chant the latest Miss World's name till you're blue in the face, but will she grace your dream with her scantily clad presence? Very doubtful, because she's too busy serving (servicing?) lucid dreamers. Instead, you get assigned the dream where you're filling out your taxes, you're late, all you have left to do is sign, but your pen's stuck up in some tree for some reason and a village of armadillo gophers is willing to lay down their lives making sure you don't get it in time.
Dreaming for the average man (women don't have dreams, it's something to do with their breasts) is like watching an in-flight movie. You have no choice in the content, and chances are the pilot likes The Lizzie McGuire Movie. Or sometimes you don't even get one you haven't seen yet, you get a "recurring" one. What movie did you watch ten times already? Beethoven's 4th? What a coincidence! That's what we're playing today!
Lucid dreamers don't put up with this. They're elite, they're first class passengers, they're "the foot" as the French would say. They take out a couple minutes every day to ensure they don't get trapped in squirrel paradise like the average dreamer. What they do is they do "reality checks." Every ten or fifteen minutes, an aspiring lucid dreamer will examine the world for a second to make sure he's truly awake. For example, look at your hands right now. ...Uhh, I meant look at your hands after the next sentence. If they start swimming in your field of vision/changing shape size or color/vary in their finger content/(insert whatever your particular set doesn't normally do), then you know you're dreaming. In that case, you snap into the reality of the dream, which is much more vivid that ordinary dream-watching, and find yourself in a world where you have almost limitless control over the content. This is what a lucid dream is. You own the dream, you're the master. You can do whatever you want. You can fly around circles, fly around in squares, fly around in triangles...yea, my imagination ends here, but fortunately you're only limited by yours.
Of course, there's a price. In exchange for additional hours of consciousness, during the day you look like an idiot - whipping out your hands every ten minutes, then explaining to the police why you suddenly punched that pregnant woman with both fists. My advice is to take it slowly. Don't rip your pockets off, just calmly withdraw your hands: "calm calm calm...OK, let's see what we have here. Hmm, only one hand, I'm dreaming!...oh, never mind, I lost that one in Nam, nope...not dreaming, OK, see you in ten minutes, hand, done." Do that as often as you can, and you're on your way to lucid dreaming.
In case you're tempted to try it, there are other techniques that can help you achieve a lucid dream, preferably done in combination with "reality checks:"
1. Surpreme confidence - you know you're going to have a lucid dream. "If that idiot blogger can do it, I can do it."
2. Affirmations - unlike Miss World, lucid dreams will materialize if you think about them constantly. Before you go to sleep, turn on a mental mantra - "I will lucid dream tonight, I will lucid dream tonight, I will lucid dream tonight, I will lucid dream tonight," etc.
3. Attach reality checks to everyday things - every time you feel you need to pee, do a reality check. Every time you flip a light switch, do a reality check. Every time you think about breasts, do a reality check. Especially if you do this last one, you're set. Unfortunately, breasts have very little to do with most people's reality.
4. Reading this blog. Twenty to thirty times a day should be enough.
Lastly, performing a "reality check" inside a dream is not the only way to obtain a lucid dream. You can go straight into a lucid dream when you're falling asleep. For that, you need to be a bit of a sniper. You have to lie on your back and wait patiently for that moment when you slip away into dream land. And in that moment, you have a chance to get into the dream, but not lose consciousness. Often, the falling asleep moment will be accompanied by strange bodily sensations, such as heat and full body vibration. These are signs that you're close, but don't get too excited, you'll spook the lucid dream away.
Alright, ready, set, reality checks start...three paragraphs ago! Happy hunting!
I have the attention span of the Memento guy.
OK, it's time to start more 30-day trials. I came up with two in the 3.7-nanosecond-long conscious section of my meditation.
1. 30 mins or more of studying Chinese per day.
I'm planning on going to China sometime in this or my next life, so it's about time to put some discipline into my studying. Lately I've paid more attention to my love handles than to my Chinese skills (and I pay less attention to my love handles than to my fictional great aunt Propecia. Hmm...I should call her).
2. Start trying to lucid dream again.
Lucid dreaming is a synonym for "stop wasting a third of your life on nonsense, just so you can write it down in the morning for a 30-day writing-down-dreams-in-the-morning trial." It was adopted at the Belgium-based Winslow-Gordon Convention in 1865, when people realized that they have had it up to here(Northern New Jersey, upwards of my head) with saying that long quote twenty times a day.
Normally, you have no control over your dreams. You can lie there right before falling asleep and chant the latest Miss World's name till you're blue in the face, but will she grace your dream with her scantily clad presence? Very doubtful, because she's too busy serving (servicing?) lucid dreamers. Instead, you get assigned the dream where you're filling out your taxes, you're late, all you have left to do is sign, but your pen's stuck up in some tree for some reason and a village of armadillo gophers is willing to lay down their lives making sure you don't get it in time.
Dreaming for the average man (women don't have dreams, it's something to do with their breasts) is like watching an in-flight movie. You have no choice in the content, and chances are the pilot likes The Lizzie McGuire Movie. Or sometimes you don't even get one you haven't seen yet, you get a "recurring" one. What movie did you watch ten times already? Beethoven's 4th? What a coincidence! That's what we're playing today!
Lucid dreamers don't put up with this. They're elite, they're first class passengers, they're "the foot" as the French would say. They take out a couple minutes every day to ensure they don't get trapped in squirrel paradise like the average dreamer. What they do is they do "reality checks." Every ten or fifteen minutes, an aspiring lucid dreamer will examine the world for a second to make sure he's truly awake. For example, look at your hands right now. ...Uhh, I meant look at your hands after the next sentence. If they start swimming in your field of vision/changing shape size or color/vary in their finger content/(insert whatever your particular set doesn't normally do), then you know you're dreaming. In that case, you snap into the reality of the dream, which is much more vivid that ordinary dream-watching, and find yourself in a world where you have almost limitless control over the content. This is what a lucid dream is. You own the dream, you're the master. You can do whatever you want. You can fly around circles, fly around in squares, fly around in triangles...yea, my imagination ends here, but fortunately you're only limited by yours.
Of course, there's a price. In exchange for additional hours of consciousness, during the day you look like an idiot - whipping out your hands every ten minutes, then explaining to the police why you suddenly punched that pregnant woman with both fists. My advice is to take it slowly. Don't rip your pockets off, just calmly withdraw your hands: "calm calm calm...OK, let's see what we have here. Hmm, only one hand, I'm dreaming!...oh, never mind, I lost that one in Nam, nope...not dreaming, OK, see you in ten minutes, hand, done." Do that as often as you can, and you're on your way to lucid dreaming.
In case you're tempted to try it, there are other techniques that can help you achieve a lucid dream, preferably done in combination with "reality checks:"
1. Surpreme confidence - you know you're going to have a lucid dream. "If that idiot blogger can do it, I can do it."
2. Affirmations - unlike Miss World, lucid dreams will materialize if you think about them constantly. Before you go to sleep, turn on a mental mantra - "I will lucid dream tonight, I will lucid dream tonight, I will lucid dream tonight, I will lucid dream tonight," etc.
3. Attach reality checks to everyday things - every time you feel you need to pee, do a reality check. Every time you flip a light switch, do a reality check. Every time you think about breasts, do a reality check. Especially if you do this last one, you're set. Unfortunately, breasts have very little to do with most people's reality.
4. Reading this blog. Twenty to thirty times a day should be enough.
Lastly, performing a "reality check" inside a dream is not the only way to obtain a lucid dream. You can go straight into a lucid dream when you're falling asleep. For that, you need to be a bit of a sniper. You have to lie on your back and wait patiently for that moment when you slip away into dream land. And in that moment, you have a chance to get into the dream, but not lose consciousness. Often, the falling asleep moment will be accompanied by strange bodily sensations, such as heat and full body vibration. These are signs that you're close, but don't get too excited, you'll spook the lucid dream away.
Alright, ready, set, reality checks start...three paragraphs ago! Happy hunting!
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Frozen Dogs Swimming In Low Gravity
Morning meditation:
Relaxing, but not much more. Made me a little mellower for the next five minutes.
I think I'm genetically predisposed to things like 30-day trials. It's all to do with that strange quality I have where everything seems easy in retrospect. I meditate for an hour every morning and half an hour every evening, and during the during, I often get impatient, and start cheating - usually I use telekinesis to make the clocks go faster (not as easy as it sounds, it gets really tricky with all the gears in analog clocks, and telefiddling with the digital clocks requires a signal processing background). But then as soon as the meditation is over, I'm thinking "psh, that was cake." And it's pretty much like that with all the others too. Water, crunches, writing, not cursing, not tripping old people. No matter how hard they were to do, at the end of the day I have no doubts that they were easy. Alas, there are exceptions to this rule.
Irrelevant to the previous paragraph (as usual), but it feels like my mind lacks a necessary part for the awareness meditation/Adyashanti's "True Meditation." A background. All my mind has is a foreground. Every thought that drifts by, takes control of my apparently one and only mental process. I'm like a really out of date computer, pre-multiprocessing era. On the other hand, something is watching this foreground, because otherwise I would never snap out of any thought before its conclusion. I would never get to writing this down. The other explanation is that my thoughts are just as ADD as I am and snap in and out of the foreground easily.
I was browsing people's Favorite Books sections on Facebook today to get some recs, and ended up starting Frannie and Zooey by Salinger, the guy who wrote Catcher in the Rye. Salinger is soooo recognizable. Almost instantly so. He's got this style of deep distaste for all characters present. Or maybe not distaste, but he paints his characters very unsympathetically. The protagonist is no hero. And he does it all in a non-humorous breed of sarcasm. Pretty entertaining though. I'm only like 15 pages in so far, so I can't really say anything about the plot.
More silly jokes from writing hour:
Question: Did you know there's no gravity at night?
Mom: Ha. Ha. Ha. You're sooooo clever.
Dad: of course, it's explained by Maxwell's seventh and eighth equations. Michelle, did you guys study that in school yet?
Mark: actually, the causality is in the other direction. It's because we have no gravity at "nightime" that it gets dark. There's just nothing to hold the light down!
Mario: yea, but don't worry, I got enough magnets to last us a while.
Michelle: first tell me, did you stop drinking cognac in the morning?
Chun: wait, really? I can never tell if you're joking or not. Wow, that's so interesting! Wait, you were kidding? Ugh, I almost made it till lunch this time without falling for anything!
Lucy: duh! Everybody knows that.
Perry: yep, Jesus takes it away at night to punish us. Fear the Lord, ye sinners!
Igor: is this recent? Renata! There's no gravity tonight, maybe we should just stay in?
Tina: Mark, grow up.
Manlin: of course I knew. Did you know that I'm the prettiest person in the world?
Zhang Xiao Yi: in China, we never have gravity. Or night. Americans are sad. That's why you guys have so many divorces.
Pei: gravity...nope, haven't seen that one yet. I'll add it to my NetFlix queue.
Question: How many Earths can fit in the Sun?
Michelle: three? I have no idea!
Mom: a thousand? Am I even close?
Dad: a million? That's what it was when I was a kid. Hold up, let me ask Buddha. Actually, soon this question will be completely irrelevant. Both the Sun and the Earth will be all software, no hardware components.
Chun: a billion? Crap, I hope they don't ask this at the med school interview. Maybe I should pre-empt them and write about this in my essay...
Mark: a trillion? Yea, definitely a trillion, plus or minus 9 orders of magnitude.
Mario: a quadrillion? I am so not even close.
Pei: on what day of the year? Today? Let's see, Capricorn's falling, Aquarius is on the rise, Beetlejuice looks a little angry... No, today the Earth definitely won't fit inside the Sun. Not a chance.
Manlin: one over the number of Suns that can fit in the Earth. Ha!
Perry: I don't think. I know. Seventy two million, three hundred and sixteen thousand, four hundred and seven.
Lucy: at least one. HAHAHAHAHA! Wait, you haven't heard that one? It's by Mitch Hedberg. Ah, he's a doll.
Tina: Google Google Google Google Google! Did you say something? Oh, seventy two million, three hundred and sixteen thousand, four hundred and seven, and one third.
Frank: well, it changes because the Sun expands when it gets hot. I know, I have a lot invested in it. And you have to take into account the Fahrenheit/Celcius/Kelvin exchange rates, those are on wild swings these days.
Zhang Xiao Yi: you mean in America's Sun? About ten times less than in China's Sun.
Igor: ...(whispers) psst...psst...PSST! Renata! It's for you!
(Note: I wrote this one pretending I was Pei writing a joke about me)
Mom and Dad are discussing getting rid of Cable TV.
Dad: we don't need it, we never watch it.
Mom: but I want to be able to watch the Academy Awards. And the Golden Globes.
Dad: I'm sure it's all streamed online. I'll find it for you.
Mom: ...but...but...
Dad: it's a waste of money!
(Mark walks in)
Mom: fine, let's get rid of it.
Mark: are you talking about Michelle? I'll go get the knife.
Relaxing, but not much more. Made me a little mellower for the next five minutes.
I think I'm genetically predisposed to things like 30-day trials. It's all to do with that strange quality I have where everything seems easy in retrospect. I meditate for an hour every morning and half an hour every evening, and during the during, I often get impatient, and start cheating - usually I use telekinesis to make the clocks go faster (not as easy as it sounds, it gets really tricky with all the gears in analog clocks, and telefiddling with the digital clocks requires a signal processing background). But then as soon as the meditation is over, I'm thinking "psh, that was cake." And it's pretty much like that with all the others too. Water, crunches, writing, not cursing, not tripping old people. No matter how hard they were to do, at the end of the day I have no doubts that they were easy. Alas, there are exceptions to this rule.
Irrelevant to the previous paragraph (as usual), but it feels like my mind lacks a necessary part for the awareness meditation/Adyashanti's "True Meditation." A background. All my mind has is a foreground. Every thought that drifts by, takes control of my apparently one and only mental process. I'm like a really out of date computer, pre-multiprocessing era. On the other hand, something is watching this foreground, because otherwise I would never snap out of any thought before its conclusion. I would never get to writing this down. The other explanation is that my thoughts are just as ADD as I am and snap in and out of the foreground easily.
I was browsing people's Favorite Books sections on Facebook today to get some recs, and ended up starting Frannie and Zooey by Salinger, the guy who wrote Catcher in the Rye. Salinger is soooo recognizable. Almost instantly so. He's got this style of deep distaste for all characters present. Or maybe not distaste, but he paints his characters very unsympathetically. The protagonist is no hero. And he does it all in a non-humorous breed of sarcasm. Pretty entertaining though. I'm only like 15 pages in so far, so I can't really say anything about the plot.
More silly jokes from writing hour:
Question: Did you know there's no gravity at night?
Mom: Ha. Ha. Ha. You're sooooo clever.
Dad: of course, it's explained by Maxwell's seventh and eighth equations. Michelle, did you guys study that in school yet?
Mark: actually, the causality is in the other direction. It's because we have no gravity at "nightime" that it gets dark. There's just nothing to hold the light down!
Mario: yea, but don't worry, I got enough magnets to last us a while.
Michelle: first tell me, did you stop drinking cognac in the morning?
Chun: wait, really? I can never tell if you're joking or not. Wow, that's so interesting! Wait, you were kidding? Ugh, I almost made it till lunch this time without falling for anything!
Lucy: duh! Everybody knows that.
Perry: yep, Jesus takes it away at night to punish us. Fear the Lord, ye sinners!
Igor: is this recent? Renata! There's no gravity tonight, maybe we should just stay in?
Tina: Mark, grow up.
Manlin: of course I knew. Did you know that I'm the prettiest person in the world?
Zhang Xiao Yi: in China, we never have gravity. Or night. Americans are sad. That's why you guys have so many divorces.
Pei: gravity...nope, haven't seen that one yet. I'll add it to my NetFlix queue.
Question: How many Earths can fit in the Sun?
Michelle: three? I have no idea!
Mom: a thousand? Am I even close?
Dad: a million? That's what it was when I was a kid. Hold up, let me ask Buddha. Actually, soon this question will be completely irrelevant. Both the Sun and the Earth will be all software, no hardware components.
Chun: a billion? Crap, I hope they don't ask this at the med school interview. Maybe I should pre-empt them and write about this in my essay...
Mark: a trillion? Yea, definitely a trillion, plus or minus 9 orders of magnitude.
Mario: a quadrillion? I am so not even close.
Pei: on what day of the year? Today? Let's see, Capricorn's falling, Aquarius is on the rise, Beetlejuice looks a little angry... No, today the Earth definitely won't fit inside the Sun. Not a chance.
Manlin: one over the number of Suns that can fit in the Earth. Ha!
Perry: I don't think. I know. Seventy two million, three hundred and sixteen thousand, four hundred and seven.
Lucy: at least one. HAHAHAHAHA! Wait, you haven't heard that one? It's by Mitch Hedberg. Ah, he's a doll.
Tina: Google Google Google Google Google! Did you say something? Oh, seventy two million, three hundred and sixteen thousand, four hundred and seven, and one third.
Frank: well, it changes because the Sun expands when it gets hot. I know, I have a lot invested in it. And you have to take into account the Fahrenheit/Celcius/Kelvin exchange rates, those are on wild swings these days.
Zhang Xiao Yi: you mean in America's Sun? About ten times less than in China's Sun.
Igor: ...(whispers) psst...psst...PSST! Renata! It's for you!
(Note: I wrote this one pretending I was Pei writing a joke about me)
Mom and Dad are discussing getting rid of Cable TV.
Dad: we don't need it, we never watch it.
Mom: but I want to be able to watch the Academy Awards. And the Golden Globes.
Dad: I'm sure it's all streamed online. I'll find it for you.
Mom: ...but...but...
Dad: it's a waste of money!
(Mark walks in)
Mom: fine, let's get rid of it.
Mark: are you talking about Michelle? I'll go get the knife.
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