I got this fortune in a fortune cookie the other day. It is so profound, I thought I might share it with all of you.
Click to go to slightly larger image.
Monthly Archive for October, 2007
I have some pretty messed up nightmares sometimes, even though I’m a pretty logical, rational person, right? Well, I certainly like to think that I am anyways. It’s for this very reason that I’ve been sort of freaked out.
I don’t generally put any stock into dreams. In fact, to me, they’re really pretty meaningless. I know that some of you might, so sorry if that’s offensive to you, but to me, dreams are just dreams: no big deal.
But, I had this dream last night that awoke me in utter terror. Cold sweat, sweaty palms, heart racing, full-blown physiological anxiety response.
Here’s the dream: I’m sitting at my computer, and I go to this website. A blob in the middle starts to devour the words on the page, and then the browser, then the icons on my desktop, then my monitor itself, and it just keeps growing, devouring everything around it. It looks like it’s a series of jet black fingers, one after the other, just flowing into the void. The thing expands, and I’m just on the edge of it, trying to get away, but realizing the futility, I turn around to look at it. At this point, it’s just a mountain of fluid, black fingers. Something about what I’m seeing is familiar, but I can’t figure out what this thing is.
I awoke terrified, playing back the vision of the thing over and over again trying like mad to figure out what this thing was because I both know what it is and have no idea. Even while awake the thing is terrifying, playing vividly over and over again in my mind’s eye, to the point where I have to restrain myself from just screaming out in terror. I got up, got out of bed, and started working on some homework, but this thing just dominated my thoughts. I finished my homework, went back to bed, and eventually got back to sleep, literally jumping at every noise, wondering if it was that thing.
I got up in the morning (a whole two hours later), and I was still thinking about this thing. The physiological signs of anxiety were all still present. I finally got my mind off it, and went to school. On and off all day, I’ve started thinking about it, being able to see it clearly in my mind’s eye, and the anxiety starts up again.
What’s up with this?
Ok, folks. I finally got a CD of the MRI images, so I thought I’d grab one that showed what’s going on in my head. I put some labels on so no one would get confused. Also, the labels are in red, so don’t freak out. Here’s a small version, if you click it, it’ll go to the bigger one.
Enjoy!
Dumb thing number one:
Last week, I got home from school, and I had the feeling that we needed some more excitement around the house. Well, it wasn’t 15 minutes later that my wish was granted. When I answered the extremely rare, and always unexpected, doorbell, I was delighted to find at the door a woman holding a flyer. She immediately began talking loudly and slowly as if I were a small child about how her boss was having a competition, and they only had to do 20 Demos a day and they would get to go to New Orleans for a week.
New Orleans. Woah. This was big, I tell you.
I told her, sure, I’d love to help you get to New Orleans, but I won’ t buy whatever you’re selling. Well, she was just OK with that, and she said she would send a rep right over. A few minutes later, the doorbell rang again, and there she was, holding her Hoover as if it were the Holy Grail itself.
I’m a pretty sarcastic guy, and my roommate, Brian, is pretty sarcastic as well. He and I are a salesperson’s worst nightmare. I was sad when Brian left after the first fifteen minutes. I was more sad when he was still gone after the first hour. I was outright depressed when he was still gone for the second hour. Things got better during the third hour, when the guy driving the sales reps all over town was across town picking someone else up.
With the demo over, and our rugs sufficiently clean, I was stuck with the sales rep continuing to bubble, bounce, and squeak her way into my heart. You know, that part of your heart where you keep special thoughts about those people you wish you could kill? Yeah. That’s the place.
So, she was intrigued by the shiny white box sitting on top of our TV, and wondered what it was. I told her it was a Nintendo Wii, and she immediately insisted that I show her how to play. For the next forty-five minutes, I played Wii Play games with the Hoover sales lady. She loved it. I loved it because while I couldn’t shoot her in real life, I didn’t miss a single target that had her Mii’s face plastered on it. Catharsis doesn’t even cut it.
Her ride showed up, finally, and on her way out the door, she said, “You know, I think I may have to buy one of those.” I grinned and asked her how she felt that she spent 3 hours trying to sell me an over-priced vacuum to no avail, and in 45 minutes, I had sold her a Nintendo Wii? I never heard the answer, because I was too busy shutting the door and proceeding to laugh for the next 10 minutes about the evening.
The moral of the story: At least the Mormons will “have another appointment” if you make them mad enough. The Hoover lady? She just keeps on going, no matter what.
P.S. I got them to go down from $2100 to $997, so if you’re really interested in buying a Hoover (and I’ll freely admit, it was pretty impressive how much dirt it picked up, even after she vacuumed with our existing vacuum), they’ll go down under $1000, so no need to pay more than that. Cheers!
Stay tuned tomorrow for Dumb Thing number 2.