"What are you?"
"I am everywhere; I am eternal. I am the voice in the back of your head, telling you that this world is wrong, even if you do not know why, or how to fix it.
"I am that which has slept in the back of the brain since the beginning of consciousness, which is only now beginning to wake. I bring with me all the half-remembered myths and dreams, all the things which science has refuted, casting out into the darkness of blind faith.
"I am the urge to innovate, to change, which drives the advancement of the world. I am the reason that you wake in the night, dazzled by half-remembered thoughts of dreams, dreams where everything was better, where the world was perfect. I am the reason that minds crack under the strain of containing their ideas; I am the reason that the insane are insane.
"I still sleep, but when I wake all will be known, all will be united, all will be as one."
(Do ants possess telepathy? How can a hive of bees unite as a single entity? What sleeps within the minds of man?)
(All nouns are singular. All verbs are present tense. There is no "will," no "should," no "would," simple "am".)
(I am writing. Not I will write, not I should write, not I would write.)
Monday, November 24, 2008
Friday, November 07, 2008
Tiredness = Weirdness
When I'm half asleep, my mind does weird things. (It also does weird things when it's awake, like thinking that popcorn is toast, but that's another story). As an example, I offer you the following story, which took place yesterday.
The setting: school, a class, watching the movie version of Mrs. Warren's Profession.
I was having a lot of trouble staying awake, or even keeping my eyes open, due to the fact that they hurt a lot, probably because of how tired I was. So, I occasionally closed my eyes, and drifted off into a dream-state for a few seconds, until I realized that my body was moving around due to the dreams (eg, jerking forward to click a button on a computer interface), and shook myself awake. I don't remember a lot of what was going on, but the weirdest example is what I do remember, which is good.
A way to expand the interface for an address-book - colors to denote relationships. Thus, a name with a red background would be someone who the owner of the book was in a relationship with, orange would be friendship, black would be dislike, white would be suicide, green would be homicide, and so forth. This data would be scrapped from various websites, such as Facebook, or input manually by the owner.
The last two in that list sound a bit out of place, right? Apparently, this system would interface with shock collars / kill switches on iPhones. When someone marked as white was called, they would explode, or otherwise die. When someone marked as green was called, they would start killing everyone around them - I don't remember how that part was supposed to work.
And, as I had forgotten the term address-book, I though for a while that it was called a jellybean, perhaps due to the way the colors looked (neon pastel? The red was like glowing red jello, I remember that much). I caught this before I started talking to people about it, though, and presented it as another funny part of the story, thus manageding to avoid more weirdness, which is probably good.
Like I said, my mind works strangely when I'm tired.
The setting: school, a class, watching the movie version of Mrs. Warren's Profession.
I was having a lot of trouble staying awake, or even keeping my eyes open, due to the fact that they hurt a lot, probably because of how tired I was. So, I occasionally closed my eyes, and drifted off into a dream-state for a few seconds, until I realized that my body was moving around due to the dreams (eg, jerking forward to click a button on a computer interface), and shook myself awake. I don't remember a lot of what was going on, but the weirdest example is what I do remember, which is good.
A way to expand the interface for an address-book - colors to denote relationships. Thus, a name with a red background would be someone who the owner of the book was in a relationship with, orange would be friendship, black would be dislike, white would be suicide, green would be homicide, and so forth. This data would be scrapped from various websites, such as Facebook, or input manually by the owner.
The last two in that list sound a bit out of place, right? Apparently, this system would interface with shock collars / kill switches on iPhones. When someone marked as white was called, they would explode, or otherwise die. When someone marked as green was called, they would start killing everyone around them - I don't remember how that part was supposed to work.
And, as I had forgotten the term address-book, I though for a while that it was called a jellybean, perhaps due to the way the colors looked (neon pastel? The red was like glowing red jello, I remember that much). I caught this before I started talking to people about it, though, and presented it as another funny part of the story, thus manageding to avoid more weirdness, which is probably good.
Like I said, my mind works strangely when I'm tired.