Please Don’t Look At Me With Those Eyes

[First Date – Blink 182]

So today on Tumblr, the Daily Wh.at linked to this discussion: If you’re about to enter into a Groundhog Day loop, what would you do to prepare?

Instead of writing a lot (I did write some, but not a lot) I started thinking about it.

Granted you read around half a page of the discussion, then you’d know what I’m about to suggest is largely based from what I read – hey, they had good ideas! But, in a nutshell, this is what I’d do.

Firstly, I am going to go with the same assumption as the movie does, and say that the reset time is at 6 am. And, for the purposes of making this discussion actually interesting, I’m going to give myself a decent amount of money, and at least 2 days’ of notice because…well you’ll see why. So, let’s say that the day I will relive for the next 3652 days (roughly 10 years) is from a Friday 6am to Saturday 6am. It just so happens that Christmas Eve this year is on a Friday. I do believe I will project my repeating day for the Christmas Eve Friday (you may wonder why I don’t make it next Friday. Well, see, that’s because it will be summer in New York and I hate summer).

Alright, so on Wednesday I’ll fly from here (Melbourne) to New York. The flight takes roughly 21 hours and 30 minutes, so I’ll say 22 for the sake of delays. If I take off at a cushiony 10 am here in Melbourne, I’ll arrive at New York 4pm on Wednesday (I’ve just taken a few minutes to factor in our respective Daylight Savings). I’ll force myself to get as used to the local time as possible (not to complicate my life, I will say that the 6am-6am works via New York’s time), and so on Thursday I will go to bed at a nice 9:30-10pm. This way, when I wake up at 6am on Friday, I will be thoroughly refreshed – ensuring that I will be thoroughly refreshed for each time that I wake up for the next 10 years.

But, wait, there’s more!

Upon arriving at New York on Wednesday afternoon, I will sort out my affairs. I will rent out a relatively cheap motel room for a night, but at the same time make bookings at the best hotel in New York for their best suite. The booking time? Thursday 6pm – Saturday 10am. I will therefore get that room for the duration of the loop, without having to waste time on check-in and check-out. Also, I’ll hire a personal chauffeur for the day.

I’ll make dinner reservations at all the good restaurants in New York, and depending on which one I feel like, I go to whichever one for Friday. I’ll load my phone with plenty of credit, have my credit cards ready to use (again, I assume I have credit cards), charge up my iPod with all the best songs (unfortunately I’ll probably get sick of these songs, but that’s okay because I’ll have my laptop ready to download new music each morning if I have to), and make sure my wallet and bag is all well packed.

Next, I will find a way to have a drum-set, electric guitar and, if possible, a piano delivered to my room. I will probably get sick of trawling the city after a while, so I must set myself some hobbies and goals I can do despite being reset. Like Murray, I can learn instruments – get the number of a teacher and see if they can’t come teach me on Christmas Eve each time when I call up. Who knows, I might even try to learn to swim!

And this was a point that was fantastically suggested on the site: Find a book series with over 3652 pages (the Harry Potter series should do nicely) and mark the page that would the 3652nd. Make yourself read a page and one page only every morning without fail. You will retain the memory of what you read the previous day. Once you’ve gotten to the 3652nd page, you will know that you will wake up tomorrow and Saturday will go on.

With all these things sorted, of course there will be downsides.

First of all, that’s 10 years of waking up completely alone. And even if you go to bed with someone, you’ll wake up completely alone. I know that I WILL get sick of doing it. I’ll get sick of the songs on my iPod, the songs on the radio, the sound of my alarm, the hotel staff, the food for breakfast, the weather, the restaurants, the fact that I have to read Harry Potter a page at a time…and most likely I will come to detest Christmas. Even if I travel elsewhere (another reason for choosing New York is that it takes around 8 hours to fly to London, and just a bit more for other parts of Europe. If anything I can get up at 6, go to the airport and go somewhere else) I’ll get sick of the routine.

I will run out of movies to see at the theater, I will get sick of making new friends each day, I will be tired of drinking til I throw up but still be fine the next day…it WOULD be nice if I had a partner or someone to spend the days with for sure, but then I’d come to be sick of them too.

Maybe Christmas Eve was not the best choice. All that bustle would be wonderful for the first week but…it will be hell traffic later on.

Hmm…

Well, what do YOU think?

Alex.

I Finally Found That Life Goes On Without You

[Naive Orleans – Anberlin]

Do you remember when I was working towards that goal described in my title? (Yes I searched through my blog to find that post)

Well, I am glad to say that I have achieved it, a year later.

So, finally, I saw Inception today. I definitely won’t give anything away because you need to sit in there yourself and get the whole experience. But it does bring up the thought: “Is reality really where we want to stay when dreams are better?”

Aside from Annie clutching at me during loud sounds, I really enjoyed the movie. It was not hard to understand the concept, and to follow, and I really admired the creator of this concept, as well as the director for making this concept into visual reality. The intelligence of the movie was not dwarved by the excitement of the action.

While it aided in the understanding of what would otherwise have been a very encrypted movie, I didn’t quite like them explaining everything. I felt that it wasn’t realistic that DiCaprio’s character Cobb would explain to a rookie architecture Ariadne (Ellen Page) the details of his private thoughts for the sake of the audience understanding.

I think I will now go Google various theories about the ending.

Alex.

P.S. I just realized that the creator and the director was the same guy. GG Chris Nolan.

A Vinyl Queen From A Surfer’s Dream

[Miss Delaney – Jack’s Mannequin]

Day 5 – Your Dreams

Dear Dreams,

I don’t know which one they’re referring to so I guess…to my dreams, literally, I would say: Hey, thanks for entertaining me all these years! I know sometimes we haven’t been on very good terms with each other; you sometimes lie to me and show me things I wish were true but are not, and then when I realize that they’re not to be, your comforting fog is nowhere to be seen.

Sometimes you take the things that scare me the most, the secrets that I don’t tell anyone, and you show them to me, like you’re taunting me. You would throw me down a flight of stairs, off a building ledge, take away all my friends, accelerate my car off the highway, throw me into the deep ocean, toss me into hungry flames…and, again, when I am awake and about to beat the crap out of you for scaring me, you’d already ran away.

But, sometimes, we’re friends. You sometimes show me how to solve problems, and you warn me of how horribly wrong events can go so that I can avoid them. You let me soar through the sky, break through walls, and most of all you make going to bed pleasant. So for that, thank you. For everything else, screw you.

To my metaphoric dreams, that is, my hopes and plans for the future: Hey, one day you and me are gonna get together and make so many Happiness babies it ain’t gonna be funny, so I hope you’re prepared for that. For now, I may seem to be taking my time but I swear I am working my way to you as fast as I can. But, please, ’til then, don’t give up, keep waiting, and for FUCK’s sake don’t die!

Alex.

P.S. I didn’t even realize ’til now that my title has the word ‘dream’ in it and I totally didn’t notice it, let alone intend it.

Twisting My Stomach Into Knots

[Sound Of Settling – Death Cab For Cutie]

I’ll write this before I get too lazy to. Today, David and I went to the city to meet up with Jac after he accounting exam.

The train ride up we spent talking about Naruto and Detective Conan. It is fun to talk to someone who’d seen a lot of the episodes. He also told me about some Death Note stuff which sounded pretty interesting.

We got to the Exhibition Hall where the exam was taking place, and we realized we had 30 minutes left. So we walked around the building to the Museum, and looked around a bit (we were going to take Jac into the museum since she hasn’t been before) and when we went back out, we started discussing what I would do if I’d bought the Exhibition Hall as my house. The renovations I would do, etc. It got a bit too wishful thinking, but I did enjoy the idea. Yeah, because I can make the museum part of my backyard, and have the IMAX theater as my personal theater. Easy. Ha.

I saw Steph W when she came outside, and she gave me a decent hug, which is all thanks to my awesome advice.

Saw Josh N, and so we were waiting with him when Jac came out. Steph W and her friends decided to take the tram to Melb Central, and David, Josh, Jac and I decided to walk to Melb Central, seeing if we can win. We did!

We all sat together and had Nandos for lunch. I think I might have weirded out Steph’s friends. I discovered that Nandos have Extra Extra Hot Peri Peri sauce. It burns! I LOVED IT! Will have it always now.

We made Jac decide on what to do after lunch, because she never ever ever ever makes a decision. In the end I suggested that we go to Myers so I can look at alarm clocks for her birthday. So, technically, she didn’t decide. Still, as David said, baby steps.

On the train home, Swin called David, and I stole the phone and talked to her for the ride. WHAT!? I haven’t talked to her in months and she can always call David later.

Said bye to David and his friend Matt at Glen Waverley, and Jac and I went to the Glen food court to bum since I don’t want to go home. We played Fruit Ninja, and I beat the best score that Jac couldn’t beat on her iPod, meaning now she really can’t beat it.

Tomorrow, I’m going to buffet with Mandy and the rest. Really looking forward to it! Gonna save me a bunch of money with the 2 hour ticket after 6 pm thing haha.

I had a chat with Steph on MSN just then, and she made me see just how awesome Jac is. So I will be more grateful from now on about being able to be Jac’s friend.

Alex.

Never Want To Be So Cold

[Falling Inside The Black – Skillet]

Something interesting I found on Tumblr, about dreams:

1. You forget 90% of your dreams. Within 5 minutes of waking, half of your dream is forgotten. Within 10, 90% is gone.

2. Blind people also dream. People who became blind after birth can see images in their dreams. People who are born blind do not see any images, but have dreams equally vivid involving their other senses of sound, smell, touch and emotion.

3. Everybody dreams. Every human being dreams (except in cases of extreme psychological disorder). If you think, you are not dreaming, you just forget your dreams.

4. In our dreams, we only see faces that we already know. Our mind is not inventing faces – in our dreams we see real faces of real people that we have seen during our life but may not know or remember. We have all seen hundreds of thousands of faces throughout our lives, so we have an endless supply of characters for our brain to utilize during our dreams.

5. Not everybody dreams in color. A full 12% of sighted people dream exclusively in black and white. The remaining number dream in full color. Studies from 1915 through to the 1950s maintained that the majority of dreams were in black and white, but these results began to change in the 1960s. Today, only 4.4% of the dreams of under-25 year-olds are in black and white. Recent research has suggested that those changing results may be linked to the switch from black-and-white film and TV to color media.

6. Dreams are symbolic. If you dream about some particular subject it is not often that the dream is about that. Dreams speak in a deeply symbolic language. Whatever symbol your dream picks on it is most unlikely to be a symbol for itself.

7. Emotions; The most common emotion experienced in dreams is anxiety. Negative emotions are more common than positive ones.

8. You can have four to seven dreams in one night. On average, you can dream anywhere from one or two hours every night.

9. Animals dream too. Studies have been done on many different animals, and they all show the same brain waves during dreaming sleep as humans. Watch a dog sleeping sometime. The paws move like they are running and they make yipping sounds as if they are chasing something in a dream.

10. Body Paralysis.

Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep is a normal stage of sleep characterized by rapid movements of the eyes. REM sleep in adult humans typically occupies 20-25% of total sleep, about 90-120 minutes of a night’s sleep.

During REM sleep the body is paralyzed by a mechanism in the brain in order to prevent the movements which occur in the dream from causing the physical body to move. However, it is possible for this mechanism to be triggered before, during, or after normal sleep while the brain awakens.

11. Dream Incorporation. Our mind interprets the external stimuli that our senses are bombarded with when we are asleep and make them a part of our dreams. This means that sometimes, in our dreams, we hear a sound from reality and incorporate it in a way. For example you may be dreaming that you are in a concert, while your brother is playing a guitar during your sleep.

12. Men and women dream differently. Men tend to dream more about other men. Around 70% of the characters in a man’s dream are other men. On the other hand, a woman’s dream contains almost an equal number of men and women. Aside from that, men generally have more aggressive emotions in their dreams than the female lot.

13. Precognitive Dreams. Results of several surveys across large population sets indicate that between 18% and 38% of people have experienced at least one precognitive dream and 70% have experienced déjà vu. The percentage of persons that believe precognitive dreaming is possible is even higher, ranging from 63% to 98%.

14. If you are snoring, then you cannot be dreaming.

15. You can experience an orgasm in your dreams. You can not only have sex as pleasurable as in your real life while dreaming, but also experience an orgasm as strong as a real one, without any wet results. The sensations felt while lucid dreaming (touch, pleasure and etc..) can be as pleasurable and strong (or I believe even stronger) as the sensations experienced in the real world.

The part about how men dream more about other men made me laugh for a good five minutes, and the bit about the orgasm made me raise my eyebrows in amusement.

This also means that my dad never dreams, very loudly, every night.

Alex.

We’ll come back in 5 years’ time…

On the way home from English SAC today (which, in the words of Dom, I semi-raped. That in itself is funny because I wrote a rape scene in. Anyway) we were just randomly discussing things, happy to get stuff over and done with. And, I forget how we got onto the topic, we were saying how in five years’ time we’ll come back and Eunice will be the most successful and rich out of all of us.

Then I was saying how I’d end up not that rich but making TV references left right and center.

And Carmaine will come back to twist everyone’s arms around.

And then I was going to say Bee, but I wasn’t sure what she wanted to do. I asked her, and she fluttered her extremely long lashes and winked, “It’ll be a mystery.”

So I said, “Yeah, Bee will come back and be like, you won’t know what I’m doing but I can just LOOK at you and I know what you do. Yeah, I can just STUDY your BEHAVIOR and know what you ate for DINNER last night.”

And we laughed, because it’s probably true.

Alex.

Can someone turn the happiness on?

Why am i not happy like I used to be? I used to be able to have long happy thoughts and memories, my imaginations full of fun things we could do, have done, should do, so forth. Now it’s hard for me to think happily. Despite myself, I keep hearing a darker voice telling me to see the worst in things. To see the glass as half empty instead of being grateful for the water I’ve been given.

And I should be happy. It’s not from the person I’d originally thought, but I’ve gotten everything I ever wanted in a friend. And all I could do to her is complain about how she’s not the person. I should just cut the crap. I’ve been given a pretty good run for the past weeks and a pretty good run coming up for the holidays.

There are three letters I want to write before the year is out. They’re each to Bianca, Carmaine, Dani and Eunice. I want to thank them, in a lengthy manner. But I don’t even know where to start. Last year Carmaine wrote me 2 simple pages, A5, and in less than 200 words she’d struck the chord, and given me a message I still keep in my wallet. I should be able to do the same. I should be able to write the same kind of things so easily. But I can’t even find the voice that I write with.

Last night I had a long and, let’s face it, depressing conversation with Dani. Well, no. The topic of conversation was depressing, but I felt more relaxed and comfortable and…content than if we were talking about plans for the summer holidays.

There was just one other moment when I was content, and that was when I was at Bee’s house, lying in her lap while she was…trying…to study for History. Just watching the Flinestones and feeling her breathing.

I’m not happy or content unless I’m with someone else, these days. I personally depress myself. I can’t stand the crash back to reality after my dreams end.

De Fluffe, Out.

Feverish Delirium

I had the flu yesterday (I guess still do today but my kick-ass immune system finally kicked in again and I’m much better now) so I didn’t blog. I didn’t actually do anything yesterday after I came home from school early (first in my life, I swear). Luckily I didn’t lose my appetite so I had some dinner, watched Taken Out (shithouse show), kind of dazed through Australian Idol, lasted a few minutes of NCIS then hit my bed. Despite the sledgehammer in my head, I fell asleep quite quickly. At least much quicker than the nap I tried to take before dinner. That was 3 hours of lying in a bed that felt like an oven (something about a 39 degree temperature doesn’t mix well with a human body) and falling in and out of dozes. At some point my headache screamed, and I dreamt that someone actually came and kicked me in the head.

Anyway, in those initial 3 hours I had momentary dreams, some of them were images I conjured up to make myself feel better. The people that came to me in those dreams, who hugged me in my mind (as well as the 3 beautiful people who in reality texted me to wish me well) and whose laughter I held on to, I thank you. I know it sounds like a cliche movie moment, and I wasn’t dying or anything, but I felt like crap and remembering you guys made the crap go away, to put eloquently.

Finally, I want to apologize to Bee for possibly infecting her, Dani for not being there to hug her when she finally came back to school, Carmaine for failing to be by your side, and Moshi for making you do your Japanese Kaiwa early.

De Fluffe, Out.

P.S. I missed you.