Lucid Dreaming

There is a threshold between being consciously awake and dreaming in sleep which actually has more substance than being just a paper-thin barrier. The point where you are aware that you are dreaming just before waking up.

I was able to for the first time, force myself to stay in the dream and take control of how I moved and manipulate the things in the environment. Not very well, however.

In my typical dreams, I am merely presented with objects or people that are composites of memories, based on whatever chemical process happens to be occurring in my brain.

This time, however, I suddenly became consciously aware that I was in a store that specialized in holiday decorations, in particular, Halloween. I think the original process intended to evoke fear, but I picked up what turned out to be a very poorly made rubber Frankenstein mask.

The store turned out to be closed at the time and I was confronted by employees, but then I became aware they were actually lip-synced to a podcast to which I was earlier listening when  I fell asleep. They were out of context with the situation my brain was processing, which emboldened me further to take control.

I raised my arms toward an open skylight in the store and floated up to the roof. I was out of their reach. I raised my arms again, toward the sky over the rooftops, and there I was, flying at will, over short buildings, and around taller ones. People below me were saying "Look at that asshole!" "What a dick!" Like they were jealous. It made me smile.

Then I suddenly became aware of my breathing. I tried to resist going toward what looked like a big wall, or super-sized television screen that was flickering and snowy. Then it disappeared and all that remained was the darkness of the inside of my eyelids. I was awake.

For a second afterward, I tried to slip back under the barrier and almost did. After a moment I had no choice but to open my eyes.

I hope I can do that again. I was drinking small doses of coffee and listening to podcasts before falling asleep. Somewhere in there is the safety harness of conscious awareness I can cling to as I descend into dreamland.

The Withering

We first started receiving the signals a few years ago. We were going to finally witness the return to our planet of the Ancient Astronauts everyone was talking about.

I used to laugh every time I saw the show about Ancient Aliens on the History Channel of all places. I thought it was a huge hoax or conspiracy theory, but now we can get live video from the approaching armada of space ships, populated by human-like people.

There were all kinds of reports in the media about the human volunteers who left long ago, and are now returning after countless generations of progeny born in the vast darkness of space.

The first ship was coming down on a plateau outside of Lima, Peru. I won the lottery to stand in the front row when they opened the door and the first of them walked out to touch their home soil again for the first time in eons.

A large vessel slowly lowered through the clouds above, barely displacing them. No sound of rockets or any engines, the massive thing touched down. Barely audible was the sound of it's weight settling into the sand. Something deep under the soil made a loud cracking sound in a deep tone like an iceberg calving away from a glacier.

At first everyone panicked. Standing up from their folding chairs, and listening for another sign of danger, but none came.

Through my binoculars I could see where the doors are. Luckily I brought a tripod with me so my hands wouldn't get tired. I suddenly had the urge to snack. Staring through my tripod-mounted binoculars, I was able to tear open and eat a bag of Funyuns.

The doors slid open and the cameras began flashing and clicking uncontrollably. Through my temporary blindness from the camera flashes, I could see some figures emerge from the ship. They were human. They were definitely bipedal.

As they approached I started hearing groans and screams from the journalists. I started to feel dizzy myself and my nose started bleeding. We were being exposed to something that these aliens who were once human didn't realize would be harmful to planet dwellers protected under the Van Allen Belt.

They had evolved in the harshness of space. The generations that survived were immune to cosmic rays at every wavelength. But we were not. I came to this realization as I lay on the ground, staring at the sky, while my brain cooked from being exposed to these people.

The Negative Gravity Problem

We were standing in the workshop when the fellas from research and development showed up with a five gallon container, surrounded by Lead weights and welded to the cart. They were pushing it too fast and the thing hit the swinging double doors, busting the left door from it's bottom hinge.

It was still floating an inch off the floor so the cart pitched and yawed, bending the caster wheels of the cart as each corner of the cart individually bounced off the floor.

"Yoh! What the Hell, man!? Whose gonna fix that shit!" Harold said in a tone you could tell he could barely control, as he looked up from his newspaper. His first coffee cup of the morning still four-fifths full. He shot a look over his bifocals that would cast a pall over the rest of the day. His feet didn't move from his desk. "Chain that shit over in the corner. God dammit!"

The rest of us stood there, hearts sinking simultaneously. We all would have called in sick today if we saw today's invoice. Today we must install gravity thrusters. If the material escapes the container uncontrolled, it will expose the entire workshop that's not behind lead shielding.

The last time it happened, all the exposed materials, including people were forced away from the gravitational pull of the planet, the other gravitational forces in the solar system, the galaxy, and so-on. And so-on.

Continental Calving

You know how glaciers calve into the sea, creating icebergs, right?

Antarctic Glaciers 

After the Tsunami of 2011, I began to wonder if the same thing could happen the subducting earth's crust going under a continental plate.

Geology Cafe 

 Wondering what might happen if it just snapped off and sank into the asthenosphere? It probably just melts at the end and is absorbed, but what if it snapped? Would a giant fissure open up, flooding lava to the surface?

Gun Violence as a Health Issue

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) was researching gun violence within the context of health until 1996 when the National Rifle Association lobbied the United States Congress effectively enough to enact a "ban" on federal funding for gun violence research.

• PRI (07/02/2015) : Quietly, Congress extends a ban on CDC research on gun violence 
• NPR (12/08/2015) : Congress Still Limits Health Research On Gun Violence 
• Washington Post (01/14/2015) :Why the CDC still isn’t researching gun violence, despite the ban being lifted two years ago 

So, what was it that Congress was so upset about that they had to shut down the CDC's efforts to treat gun violence as a health issue?

• New Hampshire Public Radio (nhpr) : CDC Studies Wilmington, Delaware's Gun Violence As Public Health Issue 
• New York Times (12/24/2015) :When Gun Violence Felt Like a Disease, a City in Delaware Turned to the C.D.C. 
• Delawareonline.com (01/27/2017) : Post CDC report, officials suggest more youth support 
• The Atlantic (04/05/2016) : Why Did the CDC Stop Researching Gun Violence?

Consent

When rape is reported in the news media, many people have an irrational reaction and make sweeping generalizations about categories of people to which they do not belong.

It's east to make assumptions about everyone who belongs to one of these groups, if you don't belong to one or more of these groups: Poor people, rich people, dark people, light people, men, women, different language speaking people, skinny people, fat people, tall people, short people, bald people, uniformed people, exposed people, covered-up people, hat wearing people, facial hair people, different eye-shape people, tattooed people, political people, religious people, secular people, deformed people, low-pants people, backwards hat people, etc.

• Rape occurs when people assume consent instead of actually asking for consent.
• Fashion is not consent.
• Consent as defined in your own culture does not apply in other cultures.
• Rape occurs when people get consent but their partner is not at the legal age for consent based on state laws.
• Rape occurs when people get consent but their partner is under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

Here are some links to help you understand consent:

• Consent is Sexy 
• “Get Consent” Campaign for the Concordia Sexual Assault Resource Centre 
• Alcohol, sex and getting consent 

Evolution Revolution

You probably heard about the recent scientific breakthrough where human embryos had their DNA altered using a new process called CRISPR. The embryos were never allowed to grow into living babies, but perhaps they should.

If we are to evolve enough to be able to survive on our toxic planet with the extreme conditions resulting from human influenced climate change, we may need to create a super-human species after all.

A species that can eat plastic for energy. A species that can survive in extreme heat and drought. A species immune to Glyphosate. A species capable of adapting its immune system to new super-infections.

The world is changing too fast for Natural Selection. We live in a global environment that requires the hand of science to reach into the abyss of unethical advancement for the sake of our survival as a species.

The Senate Movement

A photograph is worth a thousand words, so they say. It's true. One image can carry a vast amount of information, but only for people who know about the subject portrayed.

Star Wars fans are out there now, trying to make Internet search engine results first show the image of Emperor Palpatine ( actor Ian McDiarmid ) whenever anyone enters the search term "senate" or "the senate"

You can guess from this the obvious the senate is an enathema to the people.

What have we become? We have the right to question authority, yet we seem to elect the worst kind of people. Why? Because we are manipulated into doing so. We elect people who are good at appealing to our pre-conceived beliefs. Not people who know what we need and must make decisions we don't like in order to save us.

Solar System Centrifuge Hypothesis

I want to run a science experiment where I build a 12 foot wide cone that slopes at maybe only two to five degrees from the center, put it on a variable speed turntable. While the turntable is slowly spinning, I would then add water loaded with materials of varying mass, until the spinning water reaches the edge of the cone but does not flow over the edge.

The idea is to see if the materials suspended in the water settles at specific distances from the center. Would material of similar mass coalesce at the same distance from the center? Would there even be a reasonable separation of material?

Since the gravity of our solar system appears to have similarly separated the rocky inner planets from the gaseous outer planets, with some minor exceptions, I'm wondering if in all this time we have advanced our material sciences and built a Periodic table, we have only discovered a fragment of the material that exists in the universe?

Mutant Apocalypse Nightmare

After a series of stupid mistakes that served to remind me why I can't have nice things or a nice job, I had a horrible and long nightmare. The culmination of my mishaps lead to an ultimate failure.

The team of scientists were anxiously awaiting my entrance to the facility with the launch codes and the formula to release a vaccine around the world to prevent something, God knows what. I get out of the truck and the package I'm holding slips out of my hands and bounces on the hard ground a couple of times. Everyone screams and I swear out-loud "Dammit! That's why I can't have nice things!"

I jolt myself awake for moment, The feeling is still there. I fade back to sleep and into a nightmare. I'm now in a huge facility, almost as big as a shopping mall, but there's broken glass, bullet holes, and piles of charred furniture against most of the doorways.

There are some people with me arguing about which way to run or how to fight back. Fight back against a horde of people who mutated into dog-sized hungry land-piranhas. The weird thing is they were still sentient. They tried to cajole me into letting them have my legs. One was almost persuasive, but he was just too gross looking.

I finally ran out of places to hide.

"Fine."

Road Rage Nightmare

I finally had one of those dreams where you wake up from a dream within a dream. I never thought it possible until last night.

I dreamed I was driving on the road behind some jerk who was swerving and braking in front of me, just to try and make me crash into him, when I just thought 'to Hell with this jerk' and just put my foot on the gas, slammed into his rear end, and drove him off the road. He flipped and then my car rolled over and over. in a cloud of dust.

I woke up. At first I thought with great relief it was just a dream, but I gradually realized I was in a strange hotel room and not at my real home. I got up and looked out the window and my car was not there.

The feeling of dread instantly washed over me. "Oh my God! This is not a dream! It's not a dream!" This was the feeling you get the moment after the moment you have a car accident, where at first you deny it's real and almost convince yourself it's just a dream, but the next moment is the dread you feel knowing there is no escape from the situation.

The hotel room had cheap wood paneling and tan trim loosely nailed around the windows. The details of the scene sharpened as if I was really coming awake. Then I woke up in my real bed but I wasn't sure.

Night Panic

Chronic Anxiety is hard to deal with, especially if you can't afford health care. I was diagnosed back in 1999 when I had company insurance. I haven't had a Doctor since I was laid off in 2001. While I could afford the prescription for Busbar I was able to recognize that what I was feeling was internal, and had nothing to do with anyone or anything else. This is when I learned that I owned my feelings, all of them.

Occasionally when I get acclimated to a different work or living environment I tend to forget that I choose how I feel in every situation. Then in the dead of night when I wake up in a state of near panic, I get out my earbuds and listen to TuneIn.com through my phone. Specifically, Blues Before Sunrise. You can find the play list at http://www.bluesbeforesunrise.com/

The key is that it's not the music I grew up with. It's from long before I was alive. Listing to familiar music just makes me emotional, nostalgic and regretful, reminding me of the old days when I thought people made me feel bad and I reacted badly.

If nothing else works, try the steps at http://www.anxietycoach.com/nocturnal-panic-attacks.html

First and Last Sight

It was the summer of 1977, the first week of July. I always spent the month of July in Old Mission, every year for as long as I lived.

The house seemed a hundred years old. I think it was built by doctors who escaped from the cities during the influenza pandemic that followed the first world war. It was dark and old.

Usually the front door is wide open and the screen door keeps the bugs out, but for some reason I remember the front door was closed. It was dark in the front hallway when I heard the knocking. I must have been on the porch or something, but I remember seeing Johnny when I opened the door.

'Finally! Someone else was in Old Mission!' I thought.

Johnny told me he brought some friends with him and he wanted me to meet them. All was right with the world. Then I was walking down the old sandy, cracked sidewalk toward his house.

He introduced me to his cousins Luke and Sally. If I can recall, I probably thought at that point that it was going to be a pretty good summer. Then, there she was, kind of hiding out behind Sally.

She had blue eyes and blonde hair and I must admit that was a major factor in my qualifications for attractiveness at the time, but when our eyes met, it was as if we communicated data from a past relationship.

We knew we belonged to each other. As if we separately held the keys to each others hearts from the beginning of time.

I wanted to spend every waking moment with her. Bridgett. I will never forget. We were naive children at the time and never engaged sexually. Even a few years later we met again, and I was still ignorant.  I think of nothing else but what I could and should have done.

To this day I wait for a relationship, of any kind, with anyone.

The Magic Material

Once upon a time during a raging war, there was a chemist who invented a material that could stop bullets. It was so amazingly resistant and a very light, flexible material.

The chemist won a huge government contract to create armor for military vehicles, aircraft, ships and even uniforms. The material passed every test on the gun range. There didn't seem to be any shrapnel and nobody could find the fired bullets and bombs. They had to go somewhere but nobody found out where. It didn't matter because the tide of the war had turned and our side was winning the war.

One night several weeks later the chemist was startled awake by loud banging and crashing sounds. He ran down into his laboratory to find it in ruins and the material he invented in tatters, which it turns out only absorbed kinetic energy and kept it in temporary suspense.

The end.