Saturday, February 20, 2016

Wild Abandon - More 'Thoughts of the Day'

- Upon hearing that there were endless variants of our own reality I took it upon myself to stray from my place in the dimensional spectrum to see what lay within the realm of possibility. In one reality society was distinctly more feline. Although, saying it like that is perhaps a bit misleading. It would be more accurate to say that evolution of public sanitation was distinctly more feline. Bathrooms were, rather, box rooms or litter rooms. You would politely find a corner of the sandy room and do your business, using either a litter shovel or kicking motions to bury your deed. The box rooms, so named because they were usually a disconnected room within a larger structure, typically included a comfortable carpeted area on top of the box/room. In that society it was normal to wait on top of the box, lounging on the plush carpet. It was accepted, no, expected even that if you had been kept waiting for some time that as the occupant exited the box that you reach down and thump them on the head. In some high-end establishments there were even employees whose job entailed tapping each person on the head as they exited. The gesture was between a nod and a 'high five', and niceties such as warm towels or colognes/perfumes were tossed down afterwards. (Or slowly pushed over the edge as it were.)


- Ever notice how small, trivial details can collude to create a memorable moment out of an otherwise ordinary event? It happens to me most often while I am enjoying a book or a show, the combination of emotions and my circumstances blend together into a moment that, in memory, is more than the sum of the parts. I read the The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and enjoyed it immensely, but my experience while reading it made it all the more memorable. After a long day of work followed by several hours of home renovation and a lazy dinner I would find a comfortable position on our old couch, wrap up in a blanket and crack a window enough to circulate the air but not let in too much of the winter cold. I'd light a cigar and spend several hours reading by the diffuse light of our tower lamp mixed with the glow of flames from the pellet stove. Usually a cat was draped over me purring loudly. Another favorite of mine was sitting cross legged on my computer chair at 1am, my arms tucked into a sweatshirt while our failing boiler strained to keep the house at a modest 60-65 (F) degrees. I was watching Steins;Gate on my computer with the volume turned down (so as not to disturb my wife) and occasionally sipping coffee. It was particularly memorable because several weeks earlier we had swapped our computers out of the office and into the living room.


- Move tile inspiration - Wizard of OZ III: Toto Vengeance


- Sometimes I feel phantom pains and I wonder if in some adjacent reality whether some accident or injury befell my counterpart.


- Sometimes I feel the need to pick up an obscure or relatively pointless skill. Like learning Morse Code for example. Honestly, who even knows Morse code anymore?


- Sometimes I become oddly focused on certain aspects of my body. Sometimes I notice how my pulse actually interferes with my ability to hold my hand steady. When it's really quiet I notice how it  sounds like there is a really high-pitched noise just at the edge of hearing (that's not actually there). Occasionally I'll feel two tiny rings, symmetrical, in roughly opposite spots, whenever I touch the roof of my mouth with my tongue. When I chew I sometimes fixate on the muscle that flexes just above my temple.
     I became annoyed when I discovered one day that I could bend my pinky finger on my left hand to my palm independently of the other fingers. Yet, on my right hand, I was unable to touch my pinky to my palm without uncontrollably bending the finger next to it. Luckily I'm fairly certain I figured out why. I regularly use my left pinky independently to hit CTRL or SHIFT on the keyboard, my right hand does not.
     Before I regularly kept a mustache I used to trace the groove in my upper lip. Everyone has it but I'm not sure why it's there. On the subject of facial hair, I also absent-mindedly twirl my soul patch when I'm studying something. I think it's a requirement or something.


- I had a dream about a WWII museum in which all the exhibits were represented with housecats. There were tanks and planes, all the real stuff, all appropriately scaled down and accurate, except the people were replaced by cats standing on their hind legs. Imagine a Hitler cat at a podium, talking to a field of other cats saluting. Imagine a cat dressed in an army uniform, his paw outstretched pointing forward, while behind him a field of tanks began advancing. Manning the guns on the tanks are cats of all colours, some of them only kittens. In a paratrooper exhibit a line of cats waits for their turn to jump, lit red by the glow of the jump light, while the jump captain cat looks out the open hatch, his head tilted as if looking at something that had just fallen over the edge. Call me crazy...but if someone actually built this I think it would be huge.

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