The Mind is Terrifying

Man, I had some odd dreams last night. I don't remember all the details but here are a couple that stuck with me.

First: if you take prisoners on the open sea be sure to take their luggage. Apparently it's proper pirate etiquette. I guess if you don't take their stuff they are comfortable enough to plot escape.

Second: Mila Kunis likes to tell dirty jokes. I only remember the punch line, "yeah, but porn tastes better."

What's wrong with me? How have your dreams been as of late?

Dreams you say... I've been thinking about that a lot recently even though I rarely remember my dreams.

I really wanted to write an article on this but I am starting to think my writing skills aren't up to the task. It would take some serious journalism to get this done and I just don't have the wherewithal. So here's the article I read that started my head down that path. Maybe someone else can do it.

www.theverge.com/2014/1/21/5330636/video-games-effect-on-dreams

The gist of this article, although you should just read it, is that video gamers are better at lucid dreaming because they are used to being in control of imaginary worlds and they generally don't suffer from nightmares as much because the concept of fighting back against fire breathing dragons isn't nearly as foreign to them. Then I read some other articles that talked about how video gamers have better eye sight too (due to being used to tracking several different fast things simultaneously) and have better problem solving skills (probably due to all those silly puzzles we play through in games). Some studies thought that maybe focus was lost and being de-sensitized to violence was a real possibility. But that last one's more controversial.

So I started thinking about how boardgamers might be effected .... brain wise.

Now I'm starting to think I'll never get it done and thankfully GL had some weird ass dreams last night so I can tell you what I'm not working on.

I love that punchline - 'porn tastes better'. No clue what the joke should be but I dig it. I'm working on a set up as I type this.

If I were to do the article this is the picture I would have used...

JonJacob wrote: I love that punchline - 'porn tastes better'. No clue what the joke should be but I dig it. I'm working on a set up as I type this.

LOL! Dude, I'd love to have the whole joke so please share what you come up with.

I don't play a lot of video games, but I do lucid dream pretty much every night. I also have lucid nightmares occassionally. Being able to fight back against the fire-breathing dragon isn't always good. If you're mind still wants to go someplace dark it will find another way.

I had a really weird hypnagogic moment when coming out of a nightmare a couple of nights ago. I had awoken from a dream of my pit bull ripping into one of my cats and startled myself awake pretty quickly, assessed my surroundings, heard the dog snoring and closed my eyes. I can only imagine that what I saw must have been similar to the closed-eye beginnings of a trip, pin-pricks of shapes resolving into mathematics symbols in grid patterns, then shifting into cuneiform, then full on hieroglyphics... rows upon rows of them in very sharp detail. Then I drifted off again. Most of my hypnagogic hallucinations are auditory (usually a spoken word or two), or just a falling sensation, but this was the first time I experienced something that visually vivid while being closer to waking than sleeping.

Thankfully I never have nightmares. The closest I get is getting into a fender bender or the dreams where I show up for a final exam after skipping the whole semester of classes. I have a lot of those actually, and my guess is it's got something to do with my tendency to procrastinate and the underlying stress that causes.

I rarely remember details of my dreams but when I do it's weird shit like the pirate bit above or the punch line to the joke. That's odd too since I am not a natural jokester nor do I have any aptitude in telling or remembering them. The only other odd dream I've had recently involved the streets of San Francisco, Jared Leto, an enormous inflatable inter-tube, and aiding Mr. Leto in disposing of two guys he offed on some back country road.

ubarose wrote: Cool. I was just thinking about how people rarely speak about hypnagogic hallucinations, and was wondering if anyone had experiences similar to mine. I see pages and pages of glowing text/symbols that I know are mathematical, but I can't read them. It's a problem I need to solve, but they won't resolve into anything I recognize. I also hear music playing, as if it is coming from the next room. It is an old scratchy record of ragtime or maybe jazz. It is wonderful, but when I am awake I can never remember the tune. It haunts me.

I can only guess that some of these types of hallucinations are some sort of "ambient" processing that the brain is amplifying as it starts to tune out the real world. I get it more frequently with sound, particularly thinking I'm hearing birdsong outside the window. There must be a similar ambient visualization "circuit" of neurons when it comes to deciphering text that can get triggered/amplified in the same way.

I get hynagogic hallucinations that are often visual mathematics.

Also, I have a sensory one that is recurring (a couple of times a year since I was a teen) that feels like a sharp pain that ALWAYS follows a dream of a sword duel with George Washington.