Five Things People Don't Usually Know About Me

Nope, Redruby, I had to stretch to find 5. I kept scratching my head trying to come up with 5. The head scratching reminded me of #4. No, again, #2 is one of the things people don't know about me. They keep asking me how many. I keep telling them "more than I can count."

I knew you were going to ask, so I am prepared. If I told you how many then people would know, wouldn't they?

Karl??? Is that you?

5. When I listen to music and close my eyes, I can "see" the music as moving landscapes or abstract figures. The bass tones are always deep blue for some strange reason.

Wow, neat. Maybe you're a "weak" synæsthete? Synæsthesia has always been something I thought would be interesting to experience.

Redroby said:

I'd love to meet up with you and that first group of friends. I bet the conversations are fantastic.

You shall be mostly welcome. Most of these folks are musicians, so we often let the instruments do a part of the talking. It's like an alternative way of communicating, because you can better express feelings through music, than through words. But maybe that's a masculine thing...

I wonder if you couldn't get back to that with a little hypnosis? Clear out those channels.

I've tried hypnosis once. It didn't work. I resisted persistently that someone attempted to take control over my mind, and ended up with a headache instead. I have much better experiences with meditation, especially Transcendental Meditation (TM), which I think offers a wide range of useful and well documented benefits:

The Transcendental Meditation technique is a simple, natural procedure to gain deep rest— and contact that inner reservoir of creativity, energy and intelligence—to gain its support in all you do and to enrich your life day by day.

My New Year Resolution for 2007 is to start practicing TM again on a daily basis.

Spiffie said:

Wow, neat. Maybe you're a "weak" synæsthete?

It comes pretty close to this part:

In music → color synesthesia, individuals experience colors in response to tones or other aspects of musical stimuli (e.g., timbre or key). Like grapheme → color synesthesia, there is rarely agreement amongst synesthetes that a given tone will be a certain color, but individuals are internally consistent. Tested months later, a synesthete will report the same experiences as they had previously reported.

Color changes in response to pitch may involve more than just the hue of the color. Lightness (the amount of black in a color; red with black may appear brown), saturation (the intensity of the color; candy red is highly saturated, while pink is unsaturated), and hue may all be affected to varying degrees (Campen & Froger 2003). Additionally, music → color synesthetes, unlike grapheme → color synesthetes, often report that the colors move, or stream into and out of their field of view.

The landscapes (soundscapes) and abstract figures can appear very physical and three dimensional at times. It's probably just a product of ones imagination, but a nice secondary effect indeed.

Keld, everybody would love to have met Philip K. Dick. He would have love to have met you :)

I have never read much science fiction, Claus, and only know him by name. But he definitely appears to be an interesting person and author:

In February and March 1974, Dick experienced a series of visions and auditions including an information-rich "pink light" beam that transmitted directly into his consciousness. A year after the events, in March 1975, Dick summarized the 2-3-74 experiences that would pervade his writing for the final eight years of his life.

Wow, this Erickson is a very clever guy. Most people don't realise that their absent-mindedness or daydreaming is in fact an altered state of mind, or a trance:

Erickson maintained that trance is a common, everyday occurrence. For example, when waiting for buses and trains, reading or listening, or even being involved in strenuous physical exercise, it's quite normal to become immersed in the activity and go into a trance state, removed from any other irrelevant stimuli. These states are so common and familiar that most people do not consciously recognise them as hypnotic phenomena.

And this elevator story is really a master piece ;-)

My resistance towards being hypnotised had nothing to do with the hypnotist. I was teaching psychology in an evening class, and we decided to hire this professional guy to demonstrate what it was all about. Unfortunately he choose me to be his first 'victim' and I couldn't allow myself to 'lose' control in front of my students.

It went much better with the next 'victim' who was a woman in her twenties. The session lasted for a couple of hours, and the hypnotist managed to take her back in time to three previous lives. She even experienced her own death two times, which was also a very strong experience for the rest of us. It turned out that she had been a Scottish woman in her former life, and she later went to Scotland to find the house where she had lived. Some of the elderly neighbours confirmed that such a woman had indeed lived there. Astonishing.

By the way, in Sweden many dentists use hypnosis instead of anaesthesia. Maybe also elsewhere.

I have a blind girlfriend whose internal clock is wack. She shares that condition with about 35% of the totally blind. You can reset your clock with light exposure, but she, of course, can't. She's on about a 26 hour cycle, so she comes around and meets up with the rest of us, and then swings away. The toughest is when she's up all night and sleeps all day.

Keld, in regards to sleep, you may want to try polyphasic sleep.

The link is to a man's blog that tried it (for about three months IIRC) and it is quite interesting. Having tried it myself, I can say that at the onset, it is difficult to get used to (especially when you have to take two of your naps at school), but all the extra energy you have is amazing.

Thanks very much, Greg. That sounds very interesting. I might want to try it out, or find a combination that suits my somewhat irregular working hours.

But if I could speak on my own experience... DON'T GET ONE!!!

LOL. I couldn't get a mohawk now if I wanted to. Not enough hair.

Mr Claus hasn't said what the ramifications of his mohawk were.

It was a drunk bet, so both me and a friend got one. It is long time ago. Almost 15 years I think. The only ramification I can remember was a Muslim friend of mine, a guy who ran a shawarma restaurant, who said: "Don't have that kind of hair, please. It's just for bad boys." Most other people thought it was funny. Eventually the hair grew back out :)

Dear Mr Claus... 15 years is not a "long" time ago. Ask me what is a long time ago! I even did it before I could drunk. Now I can and I spell like you wrote.

Your ramification was less target-specific than mine was. We didn't have smart-bombs or any thing like that. We had dumb bombs. Back then blondes were smart. That is how lon ago it was that I got that stupid thing.

I couldn't eat either because every time I chewed... my mohawk hurt.

My hair grew back out too. Thank Gnuts! And now I have silver in it too. That is silver with a small s. I was fond of the Lone Ranger too, at the time, but I didn't ask for Silver. Noooope... I picked the stupid mohawk.

You know it is bad for boys when you don't see any girls with them. The man who ran the restaurant was probably right. In my case... he was definitely right.

Dear Mr Spiffie...

Maybe you are the atheist I wanted to meet. If you don't have an agenda to force on me...which I have not sensed that you do... could you help me understand why I got myself in such hot water with them with my comment that maybe Mr Newdow was a reason the myths got attention and not the facts?

Do you have to be concerned about fire and brimstone types if you are an atheist? Or do they just condemn you without knowing anything about you?

Oooh, these are good.

I often feel if I had to, I could live happily on soup and sandwiches and nothing else. I've also never physically handled a gun.

Regarding the sentimental, I'm surrounded by gadgets, computers, and electronics, but I also really like old movies and sappy movies. Give me anything with Kate Hepburn. Also, Big Fish is the only movie that's ever brought me near to tears. How goofy is that?

Dear Mr Oluseye Bassir...

I handled a gun a couple of times... a .22. I shot a squirrel. Dad said that was great! Let's go give it to your mom and eat it.

I thought... this sucks... why can't you provide the food?

Dear Mr Spiffie... did you see "The Notebook"? I hope you get the chance. It is about where we are all headed. It makes one cry and then it makes everybody cry.... cry really bad.... but good in knowing what is ahead for us.

If you get the chance... see it. You'll have two that made you cry... one for me (recommended) and one for you (real).

Nope. Don't count. We knew all that.

Winsome, I need you to adopt me right away

Ansab, sure, a doctor in the family (swoon).
From what little you've written of your mum I fear the adoption process could be similar to trying to put dolls clothes on a grizzly cub in front of it's mother.
How about honoree cousin?

My favorite club of all time is a club that is/was a goth/industrial club.

My best friend started a fight at said club, and I was injured worse than he was. (That bastard!)

I hate the telephone, even though I worked in telephone support for 6 years. If you call me, chances are I won't answer.

Generally speaking, I think I have been very lucky, considering my idiotic behavior.

Happiness is good. Wealth can satiate, but if true happiness offers itself, take it or you are a fool.

:) nice

20+ coffee cups a day? Yikes! Everything else I could totally live with. :-D

Hmm. I'm a biker with tattoos, I smoke, drink a lot of coffee and I'm a painter, who is very happy and very poor.

That's why I call it a weakness - they are all bloody poor.

*grin*

It was shortly before she died.

It was shortly before she died.

Back in California, then?

Yes, in Santa Barbara.

Well, I'm not as flexible as I used to be.

BTW, I'm almost afraid to say that it's Ms.

Don't be afraid Ms ZenAid. You can do something that many of us can't do... plus you know why! Now I know why I am afraid to ask the follow-on question...

What else could you do before you got... uh...less flexible?

Well the question isn't that scary now that I can read it.

I am fearful of the answer.

I am fearful of the answer.

Me too

Dear mr tschreck

the sisters were of the sibling variety, same parents..

The same parents as yours? Lord you must have had some really strange parents.

Thanks for using the S I sent. That was very kind of you.

silly man..

the sisters had the same parents, but different parents that mine.

:-D

Well... at least your parents were Okay.

H-I-L-A-R-I-O-U-S

3) I paint in the nude.

That can be very messy. Trust me, I know.

I once got 500m from the house, in the bush, in the nude, with a chainsaw, ready to cut firewood. And I stopped and thought about it for about a minute. I had on boots and gloves. I went back to the house.

Call me a coward, but too many possibilities went through my head in that minute.

Martin-

i think it was the american general patton who once said

"discretion is the better part of valor"

and our good friend darwin would also approve of your actions.

5) She sent me a happy new year email...

Ouch! Commiserations.

Thanks Zenaid

Not revealing enough!

AdipicAcid was my handle on Plastic.com before the trolls ate that site. It's used to make nylon, amongst other things. Catch22, iarnucon, ignoblus, stevetherobot, and Jimmy Havoc amongst others also came over from there.

A kid planted a flash-bang device to disrupt the drama club show. I was cutting class to fix the lights and found it. I didn't spend all that much of high school actually in class. Probably would have been better if I had.

I would suggest finding a copy of the book "The Bermuda Triangle Mystery: Solved" It's out of print, but the library might have it. The amount of distortion that has been used to "prove" there is such a thing is phenomenal, including ignored weather reports in order to claim "clear skies" and even disappearances that were made up whole cloth, as the ships that supposedly "disappeared" never had insurance claims filed for their loss, and in fact no registry for said ships can be located.

I'm going to remain silent for a bit longer on the last thing in hope someone out there "gets it." It's a long shot as the book in question would have to be recognized and someone would need to remember the free response question on the 1984 AP English exam, but hey, let's see if anyone gets close.

And it's Mr., by the way.

Yep. It is definitely Mr from now on.

Thank you.