The two last things I do each night are remove my contacts so I can sleep, then remove my context so I can dream.

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I had my first dream about being dead last night. not dreams about dying; that happens to me all the time. no, in this dream I was living in the underworld, which was represented by a jail where nobody ever came to visit, everyone was grey and listless, and I had to fight inside my own mind to try and find relevancy in this (under)world.

I tried to rally others into original thought again, I tried to get them to pick up and read the letters that had been written to them by the loved ones they had departed. Some greater power was trying to keep the status quo, though, and I found myself with my head in between prison bars, with pulsing and ringing coursing through, trying to abolish original thought.

I kept trying to fight it, trying to think free, and trying to find meaning in existance beyond death, and trying to bring it to others.

It was odd, because it felt different than many of the other dreams I've been having, it fel like it had a flavor that came completely from outside myself.

It didn't occur to me until this afternoon that I do live less than a hundred feet from very real graves, and maybe my dreams aren't entirely my own.

Maybe I'll bring them some poetry tonight.

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I had the oddest dream last night: Me and two of my friends in the HCI Masters program went back in time three hundred years to talk to their equivalent of an interaction designer. I lost most of it, but I remember thinking "Ooh! Let's tell him about affordances!"

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Remind me, once my final (6 hours away) and my last project (32 hours away) are over, to tell you about the dream I had, where I could run and fly.

It felt so real. It felt like I could understand it. Just a few inches off the ground, but for dozens of feet at a time, as long as I kept concentrating the right way.

I think it ties into the diet story. Remind me to tell you about that, too.

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I haven't gone to sleep before midnight... Ever.

Well, at least since I got to Pittsburgh, three months ago (yes Virginia, it's already been three months!)

Right now it's 10:49, and I'm going to turn off the computer, take out my contacts, read in bed for a while (Susie and Karen: the book's getting past the slow part now), and go to sleep before midnight. And I don't even have to get up before 8! Nice.

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Workload is at its peak over in these parts. With four real weeks of class left before the end of the semester, I'm working on four final projects simultaneously, along with regular assignments in three classes. Hence the quiet.

Which is a real shame because I have so much to blog about! Well, e-commerce-wise, my Sidekick (Danger, Hiptop, what have you) is arriving tomorrow and also, after waiting (not so) patiently for three months (and three years) I ordered a Titanium Powerbook from Apple today. I knew the model refresh was coming, and there was a lot of speculation on what would be included, from a price drop, to internal bluetooth, to gigahertz processors to internal superdrives to new video cards. Well, I woke up this morning and read that Apple delivered on all of the above except for the internal bluetooth, arguably the smallest of the mentioned features, and so I sprung like a cat to the student developer site and placed my order, saving $500 from what I would have had to pay only a day earlier and getting a much, much better machine in the bargain. I even boosted the RAM from 512 megs to a gigabyte for $40.

Mind you, it's not shipping for 3 to 4 weeks, but I don't mind the wait.

Okay, so I'm having one of those complexes where I have some really interesting content to post (palazzo and logmusic, for those who know) but I feel like I have to do them justice before posting. It's such a quandry.

But more than anything I need sleep. Three hours last night and three the night before, and I have class in 8 hours, so I hope to get at least six-and-a-half hours of rest right now. Can you blame me?

Okay, so much cool stuff to share.. Gonna burst... I finally figured out that the way to regain inspiration was to bend, ever so slightly, my educational endevours to leverage my web initiatives, and vice-versa.

I'll be sane again tomorrow, really. Now I'm going to sleep.

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I had the weirdest three-minute dream last night. I was outside, on a playground or something, and I noticed a pimple on my arm, just in front of my shoulder. I started to squeeze it and immediately a powder-fresh two-inch long cherub popped out and just lay there on the playground, lethargically looking around. A friend of mine came over and I pointed it out to her, telling her, "that's so weird. that hasn't happened to me in like three months!" while casually inspecting the little two-inch cavern in my arm, like a belly-button with a golf ball-sized room behind it.

I should try to get more sleep. My body's trying to tell me something.

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A nice article on the Digital Resource Management movement, specifically, Apple's counterstance.

I don't believe that Apple protects its users' right to burn CDs because it trusts that the user won't, but because people like Apple better for not acting as a tool of law enforcement.

I heart Apple.

PS: I had a dream this morning about looking up my powerbook purchase online, finding that it had been assembled, it was a 900Mhz G4 Powerbook, with a slimline superdrive. Soon, my precious...

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Astral Projection, Out of Body Experiences, whatever you want to call it, CNN says researchers think they may know what causes it.

Sorry for another 'mainstream media' link, but as Joss said when he tearfully killed off Tara, it would be just as wrong to not do it because of the fear of backlash.

Personally, I think the conclusions are a little dubious, based on the paucity of the data and the sample size (one person). It reminds me of how people in the Middle Ages thought tomatoes were poisonous, because people who cooked with them occasionally went insane. In that particular case, there was a causal relation, but the conclusion was invalid. The real story? People had just started using lead cookware, which the acids in the tomato would break down, putting lead (a known psychotic) into the food and the body.

The same thing happened in Rome when they used lead pipes for plumbing.

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I had a very strange dream the night before last that left me with an odd thought: GPS navigation units for cars are great, but if you're in a car that can travel in time, the car should also have historical traffic data built-in, so when you're in the past, you can tell the fastest way to get where your going based on the traffic history already knows you'll encounter along each possible route.

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Something wasn't right.

I've been having some strange dreams lately. It's probably been a lot of things: I rearranged my bedroom and now my bed's in a strange place. I'm regularly living on 6 hours of sleep a night. I go to sleep thinking of unfinished projects and wake up in a rush.

I've been having strange dreams. Dreams of flying I'm completely familiar with; not flying like a bird, soaring, gliding, and circling through thermals of inspiration, but more like the flight of a butterfly, alternating floating downward and twitching upward. This is a familiar dream.

Strange dreams. Dreams like vignettes. A few seconds here, lay the background, and scene. And on to the next. Most of them I don't remember beyond the wheel-of-fortune structure of flipping from one environment to the next.

Strange. Two nights ago one flash was my car, the front fender damaged on the driver's right, sort of shredded, sort of planed off, so the bumper was higher on that side for want of a bottom. I was unsettled on Saturday, vaguely unsettled on Saturday, until I remembered this night-picture and segmented it off from reality. All better.

Today's morning ritual involved getting up later than I ought to have, to catch my train, rushing to get it all together, walking up Haste to my car.

Berkeley parking is somewhat of a mystery. When I get home, bet it 6pm or midnight, Berkeley is perpetually packed, residential and meter parking alike. Luckily, a silver-lining of my working world is being able to park at a meter, as my start time is substantially earlier than when the meters tick on at 9. The mystery is that, though the meters are packed when I get in in the evening, come 7am mine is the only car remaining on a block of 25 spaces.

Are the other 24 who were here last night all earlier risers than I am, or are they partying until 2am, then driving home?

No matter. My car is at the top of the block, and walking towards it from 300 feet out, I can't decide if it's mine. It doesn't look quite right. I don't think about it again and come half-a-block I can see that it's Baby. I walk up, unlock the door, hand on the handle, and I stop.

I go back to the front of the car, the dream-vision coming back, to check out the front bumper.

Fine, normal. Okay. I turn back to the door.

Something wasn't right.

Back to the front I go, and realization dawns. No license plate. Gone. Just an empty bracket. No trauma of a violent parallel parker, just the void of absence.

I check the back, just so see if my assailant was going for a hat trick. At least they left me that one, with the registration tab I spent far to long acquiring.

When did this attack occur? Were there cars around bearing mute witness? Did it happen days ago and I only just noticed? Was my dream prescient, coincident, or simply a subliminal realization trying to share itself with my conscious awareness?

So now I assume that my license plate, too clever by half, is adorning someone's dorm room or apartment. What my assailant isn't counting on is the interconnectedness that seems to run through my life. Three friends of mine who don't know each other all attended the same wedding on Friday, for two people I've never met. I can meet someone and within 15 minutes find a common acquaintance. I just know that I can find someone who knows upon what wall, in which hall or frat house, the license plate "GRR ARG" stands imprisoned and shackled. Have you seen it? Vanity theft is the most dangerous kind indeed. For the victim robbed of a non-fungible item, the desire for recovery is strong, and the thief feels the need to display the acquisition, for what good is art in a drawer?

It will take a few weeks for this spell to run its course, but I know that I will get it back. It may take some help from friends, or some more dreaming, but it will come back.

Grr, arg! Indeed.

Addendum: I just got off the phone with Ali, who tells me I was very lucky that they didn't take the back plate, as I can get a replacement front plate without a problem, but if someone steals the back plate, they'll keep the plate out of circulation for seven years. Umm, thank you I guess?

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Dreams about burrowing alligators all last night. In a deserted square in a deserted land on a deserted world, they poke their little snouts out from cracks near the deteriorating pillars. You peek in, then they jump out and run after you, biting at your feet and legs.

That and a post-heroic story about being a sidekick cleaning up the deserted hideout-turned-ghosttown-shack with some friends, reminiscing about the days before the superhero's fall, finding miscellaneous gadgetry amidst the dusty memories that can only accumulate from a lifetime of clipping newspaper articles and carefully packing away old photos and trinkets from around the world into wooden crates of sawdust and mildew.

Sifting through the dust mites and memories, looking for I don't remember what, we hatch a plan to use the antiquated yet clever electronics and nostalgic words to fight new evil.

And somewhere in between was the parade of crocodiles, silent people from a forgotten time, strolling through the square in dusty finery, led by crocks large and very small, all on polite diamond leashes, convincing me that the crocs weren't all bad so that, after the parade passes, I approach the crack by the pillar again, only to be chased and mauled by the emerging crock once again.

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