12.22.03
Posted in Dreams at 12:20 pm by Danny Dawson
I had a dream last night about making love to my ex-girlfriend…the one to whom I never did. We were both competing in a debate tournament, and it took place after the first round, while waiting for the results to be posted. The classroom we were alone in conveniently had a bed. I remember looking into her eyes the entire time. It was slow, gentle, and beautiful.
Afterwards, I didn’t bother looking at the results for the first round, or the postings for the second. I didn’t care anymore. She did. She had won, and was going on the the next round. I stood by while she practiced her opening speech over and over, but she didn’t pay me any attention. She was absorbed in her studying. She went to the appropriate room when it was time. I remember the walk to my car, wondering when she would notice that I had left…when she would notice how much she cared that I had left…if she cared.
I felt used, but I didn’t let it show. I crawled back into my stoic shell and went on, like I always do. I let it roll off my back, like I always do. I only let it hurt down deep, like I always do. I woke up before noon, like I never do.
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12.25.03
Posted in Prions at 5:23 pm by Danny Dawson
I gave up beef early this year - sometime in January or March - and I decided to exclude all red meat from my diet a short while later. It started when I read Michael Moore’s “Stupid White Men.” He includes a chapter on Mad Cow Disease and the ignorance that the goernment-influenced media conveys to the public on the issue. Amazingly, ignorance can be conveyed as easily as knowledge these days.
Within the next week, solely by coincidence, I read an article in a science magazine to which I had a subscription (maybe it was Scientific American, I can’t remember) on Chronic Wasting Disease, another prion disease which affects deer and elk. The article recommended some further reading and that’s when my attention was truly caught. What interested me most was the incidence of CWD in the United States, and the research showing that CWD could be passed across the species barrier, as well as from wild to captive populations. Syllogize that information, and you realize how truly at-risk our cattle ranches are.
Meanwhile, governmental policy in the US is based on restricting the importation of cattle products from countries with known infections, and pays no regard to the possibility of pre-existing infection in this country. The US government is performing the same cover-ups and gloss-overs and embracing the same selective science that got Britian in trouble in the 1980’s.
Take this article, for example.
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12.27.03
Posted in Dreams at 2:22 pm by Danny Dawson
Last night I dreamt about the future. Everyone had a microchip implanted in their right bicep. Unmanned heli-vehicles monitored the highways for speeders and criminals. I was a marked man. Not marked for a crime I’d committed, but marked for death nonetheless.
I was attending a convention of some sort in a commercial plaza. The bartab was covered by the hosts, as well as a certain amount of food in a pizzeria there (I want to say it was West Coast Pizza). While there, a government mandate was issued that everyone was to report to a doctor to have their microchips analyzed. There was a doctor in the plaza, so I stopped in while everyone was drinking it up.
I sat down on the examining table across from another patient doing the same (so much for privacy at the doctor’s). The doctor came over to me and stuck me with a short needle (it reminded me of an immunization needle) in my left bicep. I reacted pretty strongly and demanded to know why he wasn’t checking the chip in my right bicep. Had I been duped by the government? What else were they doing to me that I didn’t know about? He told me to relax; it was a routine test for HIV always performed before microchip evaluations.
I looked at my right bicep and saw a huge red welt. “Doctor, does this mean I have HIV?”
Looking frightened, he replied: “A lot of it.” He was pale. I had been infected for a long time, but I never knew. I didn’t have too much longer left.
I asked to use the restroom, which was in another part of the plaza. I had a hard time finding it, and on the way, I ran into an attractive older black woman I had been flirting with earlier. She looked at me with a smile, taking in my bleached-blonde and dark brown hair, my gray Gap Stretch t-shirt, my baggy blue jeans, and she asked “What was Danny thinking when he decided to be who he is?”
“This was a Danny dying.”
I used the restroom and came back out. She was waiting for me. “Where are you going?”
“This is Danny dying.” She didn’t follow me for a few seconds, then came running up to catch me. My stride was quick and purposeful. “Wait! I can’t let you do this! I won’t-”
“That’s not what I meant.” I woke from the dream wearing my gray Gap Stretch t-shirt.
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01.01.04
Posted in General at 4:00 am by Danny Dawson
So appparently I’m a hiring manager now. I knew Dave had a little too much confidence in me, but apparently here’s the test. I’m now in charge of hiring and firing a friend. Hopefully it won’t come to the firing. I have confidence in him.
We’ll see. He starts Friday.
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01.26.04
Posted in General at 5:39 am by Danny Dawson
I always thought the song was about waiting tables. “The roast beef combo’s pnly $9.95. Good Morning Sun, right? Now I think of my father and of the son I may one day have, since it hasn’t yet been proven that I can’t do so. I sit here sipping my makeshift drink - Black Haus with muddled apple and pineapple, sugar and water.
I finally allowed myself to see Requiem for a Dream, and I’m disappointed. I found “A Beautiful Mind” and “Memento” far more disturbing and self-identifying.
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01.29.04
Posted in Dreams at 2:25 am by Danny Dawson
Last night I had another dream about Casper (henceforth I will call her Casper here so that some semblance of anonymity will be saved). Every moment I spend awake, I forget more details of the dream. At this point, I remember only that she may have broken up with me, and that I felt regret about the situation.
It seems somewhat that this is an ongoing theme in my dreams. She wants to have used me and be rid of me, and I continue to think of her and want more with her for times afterward. Is this how things really are? (Space Space) (Backspace backspace) (Period Period Period) (Backspace Backspace Backspace) (Indecision…)
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04.10.04
Posted in Web at 7:11 am by Danny Dawson
Well, if that isn’t just the spiffiest entry title, I don’t know what is.
Jaap A. Haitsma has published Dictionary Search 0.5, an extension for Mozilla/Firefox that makes it easy to perform follow-up research on a webpage you might be reading. Just use the mouse cursor to highlight some text, right-click, and select the engine/website you want to search. I use it to search IMDb, Netflix, and Amazon for information about books, music, and movies (not respectively), to do further research on google (search, news, and images), salon.com, metafilter, and slashdot, as well as find definitions (surprise!). It’s incredibly useful, and it can be configured to search the databases of just about any website that uses GET headers in their search technology.
The only problem I ran into: Jaap’s default compilation only allows for four search engines to be configured at once, which isn’t quite enough for me. So I delved into some source, did a little tinkering, and upped it to eight: Download the updated installer here. <Updated 4/19/04 for bug fixes>
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04.16.04
Posted in Health at 1:41 pm by Danny Dawson
This is an embarassing story to tell, and when people ask me about it I often evade the truth in order to save face, but I’m tired of the lying and deception. A little over a month ago, I had an accident. It was the middle of the night, and I had to go. I mean I really had to go…badly. So badly, in fact, that I couldn’t make it to the bathroom. That’s the truth, kids: I had an accident.
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04.30.04
Posted in Health at 1:11 am by Danny Dawson
For reasons I will not currently delve too deep into (health-related, but probably not serious in the long term), I have been unemployed and penniless for the past two months, with no prospect of employment between me and the visible horizon (at least another two or three months). Because of this, I have been spending most of my time (read:all of my time) bouncing between couch, toilet, fridge, and porch, with occasional yet infrequent trips to bed and doctor’s office.
I am most productive on the couch and on the porch (and occasionally on the toilet, in more ways than one), where I perform my computer-related activities. These mostly include catching up with the News and the Weblog World, but occasionally involve work on the new website design, once I work out the kinks and the too-obvious security flaws. Currently, I’m working on the integration of Geeklog, MovableType, Gallery, and phpAbook. [rant style=”defensive”]This happens to be incredibly similar to the setup over at Cementhorizon, which I do visit daily, but I swear that it is purely a happy accident. I came upon each piece of software by googling for scripts which provided the functionality I desired, and only once, with Geeklog, did I find it on the web and say “Hey, Gene uses this” before installing it on my own server.[/rant]
The rest of my time on the couch, sadly, has involved TV. Now, I had been anti-TV for several years, so my first impulse (while I still had money in the bank) was Netflix. The problem is that the movies just don’t come fast enough, and with my attention span dwindling, as well as my mental state not always allowing for the intensive concentration that the computer requires (Thank you Percocet), I find myself tuning in to regular programming. We’ve never, in all my life, subscribed to cable or satellite TV, so I have very limited options.
My typical day (start and end times vary, as do programming choices, occasionally):
Today in Florida; Family Feud (twice); The Price Is Right; News at Noon (lots of station flippage here); Who Wants to Be a Millionaire; Frasier; King of the Hill; Break for half an hour; Archie’s Weird Mysteries (or Sabrina the cartoon); Astro Boy; Static Shock; Millionaire (again); Pyramid (I hate this show); The Simpsons (twice); Seinfeld (twice); Friends; Everybody Loves Raymond (but hates his voice); Prime Time Television (tonight it was Friends [twice, or maybe three times] followed by Will & Grace); News for a bit (more flippage); Will & Grace; Friends; Raymond; Will & Grace; Spin City; The Drew Carey Show; Dharma and Greg; The Tonight Show (second airing, usually I’m on the computer by now, moving towards the idea of sleep)
As you can see, I have a full schedule. I also find it a fully repulsive schedule, but hey, it passes the time, and when you’re in a drug-induced daze (for more than six weeks) or you’re coping with opiate withdrawal (as I have been for the last week now, Thanks again Percocet), that’s all you really care to do. Some of the Primetime programs I watch (all WB, the Relive Your Teenage Angst Channel) include Smallville, Everwood, One Tree Hill, and Angel. Keep in mind I am proud of NONE of this (and I bold things sparingly, remember).
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05.04.04
Posted in Movies at 11:38 pm by Danny Dawson
Long, meaningful posts are always difficult to compose.
First, let me say that I tend to identify strongly with movies in which the central character has some sort of schitzophrenic break with reality. Memento was one. So were A Beautiful Mind, 12 Monkeys, The Ring (to some degree), The Bourne Identity, Vanilla Sky, The Game… And now, Donnie Darko. I got this movie in the mail from Netflix yesterday. Darko and The Rocky Horror Picture Show were the last to come before Netflix put my account on hold because I’m flat broke. I watched Darko tonight.
“I find it kinda funny, I find it kinda sad”
Fans become fans because of the identities they perceive, the samenesses, between their own lives and the characters they watch on screen or read about on pages. I’m tempted to scratch out “their own lives” and replace with “their desires” - I don’t know which is true. I’ve had my own breaks with accepted reality, and I occasionally wonder where the real truth lies. Sometimes I wonder which I want the real truth to be.
Keeping in line with the Foolish Fan Club theme, here’s tonight’s indulgence in coincidence:
Halfway through the movie, I paused to go outside and have a cigarette. I noticed the sky was unusually bright for 10:30pm, and wondered what phase the moon was in. The moon came out from the clouds then, and I saw that it was full. I also remembered that today there was a total lunar eclipse, unfortunately not visible from the Western Hemisphere.
I don’t believe in horoscopes, not of the daily kind anyway, but I give a lot of thought to coincidence. I feel that the moon is a sort of governing force with me. Full moons in particular often mark changes, transitions, important moments, or times to get up and move. I would much rather lead my life by a lunar calendar than a solar calendar, but in most cases, I’m forced to concede to the rest of the western working world and go Gregorian.
Anywho, I decided it would be nice to implement a Moon Phase sidebar on the weblog here, so I started to google (my laptop always accompanies me for a smoke). “Php cron job moon phase.” The link I clicked was this one. I figured “Hey, lets see what code other weblogs are using to do the same thing.”
The entry I opened up started “Continuing on the theme of paranoia,” which fit my mood, but the entry itself was actually about backing up her Movable Type installation. I got curious…I read the entry…I read the comments. Halfway down I look to the right and see “Watching Donnie Darko.” Okay, so the girl is interesting. I go to her about page. We have a few things in common. “Don’t get me wrong - in respects other than my interests, I am resolutely female.” I wonder what I would think of this girl if I met her.
Then my mind wanders back to the movie. Donnie Darko. Danny Dawson. “What kind of name is that? It sounds like a superhero.” “What makes you think I’m not?” (I’m paraphrasing here.) “What if you could go back and erase all the darkness?” The idea that everything can be classified on a spectrum between two extremes: Love and Fear, Good and Evil, Light and Dark, Light and Darko…
Ideas of absolute Good and Evil scare the hell out of me. The strongest existential crises I’ve experienced, the moments I call “Panic Attacks,” happen when I allow myself to believe, for a split second (or sometimes for a few split seconds, or once for about eight hours), that things are as simple as two polar opposites. The belief that things are more complex allows me to get through day-to-day life. As long as my life is more than just a simple choice between existence and non-existence, I can think; I can retain full function. If everything I did, every action I took was a choice between the two Absolute extremes, all it would take is one wrong choice and everything would be over; it would all fall to shit.
But I screw up all the time, and I’m still here. The one choice I’m glad I don’t have is the ability to go back and make changes. I make irreversible decisions everyday. I would have , I could have, I might have…
Instead, I remain.
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