08:52 am - Dreambits and Tangential Reading and Coughing
Ahh, Wikipedia -- when I have trouble sleeping, you are there to show me how quickly you can take me from looking up a quick question about orbits, to reading about production of palm syrup with a mental note to get back to that article about cooping. (Since I know I've got NASA friends reading this, I'm not going to be suprised if anyone tells me that by the end of the first sentence they'd figured out that the chain of shiny-looking links included "ullage".)
Feeling noticeably better than the last time I posted, but
still coughing (especially if I try to talk too much), and it
still feels like the muscles around my rib cage are being
ripped apart every time I do. *grumble* Not liking this choice
I've got, between exceeding the recommended dosage of
dextromethorphan cough syrup and feeling all fever-dizzy and
uncoordinated and the-bad-parts-of-feeling-stoned and nauseated,
or feeling like I dare not breathe, too-little-air-dizzy (it's
different, trust me), and precariously perched on the brink of
an OH-MY-GOD-THEY'RE-STICKING-KNIVES-IN-MY-R
Also not liking the second half of that Ravens game, not that I can do much about that, either. (FWIW, I loved the first half, my fever is down another degree (uh, that's °F, about half a Kelvin), I'm coughing less often that yesterday, and I may have done something clever with the camera last night, which I'll get around to finding out whether it's as cool as I thought when I'm a lot less dizzy.)
Uh, and not liking hearing Mom make coughing sounds uncomfortably similar to my own. :-(
Did I mention that Terpsichore is being all bossy and giving me homework again? I'm not not sure the world really needs a funky modern version of ... well, I'll share it once I finish struggling with the drum and second guitar parts.
Anyhow, I'm not sure whether this was the cough syrup, the fever, or ... well, my brain being itself ... but yesterday motning while spending a long time drifting through those not-quite-waking states where you're not sure whether to refer to the interesting visuals as dreams or hallucinations, there were two especially vivid segments. The first was a multiply-recurring vision (well, y'know, theme + variations, dreamwise) in which I was looking around the inside of my upper repiratory tract, but there were all these wind direction/speed indicators (green arrows), and isobars (in 3-D), and streams of numbers flying by, all being updated as I inhaled and exhaled, and my innards were shiny and chrome-plated (well, mostly; some parts were brushed aluminum and there was still a little pink), and Neil deGrasse Tyson was there swooping around with downright corny green-screen effects and trying to explain something that I couldn't hear over the sound of my breath, and I just knew that if I had a Masters degree in fluid dynamics all of these data would be crystal clear to me and I would just instantly know exactly how to regulate my breathing and shape my lips, tongue, and soft palate so as to not have each and every breath threaten to tickle my into another coughing fit!
Did I mention the chrome plating?
The other vivid bit was a ... not so much a television commercial as a template for a commercial, with obvious blanks where a corporate logo and a soothing voiceover would go...
First scene: Daddy in some sort of protective gear -- he's a test pilot or a test driver or a racer getting off work for the day -- presents his young daughter with the scooter she's obviously wanted for a while. She hugs him, gets on the scooter, and then is disappointed that it's woefully underpowered.
Second scene: father and daughter at the computer, working with CAD/CAM/simulation software -- one pane shows a carburetor throat whooshing through it, and other panes show tables of numbers that change as she tweaks the shape while he points to problem areas. They switch to an order screen, key in some stuff, and turn off the monitor.
Short third scene: split screen -- while they sleep, an automated milling machine in a far-off factory spits metal shavings.
Short fourth scene: delivery truck drops off a brown cardboard box.
Fifth scene: she's pulling her new scooter apart while he hands her tools and occasionally helps loosen a bolt her tiny arms aren't strong enough for yet, while the shiny new carb sits in the opened box.
Final scene: helmeted little girl starts up the reassembled scooter and goes VRROOOming off giggling joyously while Daddy watches proudly.
Now I'm not sure which elements other folks will find interesting in that (if any!), but one thing that caught my attention when I started thinking about writing it up for here, was that if I were consciously designing this instead of describing a dream, I would've had a mother in there somewhere (either instead of the father, or alongside him), since a big part of the vibe seemed to be "yay for geek girls [and therefore geek women too]!" ... and I probably would've made the internal-combustion toy a four-wheeler, or the child a few years older, or more likely both ... and I certainly would have had her wearing a helmet in the first scene as well.
But it really was a quite vivid dream, and quite clearly formatted to be a 60-second ad that could be edited down to 30-seconds after the long version had gotten enough airplay that most viewers would mentally fill in the missing bits. Now I'm wondering whether I've seen-and-thought-I'd-ignored a commercial with a similar plot and theme that my dreaming-part simply slotted imagery into that was related to the other dream/hallucination in which my respiratory system was modeled like an intake manifold + carburetor.