Tuesday, 20 January 2009

• blogging for the sake of blogging.

  i think this may become a regular thing, especially if i continue to be awake late at night with nothing to do (besides study).
  
  anyway, to go off my previous post (and to fulfill lois' request), here is my method of catching a cricket in your room.  by no means is it the best way--it's just the way that worked for me 2 out of 2 times.
  
  1. the container:  grab a big bowl / container / thing to catch the cricket with.  preferably clear so you can see it, bigger than a cup so you can make room for error.  the cricket WILL jump, so if it's just a small cup, you have to aim perfectly.  but bigger is not always better--you need to be able to cover the container easily, so i recommend a medium-sized plastic gladlock container.
  2. set up the trap: the trap here is basically similar to those old box and stick traps used to catch animals, where you tilt a box and balance it with a stick, and place food or some bait inside the box.  when the animal gets near, you pull the stick (it's attached to a string) and the box falls over the animal.  but i did a ghetto version, without bait, and without a fancy stick attached to a string.  instead, i had some boxes around my room, so i simply placed the container on the side of the box, balanced in the same way.  the goal here was when the cricket gets in range, i pull the box away and the container falls.  REASONING:  no matter how big the container was, everytime i tried to catch the cricket it would jump away erratically.  i can't predict which way it would go and it is extremely sensitive and jumps away very early, so i can't even get close to it.  but by placing the trap near a box, i can be on the other side of the box and the cricket, though cautious, will not jump away
  3. catching the cricket: now comes the tricky part--getting the cricket to walk into your trap.  basically the first time i just lucked out, because my box was very close to my bookcase, and the cricket was in between the two.  i knew as long as it didn't jump, it would walk out in one direction so i set it up that way.  the second time, however, it was all over the place.  so instead, after i carefully set my trap, i used my knowledge of the cricket wanting to avoid me, and used my feet to guide it towards the trap.  basically anytime it started wandering off in a direction i didn't want it to go, i just kinda walked near the cricket (but not close enough that it would jump away).  i guess the vibrations in the ground caused it to just stop and be cautious.  once the coast is clear, it starts walking in a different direction.  rinse and repeat until it gets under the container, then pull the box away and there you go!  if you're still cautious, once the cricket is under the container you can just walk near it again so it will stop walking and just wait there.  then you can pull out the box.
  4. prepping for transport: i just slide a piece of paper underneath the container.  if the paper's too flimsy, i throw a calendar underneath as well to add firmness.
  5. disposal: just carry your little trap (container + paper + calendar), take it outside, find a nice little spot to let it go (i prefer to walk to the other side of the apartment complex for fear that it will return to my place), and just open.
  
  okay, so that is a ton of information you completely did not need... and that wasn't what i really wanted to blog about anyways.  moving on...... this weekend i remembered several poignant dreams i've had in the past.  i tend to remember a lot of my dreams, and many times they are very... imaginative.  grounded in reality, yet imaginative.  i'm not much of a dream interpreter, and don't really care for that stuff, but i do like the psychology behind it (not that i know anything, it's more of what i think the psychology behind it might be), and i like seeing how things in reality (things in our daily lives, stuff we think a lot about, stress about, or even physical things like touching warm water or the feel of blankets) have such a strong influence on our dreams, and can even change them on the fly.  for example, you can easily hold a conversation w/ someone who is sleep-talking and totally lead the conversation in order to direct the dream by suggesting things had happened, like "did you just eat that spider?  why did you do that?"--at which point the person will continue the conversation as if they did eat the spider, and try to come up with an explanation.  in a way, it's kinda like ghetto hypnosis.
  
  anyways, one of the dreams i remembered is one where i died.  i think the general understanding is that if you die in a dream, then you're supposed to really die because your brain thinks you are dead and thus tells your body to stop functioning.  but my dream is strange, in that it continued even after i died--my dream was not always in a first person perspective, but rather it seemed more like a movie--it had very cinematic angles and dramatic views, especially once i died (since i can't view it from first-person anymore).  basically, in this dream/nightmare, i'm running away from somebody down a tunnel, and reach a dead end covered with crates and barrels.  i hide behind a barrel, and the villain draws near.  he knows i'm at the dead end, so he calls me out, and says he'll make it easy for me--i can choose how i'd like to die.  he has a pistol in one hand, and a large knife in the other.  with no way out, i figure i might as well make it quick and easy so i just tell him to shoot me.  he fires off a couple shots, and though my body gets pushed back from the impact, i don't feel anything.  frustrated, the villain continues to shoot multiple times, and each time i feel nothing.  slowly i begin to be confident and start laughing.  in desperation, the villain runs at me w/ the knife and begins stabbing me in the gut.  this i do feel, and i start screaming in pain as he repeatedly stabs me and then i die.  at this point, the "camera angle" turns to an overhead view looking down on my body and the villain standing over me, and it slowly begins to zoom out while slowly rotating (a very cinematic view).  it's around this point that i wake up, i think.
  
  i guess it's possible that the "camera angle" pulling away from my body is like an out-of-body experience of like a spirit rising higher into the air, but i dunno, i didn't think that much into it.  what i did think about, was how i didn't feel any pain or get hurt at all from the gunshots, but died from the knife.  i think it's because i've never been shot before, and don't know what it's supposed to feel like, thus when my mind was conjuring up some fantastical situation, it drew a blank when it came time to suggest a feeling for being shot.  but when it comes to being stabbed, i haven't been stabbed but i have had numerous cuts (papercuts, cuts while cutting fruit, etc), so i guess my mind just amplified that feel.
  
  sooo that's it for tonight.  i do have a lot of other really weird dreams that are still extremely vivid... one in which i met the girl of my dreams.  i can say that, because it is a dream, so i guess technically she would be the girl "of my dreams."  but really though, it was a dream that i wished i never woke up from, and after i did wake up, i tried my hardest to go back to sleep and continue the same dream, but it didn't happen.  as much as i know that it's just nonsense and just a fantasy imagined by my brain while i was sleeping, i couldn't help but wonder how amazing it would be, if somehow there were a separate "dream land" that our subconscious entered everytime we slept... that though we all pass it off as pure imagination, it is one connected world that exists parallel to our own.  in other words, that in this dream i really did meet "the one" for me, because she had the exact same dream and we met each other and found one another... but when we woke up, we just passed it off as a good dream, oblivious to the fact that this other person really does exist somewhere.  my secondary explanation for this, to counter for several loopholes in the theory, was the fact that we have many many dreams every night, along with many REM cycles and all that good stuff.  so it's kinda like short 5 minute (or however long REM cycles and dreams are supposed to be) adventures / episodes with different people, multiple times a night, so that there's no possible way that we can remember them all.  but this whole dream thing could also lend itself well to feelings of deja vu.
  
  i know i'm just randomly spouting out nonsense, but it was just something i was reminded of this weekend, and thought it'd be a nice interesting theory to share w/ you all.  completely false of course, but interesting nonetheless, especially since i think i had this dream back in high school, so it's been 10+ years since i thought this stuff up.  at the very least, if i could iron out the details and inconsistencies, it'd make a great setting / plot for a story / movie would it not?  you could do action w/ it... suspense/thriller... or romantic comedy.  maybe one day i'll whip something out for all you xanga readers.  and if this ever does become a cool idea that drives a future movie franchise or whatever, know that you heard it here first!
  
  yeah, i always thought i would have a decent shot at being a scriptwriter... i have unlimited stories to tell since i have so many weird dreams and i remember a lot of them.  the only thing is that they're not always good dreams; some are pretty boring.
  
  [edit] wow this was a really long entry.  i don't think this is healthy.
  

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