Dredging the Log...

I was talking with Michele a couple of nights ago and she talked about the Log persona. This idea that Tom lives in this amazing intellectual world where he muses about humanity, cognition and occasionally toy soldiers. But in reality he's just a man who likes to watch Cops and enjoys the occasional bubble bath. In real life, I live like a hermit and through my writing and general correspondence, I interview intellectuals and talk about creating new virtual world visualisation with people who appear as close friends I have never actually met.

My dreams in recent nights have been filled with lakes and ponds that get drained. At the bottom of the ponds? Either there are fish or expanding mercury-metal spheres that grow into obtuse people that end up committing strange crimes. I had a coherent dream about returning to Australia - where a pond was dredged for some reason. It has been more than six years since I was in Australia. I would return as a citizen but an alien. Pretty well how I lived when I was in Australia.

I very rarely have lucid dreams. But for the past few nights the dredging contained waterway dreams have been continuous.

Barbalet the Bounty Hunter

It is a curious thing living in the US. I was called by a lawyer early this evening wondering if I would serve papers on one of my fellow apartment residents. My first question to the legal clerk was how did he find our number? He typed in our street address to a directory listing website and our number popped out.

I pointed out there are about 300 apartments in our complex. He agreed and said he was only up to B. I noted to the clerk that he would be better placed knocking on doors. He said that he couldn't, hence the calls and he hung up.

It was a local number, he could have knocked on doors. I suspected that the fellow he was after would have been evasive and potentially violent. In the case that I accepted doing this idiocy for the local lawyers what would happen if I had been injured.

Only in the US...

Flightplan and Mad Money

Michele and I watched Flightplan tonight. Not a bad film. A bit two dimensional but for a PG13 movie, quite reasonable. PG13 is like low-alcohol beer reality. Reality for me exists at two extremes. G and R. I don't see PG13 in real life. It strikes me that most of the external world, the world one experiences in some parts of Las Vegas are very much R and I am not talking about neon Vegas.

For example, Michele and I eat in fast food restaurants occasionally. In recent weeks our two fast food experiences has featured kids stealing food in the restaurants. Typically the number will be called quietly or lackadaisically by the staff and a couple of kids will grab the bags and run out of the store. Now the kids are never homeless. They always have fresh white shoes. But this seems to be a Vegas reality. In stark contrast, I sing to Luna.

Out in the real world of Vegas, I rarely go out with Michele where people aren't cursing loudly. That doesn't exist in a PG13 reality

Back in the realm of fantasy, I have found myself watching Mad Money on CNBC with Jim Cramer over the past couple of nights. I'm always transfixed by nerd shows. Even my Thursday night, nerds with guns. Nerd culture can be described as the unhealthy obsession with a socially uneasy topic that would occupy an average person's consideration for all of an hour a month. If you spend more time than that on a topic, you are an obsessed nerd.

Mad Money is a stock analysis show fundamentally, but without the host it would be nothing. He is a guru of extreme capitalism. I look at extreme capitalism like a cult. But in part, it is just because I lack capitalist zeal. In stark contrast to my friend, Brian C. Wiles, is amazing to watch. We talk on the phone relatively infrequently. What Brian has in zeal, I make up for in idealistic analysis. But even with AdSense, I feel dirty. I don't like looking like I am trying to make any money. I like ideals and ethics, and raw capitalism always seems a little dirty. That's my problem. I'm working through it.

Good night.