DNA - the idea that such an infinitesimally small piece of me can contain enough information to replicate me.
That factoid that says you swallow 10-12 insects a year in your sleep! urg! Makes me want to tape my mouth closed when I go to sleep. (Somebody please tell me that it an urban legend or something!)
The fact that I cannot remember some events/details from a week ago… Yet when my dad was installing my ceiling fan I remembered the complete lyrics to the Schoolhouse Rock “Electricity” song.
The fact that since I bought my condo I now owe the bank $100,000! eek!
microwave ovens - a radiation machine - which can cook things in 5 minutes and make some foods explode is a common household appliance.
revolving doors - blush can you get pulled under? what if a jerk got in after you and went too fast? (I know, I am very weird.)
I am so glad somebody else mentioned sex! Who were the first people who looked down and said, “I wonder what we can do with these?!?”
written language - it is only by common agreement that an “a” is an “a”… and so on…
I sometimes get the other planet type feeling, as well as the looking out from the body sense. I also get this very odd sense that the world has changed but in such a way that the change never happened. What ever is now different always was and only by freak coincidence (maybe being near the change, or as far away as possible) am I even aware that the universe has been retroactively updated.
Also the idea that the universe has a shape. That implies it exists within somesort of larger context that may involve an additional spacial axis (or more than just one). I try to understand a four dimensional spatial system by analogy (jab a pen through a piece of paper and now imagine some sort of thing doing that with 3-D reality as we know it) but I just can’t get a real grasp of it. The idea of a 16 points all equally appart from eachother in a shape that is related to a cube the way cubes are related to squares makes my brain enter a stutter stepping loop.
Attatched to my cosmic and poor understanding of math/physics based sense of oddness is the idea that space may end. Like the concept of space may at some point just stop and after that there isn’t just no more matter and energy but no more space to be filled with matter or energy. I imagine there is an edge and that standing at it would just break your mind, though someone watching a movie of it would see cracking light and strange bends for effect.
Which brings me to my final weird thought which is new. I don’t think TV is real. Same with movies. My parents worked at the Profesional Children’s School in NYC when I was younger so I’ve seen TV stars out of character and in person. There is a yearbook in my house that has a picture of Sarah Jessica Parker when she was in the fourth or fifth grade. I say this to show just how seperated the experience I’m going to describe is from my knowledge. I sometimes think that everything on TV and in the movies is as generated and fake as a computer animation. This sensation is amplified when very attractive appeal are on the screen. No one looks like that in real life. But there they are as if they were right infront of me. It is a total illusion. No one is really on TV. Real people who look like the illusionary people are paid to make public appearances. Maybve the illusion is actually another reality, or host of them, that is less muddled and more vibrant than our world. When TV and film technologies were invented they were really discovering a way to peer into that world.
was thinking the other day about how our generation is really the first one in the history of the world where you need never lose touch with anyone else if you don’t want to. Now that we have email and the internet you can trace anyone you’ve ever met. But right up until only a few years ago this was not possible. You could fall in love with someone, or have family members you were deeply attached to, and they might have to travel a long distance away and you’d lose their address or perhaps they didn’t know where they would end up. And you’d lose them entirely, like as if they’d died. And you’d go on the rest of your life KNOWING that they were still alive, out there somewhere, but you’d never see them again. Like a bereavement only worse because you knew they were still alive.
I got to thinking about this while thinking about all the people who emigrated from Europe to the States or Australia in the 19th century. They left for ever, and they knew (and their families knew) that they would never, ever see them again. I find that heartbreaking.
I don’t wonder about the first person to drink a big enough slug of nasty freakin’ grape juice that had been sitting on the windowsill for a year to cop a buzz (he was probably just really thirsty). The person I wonder about is the first guy that he managed to convince that it was a good idea.
“Hey Og! Drink some of this rotten juice! It’ll make you unable to walk!”
Same thing for the guys that started licking tree toads to get off.
Interesting thoughts Sparrow - this actually happened to me, and it ripped my heart right out.
My first boyfriend and love of my young life was from a remote area of Brazil. We met in London, but after a year+ he had to go home. He didn’t have a phone, or access to email, or any of the modern communication tools we take for granted. He might as well have been from another planet. I had a choice between following him, and losing almost all normal contact with my family and friends, or staying and losing all contact with him. The hardest decision I have ever made. If he had asked me to go with him, I would have done. But he didn’t. And I lost him completely. I have no idea where he is now, or if he is still alive, and I probably will never know.
Even though I’m married to someone else now, it still freaks me out to know that someone I was so unbelievably close to is out there somewhere in the world, and I have no idea where he is, if he ever thinks about me, if he’s happy or sad or sick.
You’re right—gymnastics is absolutely insane (I’m a huge fan). And they keep making the rules more & more difficult, so at some point we’re going to start maxing out what bodies can do. What REALLY scares me is trampoline—yeah, I’m gonna fly 30 feet in the air and land on my feet!
You’re right—gymnastics is absolutely insane (I’m a huge fan). And they keep making the rules more & more difficult, so at some point we’re going to start maxing out what bodies can do. Plus, a lot of the time the general public doesn’t hear about injuries at the non-Elite level…
What REALLY scares me is trampoline—yeah, I’m gonna fly 30 feet in the air and land on my feet!
Someone earlier mentioned being freaked out by their body doing things on its own.
Well, every time I get a charleyhorse (and it’s happening a lot more frequently as I get older), I wonder what’s keeping my entire body from just seizing up completely.
I mean, what if my diaphragm or my heart decides to pull the same stunt that my calf muscle does every once in a while?
Also, for a few years now, I’ve been yawning WAAAY to wide. To the point where my jaw actually pops a little ways out of its socket. What if my jaw muscles decide to just go for it one day, and there I am with a self-inflicted dislocated face?
