Category Archives: Uncategorized

Lap

A lap steel.... should I buy one?

I've always wanted to learn a different instrument, but violins and fiddles are too loud, horns are even louder; mandolins are too plinky; pianos are too big; keyboards are too electronic. I need something that sounds different than a guitar, that I can play in the spare bedroom, and that doesn't make a ton of noise (unless I want it to!).

Writing In Dreamtime

A couple weeks back I had a dream where I was walking by someone reading a newspaper, and for some reason, I felt like I needed to read the text. And so I leaned over and started reading. I got about ten words in, then things started to break down; everything after the first half sentence was pure nonsense. There were letters in word-sized chunks, but they might as well have been lorem ipsum. And this made no sense in the logic of the dream. But then, while still in the dream, I realized that I was dreaming, and therefore the text on the paper would have to come out of my imagination (along with all the rest of the world). And given that, dynamically-generated text in a dream was going to be impossible for me because there is absolutely no way I can dream-up new text and get it onto the 'paper' faster than I can read it. I just don't have the processing power to create faster than I can consume. Also, reading in a dream is the same process as reading in real life...?

Since then, I've had two more of these dreams: I had to read some scrolling TV text, then a novel. As with the newspaper, the text starts out OK for the first few words, then dissolves into sheer nonsense. And in both cases, I knew exactly what was happening, and I laughed at it.

So, it's become a joke I tell myself when I'm asleep.