How to Have Dreams Inception Style via Lucid Dreaming

Has anyone ever heard the term “lucid dreaming”?  Has anyone ever seen Inception?  It’s the same basic concept.  Okay, it’s actually pretty different, but I like to pretend that I managed to create a dream DiCaprio style.  Basically it means that while you’re dreaming you realize you’re actually asleep, but you continue to dream.  Most of the time this happens on accident (“wait, why the fuck am I making lasagna with Randy Jackson?”), but there are actually things you can do to spark a lucid dream on purpose (“ohh yeahhh, now I’m gonna make some lasagna with Randy fucking Jackson”).  When I discovered this I tried a few techniques out to see if they worked.  The last one did, and it was an epic experience.  Complete control in a dream?  Can you say achievement unlocked?

 The conditions have to be right for this to work, which may require some effort on your part.  In order to have a fantastic lucid dream that’s worth the effort, you have to at least somewhat remember your dreams.  The shock of waking up inside a dream is usually so memorable that most people remember it.  But occasionally people wake up with no knowledge of their lucid dream, and the chances of this happening are higher for people who tend to forget their dreams by morning.  Luckily it’s relatively easy to start remembering dreams, and it doesn’t take long.  For those of you whose dreams are fuzzy at best, be sure to pay attention to the first step I describe.  For the rest of you, pay attention anyways, it will help ensure that you have a lucid dream sooner rather than later, and will even help with the amount of control you have in your dream.

Step one: Start remembering dreams

                The subconscious is a strange, strange place.  It’s the part of your brain that decides if you’re going to dream about your aunt because you saw her recently, or if you’re going to dream about elephants because ten years ago your aunt took you to the zoo.  If you’re going to start remembering your dreams you need to start thinking about remembering your dreams.  The best reason I can give you for this without writing a 15 page post is what I’ve already said; the subconscious is strange.  The theory is you can train yourself to have more control over your subconscious, thus giving you more control over your dreams.  The way this can be accomplished is simple; the more aware you are of your subconscious, the more control you have over it.  In fact, reading this post alone will help tremendously, because even if you forget about it in ten minutes, your subconscious won’t, and it may remind you of that oh say… while you’re asleep (I told you I was Leonardo DiCaprio).  Start thinking about dreaming and what you want to dream about as often as you can, and you’ll start remembering your dreams fairly quickly.  Getting lots of sleep helps as well, as you’re more likely to remember a dream if you didn’t spend your night (or early morning) in a sleep deprived coma after playing Minecraft till your eyes bled.  The best advice I can give you if you’re nocturnal is to go buy some melatonin, it’s a sleep aid that isn’t addictive and actually makes dreams more vivid.  It’s easy to find and cheap to get, and will help you fall asleep before midnight in spite of distracting things like video games and reddit.  For all you heavy bud smokers out there, good news!  Remembering your dreams will actually be incredibly easy.  All you have to do is stop smoking for 24 or 48 hours, and you’ll start having crazy vivid dreams that you remember every second of.  Some people suggest using a dream journal, but I for one am far too lazy to follow that advice.

Step Two: Reality checks

                Here’s where you actually start having lucid dreams.  Make a small dot on the back of your hand with a permanent marker.  The best bet is to do this somewhere close to the curve between your thumb and pointer finger.  Throughout the day, the dot will catch your eye frequently.  Every time this happens, do a reality check by asking yourself whether or not you’re dreaming.  You’ll know that you’re not, but do it anyways.  To verify reality, locate some type of detail from your surroundings such as text, color or placement and remember it.  Look away for a few seconds, then look back to see if the detail is still the same.  Eventually, your subconscious will start reminding you to preform reality checks while you’re dreaming, and you’ll notice either A) your surroundings are changing or B) the dot isn’t on your hand.  From that point on, you’ll be in a lucid dream where you are totally aware that you’re dreaming.

It is important to note that there are different levels of lucid dreaming.  At its worse you are vaguely aware that you’re awake, but you can’t pull it together enough to actually control your dream.  At its best, you have complete and total control over what you do and see in your dream.  Being aware of your subconscious comes into play again with this, and with practice you can increase your level of control.  I have heard that lucid dreamers sometimes can’t control the overall emotion of their dreams, which would mean it’s possible to wake up in a dream that is utterly terrifying and have very limited control over what happens.  That would suck.  I wouldn’t recommend attempting to have a lucid dream if you’re prone to hellish nightmares.

If your dreams are whimsical and delightful like mine are, reality check away!  And feel free to let me know how successful you were.

What's Legitimately Wrong with Twilight

Unless you’ve been living as a hermit for the last five years there's a good chance you know more about the Twilight series than you probably care to.  But for those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, the Twilight series includes four books written by Stephanie Meyer.  The main character is a teenage girl named Bella, who falls in love with a vampire named Edward, and then runs amok with vampires and werewolves and other annoying characters.  For a more detailed description, Wikipedia knows everything about everything.

It’s safe to say that anyone who isn’t a twelve year old girl or acts like a twelve year old girl is not a fan of the books, and wouldn’t be caught dead watching the movies.  However, it’s also safe to say that the people who are adamantly opposed to the Twilight saga have never actually read the books, and know hardly anything about them.  DON’T HIT STUMBLE YET.  I’m just as disgusted with the books as the rest of you, and I too have to fight the urge to vomit when I hear a 30 year old woman gush about how wonderful they are.  But I’ve actually read the books.  The information that follows will give you hard evidence to explain the blind rage you feel whenever you hear the word ‘twilight’, and will be enough to actually win the frequently occurring debate; “this is why loving twilight makes you retarded”, instead of just muttering something about how vampires are stupid.  Best of all?  You won’t have to actually read the books.  Think of this as a type of sparknotes, except instead of passing the test you’ll get to psychologically destroy Twilight fans.  If that’s not a win-win situation, I don’t know what is.

I read a lot, and I hold a soft spot in my heart for the Harry Potter books, which I try (and fail) to not be embarrassed by.  So when I heard someone say Twilight was better than Harry Potter, I decided what the hell, I’ll go get a copy.  I did read the whole series, all the while getting more and more irritated.  I’ve even seen a couple of the movies, because unfortunately I love some of my friends unconditionally (and that’s the real test).  But in the process I did get to find out which aspects of the books were responsible for pulling in so many fans, and why the series is so god damn awful.

This is why the four million fans of twilight out there seem to have abandoned all common sense; the story draws you in.  Putting aside all of the reasons I’m about to list, the world that Stephanie Meyer invented is creative and interesting.  I realized fairly early while reading the series that I hated it passionately, but I finished it because I still wanted to know what was going to happen.  That is the number one reason it’s so popular.  Sometimes people confuse ‘lots of cliffhangers’ and ‘quality writing’ as the same thing.  Another equally important factor explaining Twilight’s popularity is its resemblance to soft core erotica.  The series is wildly inappropriate for young girls, which is the exact reason they’re all obsessed with it.  Here’s a book that takes a pretty intimate look at how to have sex with a vampire whose pelvic thrust could obliterate your entire skeletal structure and for some reason, is easy for preteens to get their hands on.  If you weren’t allow to see PG-13 movies, you’d read the series too.

Here’s why Twilight actually deserves your hatred;

Summed up, it’s morally repulsive.  The series was written for teenagers.  For people whose perception skills have proved to be so horrible that they’re legally not allowed to watch R rated movies or buy lotto tickets.  More specifically, the book was written to be read by one of the most impressionable demographics ever; preteen girls.  Having been a preteen girl, I can attest for how inclined they are to believe what they are told.  The message that Twilight sends out, however subliminally, is an awful one.  Roughly translated, Stephanie Meyer is indirectly convincing millions of girls too young to know any better that finding true love is the most important and worthwhile thing they will ever do.  In the books, Bella routinely stabs her family and friends in the back in order to be with the guy she loves.  She pulls stunts like running away from home, lying to her mom and dad, being a bitch to all of her friends at school and generally disregarding everybody’s feelings except for those of her vampire.  Towards the end of the series, she even has to make the choice between never seeing any of her family or friends again and forgoing her education, or never seeing Edward again.  Guess what she chose?  What’s even worse is that every horrible decision she makes ends up working out in the end, because all that matters is that she has Edward.  And it still gets worse.  Throughout the entire series, Bella is either miserable because she isn’t with Edward, or radiantly happy because he’s with her.  There are extremely few examples of a middle ground.  She has no hobbies outside of being obsessively in love with Edward, and no goals or dreams involving anything other than being with him for eternity.  The depth of her character is limited to how this one guy makes her feel.  Not cool Meyer, not cool.

So now we have a generation of girls who at least partially and/or secretly believe that a college degree and personal growth take a back seat to whatever hormone induced relationship they’re currently in.  Wonderful.  There are plenty of other less substantial reasons for why Twilight isn’t great all over the web, most likely because everybody wants to identify why they feel like punching Bella in the face.  The main one being the writing is surprisingly bad for published literature.  If you want a simple example of this, take a look at the name of the main character, Bella Swan.  Translation of course being beautiful swan, or in my language; I spent all of 30 seconds coming up with this name.  Plus the characters lack depth, the plot is often predictable, and the hundreds of pages devoted to Bella whining because Edward dumped her during the third book made me want to gouge my eyes out.  I know there are more flaws, but the people who argue against Twilight by saying things like “vampires don’t actually sparkle” are more annoying than their overly opinionated counter parts.

So now you can eloquently and knowledgeably make any Twilight fan cry.  Although I would try not to verbally attack the tiny ones, only the ones who should know better.  And I will say this; I’m a pretty open minded person, which explains why I read the books in the first place.  If anyone can intelligently and adequately prove me wrong, I’ll delete this post.  (Adequately does not equal CAPS LOCKS OF RAGE)

Deleted Friends Episode After 9/11

The television show Friends was an American sitcom that was on air for a decade, from 1994 to 2004.  The show was typical to most sitcoms, and always maintained a socially acceptable and family friendly story line.  The one exception to this was an extremely unlucky coincidence that occurred during the eighth season.

The episode "The One Where Rachel Tells Ross" was filmed before the September 11th attacks, and was set to air two weeks after the attacks.  Because of a seriously unfortunate script, the episode's main story line was completely changed.  It aired instead on October 4th, 2001.  Here's why:

In the original episode, Chandler and Monica are getting ready to take a flight, Chandler makes a joke about bombs, and they're both taken in for questioning.  Talk about the worst timing ever.  While the 9/11 attacks were devastating and horrific, I'm sure the writers of that script couldn't help but think "are you kidding me?" when they found out.  And if that wasn't bad enough, the rest of the story line is comprised of terrorist, hijacking and national security jokes.  I realize that the writers couldn't have had any idea of what was coming, but the deleted scenes seriously seem like they were written to be as socially inappropriate as possible.  Every single joke is like a slap in the face.  You have to sympathize for how awkwardly guilty they must have felt.

 The story starts with Chandler saying "hey look at that, federal law prohibits any joking regarding aircraft hijacking or bombing" than turns to the security attendant and says "you don't have to worry about me ma'am, I take my bombs very seriously".  Ouch.  Can you imagine the type of response that would have after 9/11?  I guess the writers should thank their lucky stars that the episode didn't air right before September 11th, not to mention look into the possibility of being satirically psychic.

They released the deleted scenes later, making it clear that they found them as offensive as the rest of us.  You can watch them here .

Origin of the Word 'Okay' (and Why it wasn't America's Proudest Moment)

I was gallivanting around the corners of the internet the other day, when I realized that I had no idea what the abbreviation 'O.K' stood for.  Naturally I immediately found as much information as I could on the matter, which surprisingly wasn't much.  Here's what I learned:

There are theories abound to how we came to incorporate 'okay' into our language, but no one really seems to know exactly when and how it came to be.  A Tennessee historian with less time on his hands than me has claimed to have found the earliest recorded use of the word to be in 1790, when Andrew Jackson supposedly said "proved a bill of sale from Hugh McGary to Gasper Mansker, for an uncalled good, which was O.K."  But, unfortunately for the Tennessee historian, the general consensus is that the recorded use was in 1815, where someone wrote "we arrived ok" in their diary.

What's strange is that while there are examples all over the place of the earliest usage, there are hardly any examples for when it became the overused word it is today.  Even stranger is despite nobody knowing what it stands for or where it came from, 'OK' has evolved in remarkable ways extremely quickly.  A perfect example of this is how it has changed just in the last decade.  Does anybody remember everyone spelling the word as an abbreviation in the 90's?  I was in school then (I'm a youngster, I know), and I used to get marked down for spelling the word as 'okay' or even 'OK'.  The correct spelling was supposedly O.K.  I for one haven't seen it spelled like that since the 90's.

  

But beyond the spelling technicalities, the word is one of the most commonly used in the United States, it's so widely known that other countries have adopted it into their own language, often making the pronunciation sound like the American version.  I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve encountered a language barrier, only to have the other party say “okay” over and over again because it was one of the few English words they knew.  It’s also rapidly becoming a cultural and technological icon.  ‘Okay’ has all but replaced the word yes on our computers, particularly online.  Not to mention the various catch phrases it’s created, Okely Dokely or Mmkay ring any bells?

And yet, nobody knows what it means.  I guarantee you can ask ten or twenty people what the letters O.K. stand for, and they won’t have any clue.  But never fear, the internet hasn’t failed me quite yet.  There are three main theories that explain 'okay', I say main theories because they are the only ones with actual academic support.

Theory number one: Old Kinderhook

                Hardly worth mentioning as it has the least support and makes the least sense, but I’ll include it out of fairness.  A guy named Allen Read noticed that Martin Van Buren (the eighth president of the United States) lived in a residence in Kinderhook, New York that was very rarely referred to as Old Kinderhook.  Read’s supporting evidence includes a breast pin from the 1840’s with the letters O.K. on it, celebrating Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans.  And that’s about it.  I included this theory because for some reason it was immediately accepted back in the 1960’s when it was first published, and thus is offered in almost every dictionary used today (although most dictionaries also offer the third theory).  Sometimes things just don’t make any sense.

Theory number two: African or Scottish Origins

                The most boring theory, but still a very likely one, is that the word okay stemmed from either Scottish immigrants and/or African slaves.  There are examples all over the place of strikingly similar sounding words used by African slaves in America, such as “Oh kee”, “kay” and “O ki”.  I can personally attest for this one, if you ever read Uncle Tom’s Cabin (written in the 1800’s about the quality of life for some fictional African slaves) you’ll see similar phrases used frequently.  The Scottish equivalent is that a large number of Scottish immigrants used the phrase “och aye” to mean ‘oh yes’, and ‘och aye’ kind of sounds like okay.  The general idea with this theory is that as America is a melting pot, our language is too, which is very true.  It’s likely that this theory explains our use of the word, but it has one major flaw.  Until recently, okay was almost always known as O.K. or OK, and this theory doesn’t clearly explain what those letters stand for.

Theory number three: Oll Korrect

                It’s up to you to decide if I’m a cynic or a realist but in my opinion, this theory seems the most likely, in addition to being my personal favorite.  It starts like this; around the time that ‘OK’ started cropping up in print, an American inside joke that still exists today started turning into a comical fad.  That fad was commonly misspelled words.  Kind of like how the whole ‘teh’ thing came into play recently.  It can be argued that education wasn’t as widely perused as it is today, so often times people would spell words based off how they sounded in the region they were in.  For example, in North Carolina the phrase ‘enough said’ was often spelled ‘nuff ced’ (now a days we spell it ‘nuff said’, kudos America).  The misspelled phrase that supposedly kicked off the word ‘okay’ was ‘all correct’.  It was often spelled 'oll korrect', which everybody found immensely funny because the internet didn’t exist yet.  As the joke continued, people would spell it incorrectly on purpose, eventually abbreviating it to OK.  A hundred years past, and we were still saying OK, except nobody really knew why anymore.  Not only does this theory have the clearest written record, but it is honestly the most probable as well.  I mean, who doesn’t expect this exact situation to eventually happen with LOL?

So there you have it, we thought it was funny that everybody misspelled everything, and it's likely that the people who used OK on purpose back then were making fun of the less educated.  Then we forgot that it was just a joke and incorporated the word into an American icon.  Embarrassing?  Yes.  Probable? Yes.