Archived comment by rory:
listen to radiohead orange visor read hemingway.

Archived comment by Matt:
That was me, steff (although you probably already knew that). I thought your photo folder looked all empty without anything in it, so I found just the thing.

Archived comment by Joe Napalm:

*Reverses Gravity*

I've always wanted to do that...

Anyway.

He might have less trouble in the crowds if you'd maybe...uh...jump or something?

*Grin*

-Jn-
City of Brass Expatriate

Archived comment by steff:
and theeeeeen, presto chango, i looked like me again! and lemme tell ya, matt was relieved. he'd been having trouble finding me in crowds when i looked like someone else.

quit messing with my reality! well... unless you get it to do something really cool. heh.

Archived comment by Apple:
Um, you look like her mom? Or at least you did until I saw the CITYBagel pics.

Archived comment by steff:
heh. much better, thanks. but now i forgot the question. =D

Archived comment by Apple:
Dammit! Stupid cut/paste!

Here. Sheesh!

Archived comment by steff:
what the...? apple? why did you send me to an expired yahoo mail session? heh. those matts, you know. they're EVERYwhere.

Archived comment by Apple:
All I got is a pic of her daughter (namelink). But there is a strong resemblance, being mother and daughter. Just add the two front teeth and make adjustments for braces when Stacy was younger. Oh, and age her like twenty-two years.

And, funny enough, her husband's name is (wait for it) Matt! *bum bum bum!*

I find neither clowns nor midgets/dwarves/incredibly short men the least bit scary. My fear factor falls more toward the creepy guy at the bus stop who stares at me and occasionally yells, "Leave the Marines alone!!" Yep, that's what scares me.

I also have a problem with the roofers who will not leave no matter if they're finished or the weather gets hella cold. Last year, it was construction workers who were clearing the field/pond across the street from here but took well over four months to actually finish the job. So, I guess I could combine them all into one category. Creepy Guys Who Stare At Me.

Hee! Midget clowns!

Archived comment by hypoxic:
heh but what if you had midget clowns?

Archived comment by steff:
but, you know, four-foot tall women ... we're just ok.

Archived comment by Matt:
Clowns aren't scary. Midgets/dwarves/severely vertically challenged men. Now those are scary. I'm talking, like, in the four-foot range.

Archived comment by steff:
heh. that's pretty funny, apple. aaaaallll my life, when someone (teachers, friend's parents, bankers, bosses, random strangers...) can't remember my name but THINKS they do, it comes out stacy. i pretty much answer to it, which is confusing because matt's sister's name is stacy. and now, i'm all curious as to what your friend stacy looks like. especially since i've been told the infamous picture doesn't look at all like 'the real me'.

Archived comment by Joe Napalm:
H.P.Lovecraft?

Uh...No. Hell no, even.

And clowns are evil. Don't even joke about that.

*Grin*

-Jn-
Efreeti Sophist

Archived comment by Apple:
Until proven different, I tend to put the faces of real life friends that fit the general persona displayed in the posts.

Mike happens to look like my real life friend Mike. Joe matches my Floridian friend, although he is starting to morph into my cousin's fiance, whose last name is what Joe calls his brother. Steff looked like my friend Stacy until picture proved otherwise. Intelligirly looks like my sister. Cebu pretty much looks like what I thought she would look like. Umrguy looked like one of my brothers. Sluggy looked like my friend Glenn, who very much resembles Campbell Scott.

When someone actually is the person I imagine them to be, then I'll be frightened. It really would be hella wierd to discover I had been relating to someone I actually knew.

Archived comment by peegee:
Don't screw up my imagined visualization of what people on IP look like. Can't help thinking up faces to go with the posts. Joe used to be somewhere between H.P.Lovecraft and Hunter S. Thompson and now you just turned him into Krusty the Klown...
*reaching for my medication*

Archived comment by steff:
scary, huh? *big grin*

the amazing, dancing, singing, sequin-costumed, tap-shoe-wearin', grin-producing, unicycle-ridin', senSAAAAAtional.... joe!

Archived comment by Apple:
Hee! Joe's sensitive! Or sensible. Sensational?

Archived comment by peegee:
Hmm, Joe, how many senses ? Why not "as many as one can count with ten fingers" ? That should give you enough possibilities to develop new senses as you go along. *grin*

Archived comment by Joe Napalm:
*blinks*

Right...what steff said.

Hmm. Mike's right about one thing, though...I forgot balance, as well as common. So...*does a quick count*...I seem to be up to eight, now.

How many are we supposed to have, again?

-Jn-
Efreeti Sophist

Archived comment by Mike:
The sixth sense is balance. Everybody forgets that.
Sleep deprivation does screw with it. And hey, so does six beers!

(*does the "back-on-topic" dance, stumbles*)

Archived comment by steff:
i'm just guessing that, in this case, the 6th sense is the gut feeling... the overriding sense that, even though your mind knows this can't be happening, your gut tells you it IS - that visceral feeling that tells you that you are or are not dreaming, if you bother to ask it. the sense of reality, if you will.

Archived comment by Joe Napalm:
Afraid not, Matt...I wasn't in Special Forces, I just happened to associate with a small covey of them while I was in school (to quote Neal Stephenson: "As nightmarishly lethal, memetically programmed death-machines went, these were the nicest you could ever hope to meet.")...Well, and I've done some work for the 160th SOAR (Night Stalkers Don't Quit!), but only as a code-slinger...ended up with a really cool shoulder patch, and no uniform to put it on. Heh.

Anyway...Bryan? Don't be impressed. It's not like I was fighting to stay awake...

-Jn-
Efreeti Sophist

Archived comment by umrguy:
Joe, that is both impressive and amusing :)

...And SIX senses? I realize you're Efreet, is that where the sixth one comes from? And which one is that?

"There are some things I can just smell. It's like a sixth sense."
"No, actually that would be one of the five."

(0.5 cool points.)

Archived comment by Jon:
Well, if it was, you could have your own theme song. Just like in "I'm Gonna Git You Sucka"!

Archived comment by Apple:
Mine's more along the lines of "Could never be a Mentos commercial."

Archived comment by steff:
one of my (many) dream jobs is to study the effects of sleep deprivation/so called abnormal sleep cycles.

...yeah, i babbled on about this for a very long time and decided nobody really cared. =D let's just say that 1)i'm actually looking forward to matt going on rotating shift work, so i'll have some excuse for my weird-ass sleep schedule and 2)searching for "peter tripp" or "randy gardner" or even just "sleep deprivation" gives you all sorts of cool stuff. aaaaaaallll sorts. really cool. try "shift work", too.

heh. "not exactly a mentos commercial" - the theme song of my life.

Archived comment by marinerd:
I was once reading an article on people suffering from extreme sleep deprivation who started seeing things, etc. One also indulged in a bit of the white powder and started shooting people (he thought they were aliens or something). There were other creepy examples.

I'm so glad our friendly neighborhood sophist wasn't in that article!

Archived comment by Apple:
Well, he is Efreet, after all.

*grin*

Yep, that sounds like Bill. Paranoid and delusional with all the nice unpleasantries that make up sucky relationships. I don't miss him.

The longest I've gone without sleep is about 72 hours. Three days was plenty to show me what a bad idea it was. Nothing anywhere near what you went through, Joe.

Archived comment by Bryan:
Joe N.


I'm impressed...how the hell did you manage to stay up for 120 hours? Sheer willpower?

Archived comment by Matt:
Well done, Joe. Well done indeed.

If it weren't for a few minor inconsistencies, I'd swear you were my friend Arthur White, Sgt. 1st Class, Special Forces 5th Group. Airborne certified, Chinese Intelligence specialist.

The only thing I was able to Google on him is that he sang Amazing Grace at the memorial service last year for three of his platoon members who were killed in Afghanistan from friendly fire.

This is a man who, at the age of 18, almost 19, turned down a National Merit Scholarship to join the Army, because he thought real life was, well, just too real.

I hope he's still alive. Surely someone would contact me if something happened.

Archived comment by Saint:
And Joe wins the insomniac trophy! To nobody's surprise. *g*

Archived comment by Joe Napalm:
Okay, I'm bored. And I'm awake.

As you may have noticed, writing tends to help my brain shut down - *Grin* - so I'm going to do so until that happens. Don't feel any particular compunction to indulge in the ramblings of an insomniac sophist. This is intentionally not the short version...

Anyway...City of Brass Studios presents:

The Camel that Ate Detroit!

Back in college I went about 11 months averaging about 4 hours of sleep a night, interspersed with periods of straight-out insomnia. A few months of that were spent working 3rd shift, so not only was I not sleeping much, but what I did get wasn't in sync with a normal circadian rhythm.

This also coincided with my Junior year in college as a CompSci geek. I'll let you in on a little secret - that's when they cull the weak specimens from the herd. They hit you with an impossible workload, and see who breaks and who adapts - I came into this already a few months in the hole, sleep wise.

You see, sleep is like a checkbook. You have to have a certain amount of income, or you end up in the red. Even when you start making ends meet, again, you still have to pay off your debts.

Also, that year, my former sensei left for Japan. His right-hand man took over...also ex-SOF, but his idea of training was all PT, all the time. I spent about four hours every day getting run into the ground by a retired SpekOps goon. Not Hell Week level of training, but not exactly a Mentos commercial, either.

Anyway - by the time the last week of classes rolled around (at Madstop, this is lovingly referred to as "Dead Week"), I'd decided to just run with it. If the Camel wanted to eat Detroit, he was more than welcome to it...I mean, I've never even been to Detroit.

Five days is 120 hours. At breakfast on Day 5 I happened to be standing around (if I sat down for very long my muscles would cramp up) speaking with an old friend (who was about to graduate with a Psych degree) when someone came up and draped their arm over my shoulder in a friendly manner. I turned to say hello...at which point my psych-major friend said: "Can I study you?"

After a quick double-take I realized that it was still just the two of us. My friend (the real one) explained that my mind had finally decided that if I wasn't going to sleep, it was going into REM mode, anyway. In other words, waking dreams. Trust me...this is not as cool as it sounds. It's bad mojo.

At first, I thought this was something I could just shrug off. I figured that forewarned was forearmed, and I could deal with it. I went to class...about halfway through the first one, I watched a desk slide itself forward from one row to the next, making that nasty screeching sound that only old wooden college desks can make on a linoleum floor. Things started going down hill from there. There's something inherently frightening about seeing something that you know is not real occur, yet all six of your senses insist that it is indeed happening. Things kept happening - despite the knowledge that they weren't - and kept getting exponentially creepier...

I skipped my Religion, WitchCraft, and Magic anthro course that day (the only time I missed that class, and it may have been the smartest thing I've ever done - studying Voodoo during REM...no thanks), went back to my room, and finally slept like a dead saint. I'd put the offical tally somewhere between 120-132 hours...zero sleep.

Don't try this at home, boys and girls. No, really...the list of effects of extreme sleep-deprivation is pretty unpleasant: acute paranoia, delusions, impaired concentration/motor functions/judgement/immune system, hallucinations, death...generally things you want to try to avoid.

Anyway - after that particular insomnia jag, I decided that the "ride it out" approach fell strongly into the Bad Idea category. And seeing as my long rambling story tactic seems to be working, the world gets another example of bathos...isn't that handy?

In any case,

By monitor light
Sleepless Efreeti Sophist
Lulls grey cells to sleep

Not exactly Basho, eh? I should add "imaired Haiku-Do" to the list...*Grin*

Night, anyone who actually read all this...

-Jn-
City of Brass Expatriate

Archived comment by steff:
hung like a camel. *falls over giggling*

Archived comment by Apple:
And I dated him!

8^O

Archived comment by steff:
...so, you can just imagine the size of the camel.

yes, sometimes that matters.

Archived comment by Joe Napalm:
"All generalizations are bad." -- RG Grenier

Detroit's a big town.

-Jn-
Efreeti Sophist

Archived comment by ParU:
Well yes, Matt - I often don't know how to spell things. And I imagine that the SEALS were pulling your...oar. But maybe the academics were tough for them.

Archived comment by Matt:
ParU, did you mean wussies? At first I thought you meant whosies, but now I'm thinking, not so much.

SeALs. I've met some. They were on the rowing team with me. Both of them said that going to college full time and rowing six days a week was about as hard as anything in SeAL training, except Hell Week. That's just what they said.

Archived comment by ParU:
OK - sleep deprivation topic - all of you are whooses (as am I). Namelink is for the SEAL program and it briefly describes Hell Week. Go ahead and read down to the bottom of the page and see what sort of physical training they recommend, just before you try out. During Hell Week, they famously are allowed 4 hours of sleep while doing incredibly difficult and demanding tasks. That's not 4 hours per night, that's 4 hours for the entire week (7 days).

And yes, Demi Moore wouldn't have lasted an hour in real life.

Archived comment by Saint:
*g*

No, as a matter of fact....

Not since I blew my knee. My cousins are "double black diamond" at 50 mph people, so I would never measure up anyway.

Archived comment by Jon:
What, you don't ski in Colorado, Saint? :^p

Archived comment by steff:
jon... it depends on how much sleep i've had. =D

Archived comment by Saint:
I'm not usually an insomniac since I gave up white powders, but lately I just can't fall asleep until way late. Then my wife comes home from work way early, and wakes me up whether she intends to or not. I hate it; I love sleep, and I miss it very much. At least I'm getting enough rest that I'm not hallucinating. And since this insomnia is natural, I don't hit the "I hate everybody, I'd kill you all if I could just get away with it" stage of come-down. Which is nice, when you're trying to stay married.

Archived comment by Jon:
Besides yourself, right steff?

Archived comment by marinerd:
Steff, I really empathized when I read your comment this morning, since I had one of those nights last night. It used to bother me when I didn't know if I was asleep or awake, and getting up feeling like I'd ridden a camel all night. Ha! Luckily it doesn't happen to me that often. ButI almost never have it happen on Friday or Saturday nights. So I don't believe it's a physical problem.

Archived comment by peegee:
...unless we get monkeys riding camels.

..better that than the other way around.

Archived comment by steff:
thaaaanks, joe... now we're going to have camels on the dream thread. at least we should be done with the monkeys.

...unless we get monkeys riding camels. *aaaiiiiieeeee!

Archived comment by steff:
matt, you don't think any of US can empathize? rookie. =P i'm getting less of the staying-up-wandering-the-halls-all-damn-night-long, but that's only because we don't have halls in this place. i hate to, you know, disturb the other denizens, so i've started just going the hell to bed about 1.30-2 in the morning and lying there. la-lala-lala.... solving the world's problems in that maddening twilight between conciously stealing the covers and dreaming of walking through ice caves because you've lost them again. there really IS a surreal quality to the life of the sleep deprived/differently scheduled.

i've found the best cure for insomnia isn't a cure at all. i still lie awake at night, but since i work on my own schedule with nowhere to be at any certain time, it just doesn't matter anymore. on the down side, no beautiful people work here. =D

Archived comment by Joe Napalm:

That's okay, Apple...

...I'm pretty sure Monk has mentioned dating the first camel, at some point.

*Grin*

-Jn-
Efreeti Sophist