wshaffer

A month or two back, I caught a very interesting BBC Radio documentary about "earworms" - those songs or snippets of songs that get stuck in your head. There's actually university in the UK that is researching earworms. They have a form where you can report your earworms. I've yet to report any, partly because in my case paying attention to the phenomenon seems to trigger more songs playing in my head. I'd hate to be the subject of a footnote: "Our data set included approximately 1,763 instances of songs by British gothic metal band Paradise Lost. However, as they were all reported by the same person, we discarded these as outliers."

However, one thing I've found particularly interesting is how often I have a song playing in my head when I wake up. This seems like a particularly "pure" sort of earworm, since it can't have been influenced by the music I've just heard or by some situational trigger. (I suppose it could be influenced by what I've been dreaming about.)

Just for giggles, I decided to track this for a week. Here are the songs I've had playing in my head when I woke up for the past week:

Monday: "Sedative God" by Paradise Lost
Tuesday: "A Kiss to Remember" by My Dying Bride
Wednesday: "Straight to Hell" by The Clash
Thursday: Nothing. I mean, when I poked a little bit and said, "Really, brain? Nothing?" it obligingly coughed up "Xavier" by Paradise Lost. But I don't think that should count.
Friday: On waking from a nightmare, "My Twin" by Katatonia. On waking at my normal waking hour, "A Day in the Life" by the Beatles
Saturday: "You're the Inspiration" by Chicago. (There went all my goth cred.)
Sunday: "My Twin" by Katatonia

The Paradise Lost, My Dying Bride, and Katatonia songs are all ones that I've listened to multiple times this week. It's been a little while since I've listened to The Clash or The Beatles. The last time I voluntarily listened to Chicago was when the original Karate Kid movie was big.

I often say that I don't really have nightmares. I have lots of dreams where strange and unpleasant things happen, but I'm usually very emotionally detached from what's going on while the dream is happening. Last night's dream of viewing an increasingly graphic series of crime scene photos was a genuine wake-up-with-your-heart-pounding, consider-never-sleeping-again nightmare.

Nifty.

In contrast, the dream where I had to supervise a bunch of toddlers playing with a tiny baby pangolin, the dream where I had to engage a 20-foot-tall demon in unarmed combat for a reality TV show, and the hypnagogic hallucination of a tall grey-cloaked figure looming by the side of my bed were relatively par for the course. Though I wouldn't normally expect all three on the same night.

What the hell, subconscious? Except for one rather important meeting that I had earlier this morning, it's not even like I have a lot to be anxious about.

Still, it beats that one where you suddenly realize that you forgot to take an exam and aren't wearing pants.

I just successfully switched on the lights in my office by hurling a foam stress ball across the room and hitting the switch. I've been practicing this for ages. Achievement unlocked.

(This is arguably less efficient than standing up and walking into the section of office that is actually covered by the light's motion sensors. But so much more satisfying.)

There's a church that I often pass by on my runs that usually features an amusing message on its signboard. Last December it had, "Hey, how about you bring the kids to my place for Christmas? --God". And it went through a whole series of "let's show we're down with this social media thing" messages vaguely along the lines of "Jesus will always like you on Facebook" and "Prayer works even when you don't have wifi." A few weeks ago they had, "Regular exposure to the Son will prevent burning," which is the first time I've ever seen a veiled threat of eternal damnation wrapped in a cheesy pun.

Today I was surprised to see that they've gone rather old-school, with "Salvation is received, not achieved." Next week perhaps they will take a position on whether the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and from the Son.

In the Mission cemetery, I was rather moved by an offering someone had left on a grave: two new-looking black patent-leather high-heeled ankle boots, carefully placed at the base of a headstone. I like to think that they were dancing shoes, left by someone who had fond memories of dancing with the deceased, but I don't really know. I kind of wanted to take a picture, but it felt like intruding on something personal.

I dreamed that I was dying. It wasn't painful, and it wasn't scary. It was awkward and embarrassing because I was terribly slow about it, and I felt bad because all my friends and family were there and they had lives to get back to and grieving to get on with and funeral arrangements to make, and I was holding them up by not actually getting on with it and expiring.

And finally after a few days of lingering on in a semi-comatose state, I sat up and said, "Fuck it, I'm just going to live." And my mom went out and got sandwiches. I had ham and havarti on rosemary-potato bread.

Comment to this post, and I will list seven things I want you to talk about. They might make sense or they might be totally random. Then post that list, with your commentary, to your journal. Other people can get lists from you, and the meme merrily perpetuates itself.

retsuko gave me the following:

high school: After I finished 10th grade, my parents moved us across the country from Orlando, FL to La Jolla, CA, in the process moving me from a smallish private Episcopalian prep school to a medium-sized southern Californian public high school. What I remember very vividly about my early weeks at my new school was the exhilirating sense that I could completely reinvent my identity. I'd been at my previous school since 6th grade, and was pretty well pigeonholed socially as The Huge Nerd. For a very brief period at La Jolla High, I didn't have to fit anyone's preconceived notions of who I was. In the end, my essential nature won out, and I became The Huge Nerd in Doc Martens. Which was a small but surprisingly crucial difference.

aliens: The first piece of fiction I can remember writing was a story about an alien visiting me and taking me on a visit to his home planet. I was about 8. I illustrated the story in crayon, and then alien looked surprisingly like a Terileptil, even though I'd never seen any Doctor Who when I wrote it. I still have the story.

yogurt: Tzatziki sauce recipe: About 1.5 cups Fage Greek yogurt; 1 medium cucumber, peeled, seeded, grated, and with as much water as you can manage squished out of it; a couple of cloves of garlic, finely minced or grated on a microplane grater, salt and pepper to taste. Lovely with pita and anything you might put in a pita.

fanfiction: Prior to this year, I'd have said I wasn't really a fanfic writer. I'd done a few bits and pieces of Doctor Who fic, but never really got into the swing of it. So far this year, I've written two short Dr. Seuss/Doctor Who crossover pieces plus a dozen short Skyrim vignettes, which is a lot of fanfic for someone who never writes fanfic.

My fanfic in general is characterized by being both funny and sentimental. (Even when I initially attempt to evoke a different mood altogether.) I would like to write a something dark and cynical some day, just to prove that I can. Although dark and cynical doesn't really work with my core fandoms.

Wonder Woman: I think I may have seen a few episodes of the Wonder Woman TV show in reruns when I was a kid. Never read the comics. Wonder Woman was undoubtedly an important influence on my favorite female superhero, Promethea, but other than that I got nothin'.

cats: When I was 4, I fed a stray cat that wandered into our yard. She lived with us for the next 17 years. I think this shaped my attitude towards pets in general - I always feel that they adopt me, not the other way around.

Halloween candy: I really dislike candy corn, and used to give away any I received when trick-or-treating. The items I always most hoped to find in my trick-or-treating bag were miniature Hershey's Special Dark and Nestle Crunch bars. I liked Sweettarts and Jolly Ranchers pretty well, but really when it comes to candy, I've always been into chocolate. Easter always knocked Halloween into a cocked hat when it came to candy anticipation.

Spotted this at Fort Clinch on Amelia Island, FL. It was posted on a wall with a bunch of facsimile Civil War era documents. For a brief moment, I thought I'd slipped sideways into an alternate time line in which the Union Army recruited female engineers, until I actually read the whole thing.

Much as I'd like this to be an example of Civil War era humor, I think it must be a modern parody. I don't think that the sans-serif font used for "YOUNG LADIES WANTED" is period, not to mention that the use of at least 4 different typefaces at various sizes and weights smacks of something created using a computer, not hand-set type.

Still, it's nice to know that the folks in our national park service are having a bit of fun.

( The text of the poster: )

I appear to have a new recurring anxiety dream: i'm trying to start a car from a stop on a hill, and the clutch won't engage. And then the brakes won't engage. And so the car goes sliding backwards into the car behind me. I always wake up at the moment of impact, so at least so far I haven't had to dream about exchanging insurance info with another driver.

Bah. I like the recurring dream about fighting cybermen with my friends better. More cameraderie. (Plus, I get to marvel at my subconscious mind's firm hold on continuity: when we fought "Tenth Planet" era cybermen, we did it in black and white.)

My mother just phoned me to tell me that she's tooling around the Florida interstate with four pistols in the car. No, she hasn't adopted a life of crime, she's been entrusted with my late grandfather's small collection of antique firearms. The newest dates from 1905; the oldest may be Civil War era. i don't think my grandfather was much of a collector, so I think these may just be pistols that belonged to my great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather that he never got rid of.

A colleague of mine is visiting from Bulgaria. He brought me, as a gift, a picture book entitled "25 Beautiful Places in Bulgaria".

He arrived on Sunday, and has already had a little time to explore the area. What had been most amazing, he said, was the smell. "Nobody told me about the smell."

The smell? I wondered if maybe he'd wandered a bit too close to some of the salt evaporation ponds near the Dumbarton bridge or something.

No, no. He meant the beautiful smell of flowers and grass. When you live here, he asked, do you just get used to it?

"I think we must," I said, sniffing the air.

I think this is an underexploited tourism promotion angle: "Come to the San Francisco Bay Area. We smell nice."