Baddogma's Other Meta Cafe- Polite Discussions About Scientific Mysticism and General Weirdness

Hi, just a short visit, because I have to share when I find something I love.
A game!

Hope all is well.

a reply to: KilgoreTrout

You are right. I should specify that the OG has lack of EQ that is dangerous for everybody. His IQ has nothing to do with it. And sorry for looping them in by loose use of general terms.

Mea culpa

Besides that, the world will be better off with someone else. Not sure who. Or why the system seems to turn up “the lesser of two evils” as a choice.

@all, strangeness...

Walking down the sidewalk to the bar. I feel a pebble in my shoe and then a bee flies right at me at eye level. I think, “Whoa!” then dodge it as I continue on.

A few steps later, I am passing an old couple going in the other direction.

Thinking about my shoe situation, I think to myself (no talking), “It was just checking you out. Wondering if you were a walking flower. Hehe”

The lady runs to me and says, “Excuse me!?!?”

Ah, telepathy! LOL! Should serve as a warning not to listen to other’s internal dialogue!

Hello???

I’ve been crazy busy at work teaching the new hires how to do their jobs.

Anyway, here is something really strange!

It is after 8 am on a Saturday, the regular crowd shuffles in... wait.,, oh yeah, I am watching the early college football game and grab an electric guitar to dork off on while nothing happens on TV. So far, nothing extraordinary.

Then, for no reason, my left eye starts tearing up. And it is gushing pretty good too. So I wipe it off on my sleeve and continue playing guitar. And it is still going a minute later and I am wondering wth???

It dribbling down my cheek so I wipe that away with my sleeve. Then I noticed that on the corner of my mouth that there is something stringy there. So I grab a napkin and wipe my mouth and see blood!!

I go to the bathroom and look in the mirror and sure enough, I have blood on my left hand sleeve and on the front of my shirt! There are no open wounds or cuts or even a popped zit. Just my face with 24 hours of beard growth and a trail of blood collecting under my chin!!

I wash my face off and do another reinspection and there is nothing to find! I still have blood on my shirt.

Did I cry tears?? WTH?! I hope that you are all doing well. This is a strange way to start the day. And there is no one else I would rather share this with than the Metacafeterians!

a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

Hi.
That's pretty disgusting baby. I'm pretty sure crying blood means something.

a reply to: Peeple

There is the big biblical and I think that I found where I might have been leaking (but that is more scary than stigmata!)

I think that it might be my apartment always having heat on and skin (parts on my face drying out and cracking) issues.

Although stigmata would not surprise me!!

Got 10 days of hell at work and am thinking of just replacing my home computer so that I have something to waste my time on (I don’t play PC/PS games and ‘American sports taint nuttin’ butt football). Then watch out!

“He is back to save the world again... again!” -Tropic Thunder

My @$$ is on the line for a job thrust upon me. That is no big deal but I would like to have a say in my own future. That is why I am reticent in doing my “new” job is pointy haired boss is an idiot and can’t plan for the future.

Anyway, the last month has been a whirlwind of cat herding (I am trying, Ringo, real hard to be the Shepherd). Mind numbing at times and “real work” at others.

This is mostly “last man standing” syndrome as I am the one who has been around long enough to remember why these decisions were made to do it the way we do it today.

All that being said, I really miss spending time thinking about big black triangles and other dimensions!! Still reading about stuff but not posting as much...

You all should have enough practice to post good stuff although the audience is rather not up to speed these days.

Paper written, work spying on me, and nothing new to share with anybody for a few months...

Keep the weirdness weird and the strange as charged with as much strangeness as possible!!

a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

Is it melancholy or nostalgia when you take a glance over the new thread titles and sigh in sweet memory of a time when people actually had their own unique thoughts and ideas?

I don't even bother anymore. My ideas go in a secure little analog notebook with pen - oldschool!

Nostalgia for novelty? Is that even possible?

a reply to: Peeple

A few more days...

... I promise! It has stupid-dumb busy... and the new pointy haired boss is quitting... so reset to zero...

-TEOT XOXOcowOXooohBaby...

a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

Happy weekend!
Something weird, I got a blood test and my doctor asked what I was taking, me "what do you mean?", she "there are tranquilizers in your blood"
I swear I didn't take anything. So what's up with that? Is my body producing its own? Did someone slip me some in my drinks or food? Did these unknown folks think I need some?
Alien abduction to medicate me?

Besides that I noticed whenever I make a thread I never get answers on topic. It's like everybody just picks a word and tries to spread their bias.

a reply to: Reverbs

That is absolutely it - meanings and stories - are what makes us human more than anything else about us. It is our distinguishing feature. There is an inherent need in us to be more, to see more, to do more, imagine more but essentially all that is to enhance the story, to give it meaning and meaning is our "purpose". We seek understanding of the past to give meaning to the present, and imagine the future to give us a meaning to pursue. The past tells us that we've been living this way for a very long time and that ownership of stories drives us apart, and brings us together.

Ouroboros anyone?

What we see of reality is truly bizarre. Blows my mind in short shrift. Colour is an entirely internal experience. The array of receptors in our eyes only pick up 2-D, everything else is inferred. That's some complex #ing # going on. Alice in Wonderland Syndrome is a really good example of how interference, due to viral/toxic and/or fever or other reasons, including, possibly, external and environmental factors, manifests upon our perception.

In the article I quoted to Peeps, they use the analogy of a computer screen with icons. That while we perceive a little green box, that little green box is actually representing something that looks nothing like a little green box. The little green box is just a "signal" or "sign" of what it actually is. I get that. But moving to 3-D. I pick it up, I feel it. It also feels like a little green box. Does it feel like a little green box, or does my brain just interpret it to feel like a little green box? Anyway the jist of the writer's conclusion was that seeing what is actually there is not good for us (in terms of survival) - they back this up with animal studies that I can't remember the details of but the frog thing I posted ages back, about the frog's eye only seeing what it needs to see, says it all really - we see what we need to see.

After my psychosis I found crossing the road mentally challenging. I wondered, since my brain could tell me things were there that (probably) weren't, could it also take things away that were? I eventually worked out that it wouldn't because I don't want to die.

a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

I saw the news last week that the "device" had picked up it's first plastics. YAAAyY for perseverance paying off.



@ everyone (especially Peeps)



Nothing much doing with me, just not enough hours in the day, let alone sufficient energy, - Busy, busy, busy. Sleep. Repeat - is summary enough, - but have been thinking about you all on and off all week so decided to pop by to see how you were all doing. It's quiet, huh?

a reply to: KilgoreTrout

you are beautiful.

you just described like my entire life jam.

right now my story involves a young smarty hottie. we are weaving our musical magic through the pages of reality.
I put value in the illusion above the desert of reality. reality is essentially meaningless.

im in love.

ReVeRbSeN

a reply to: Reverbs

Reverbs

a reply to: KilgoreTrout

GAH!!!

I had a nice response written up for your post... oh well...

Uhm, our brains are ment to certain things and if others do it in different sequences that is OK. And those that don’t get labeled “psyzophrenic” and dismissed from the conversation..

We are wrong to dismiss people like that. We need everybody to make it through (sorry Peeps, I had a better write up than this! You are still the bestest for me!)

To evolve, we do it as a group or we fail.

Nice to see the whole gang is reporing in. Some even with good news! (Hi Reverbs, happy happy joy joy)

There are two kinds of people 1 has a tendency for mythification 2 for rationalising... okay maybe 3 agnostic fundamentalists
But at some point I guess all 3 have to decide if they want to be 2 or 1 because a permanent state of not-knowing is quite draining. That's where I am now.
I've seen great wonders and mysteries, I want to believe there is a rational explanation, I know to make sense out of it all we need new better myths.

And I'm pretty overwhelmed because I feel like Kilgore said "which cars are real and which has my brain made up"?
And I guess a good rule of thumb is the ones emerging from an emotionally charged storyline are fake (everything following "I wish...", "I want...", "I hope...", "I fear..." etc)
and the stuff you don't really care for could be real

Might be that's what the "death to the ego" detachment stuff is trying to convey? Weigh the anchor. Be now

a reply to: Reverbs

As are you

My story right now is about maintaining the balance. I'm altering my patterns. It is allowing me to be mad without going there completely. I think essentially I broke myself and I'm almost done putting the pieces back together. Almost. Perhaps some I have left out from the reassemble and I am trying out different things to fill in the places. I suppose it will always remain a work in progress - until it doesn't.

Reality may be a desert but I still love picking through the sand and looking at the pieces...

...but then I haven't got a smart, young hottie to distract me.

All things are relative, that is still "true", I think. Relatively speaking.

Congratulations and enjoy.

a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

The things is that when a culture decides that something is "bad" we suspend our understanding of it's nature, and everything associated with it is considered "bad". The baby is literally thrown out with the bath water. Just take Australia as an example and the way in which the indigenous cultures were subject to systemised "re-education". Similarly Canada following the arrival of missions. We can roll that pattern of behaviour all the way back to Christian imperialistic dissemination. That's all very well in Europe, and in Canada to a major extent, but Australia is an entirely different kind of ecosystem. Throwing out the old ways and trying to supplant with the new is impossible in much of Australia, as it has proved to be in other non-temperate climates. Applying the new ways, forcing the ecosystems to comply has led to the depletion of those environments in increasingly visible ways, ways which make life in those regions increasingly unsustainable.

Along with the legend, "know thyself" displayed at the Delphic Oracle, was another, "nothing in excess".

Madness is not a difference in itself, in my opinion, it's a consequence of a difference of opinion based on a different way of perceiving, that is left marginalised and unheard, villified and isolated. The problem arises, again in my opinion, with the invention of secrets and lies. Not little white lies, proper betrayal, putting yourself above others, taking more than your share. Having things to hide opposes you with those that cannot help but tell the "truth" as they "see" it.

Sooo, if one were to dabble with the idea that this kind of perception is part of natural selection. A consequence of the natural order and of evolution in our environment. A faculty which aided our success and development as a social species was our ability to process and perceive the environment in different ways, and to create outputs of information that could be shared with the groups to form a concensus of opinion to fuel the actions of the wider group. I expect that amongst any given group that that potential exists but that society rather than huddling together for the exchange of information, has become too drawn to it's own reflection in the mirror and huddles for the reassurance of sameness and the comfort of repetition. That creates a different kind of madness, particularly in such changing times (see OG).

I was thinking earlier today how my life patterned in a similar way to when I was a child at school. I do an hour of this and then an hour of that. And it suddenly struck me as odd that we do "life" in the way that we do. We give children a variety of subjects to learn about, and then as they get older, we narrow the field, they are encouraged to specialise. We program them for diversity but lead them into monomania. 9-5, 5 days a week fulfilling the same, singular purpose. Who's mind, other than monomaniacs, is that healthy for?

Difference and diversity have purpose. I think that the times that we are currently experiencing is in part a reappraisal. Part of the problem I think is that the narrative of them and us was also successful for the group, of course and the expense of the others. And that belief that what you do not have can be taken from those that can't defend it, is part of the underlying rot, that is grasping at the heels of those of us desperately trying to swim back to the surface.

And lots of other things

These though are my thoughts for today. I can see change happening everywhere. Little steps and a few great leaps. I think the human world is getting itself fired up. I remain completely optimistic that we're going to turn this around in many ways.

a reply to: Peeple

Be now, or just Be. Remember the Three Hares - "to be". What is "I am" if not "to be"?

a reply to: KilgoreTrout

I don't know but "I am" is defining an entity, "to be" is an activity, which makes your statement rather confusing? Or is it just me?

I mean take sensory deprivation, all the coordinates(perception) gets stripped away, all the forces that push and pull your I am through the day regularly are gone the "to be" remains even without that defined entity.
On the other hand you can be so consumed by your daily routine your "to be" becomes nothing but a string of reactions the "I am" forces you to do.
To me I am is much different than to be.

But I'm complicated and feeling philosophical.

a reply to: KilgoreTrout

she kept saying reverbs last night. she has no idea how funny that is for me. one of the first things she said to me was that shes an alien haha.

i think i finally put myself together again. it was like 3 years. im differently set up, rearranged, bigger now.. i wouldnt change a thing. replanted puuurrfectly, now i just grow.

i knew i was back when my heart saw her. i thought it would never come back. the universe is being playful with me again.

synchros pushing my life where i asked ot to go. its unreal. but it is.