I've heard that most people don't dream in color. I do, and I always have as far as I can tell.

I've also heard that lucid dreams - dreams where you know you're dreaming and so you can control the action - are pretty rare. I have them all the time.

Those two things make me lucky I suppose, but all is not perfect in my dream worlds.

To tell if I'm dreaming or not I've used the trick where you find some printed words, read them, then read them again. If the words change then you're certainly dreaming. A watch can also be used if you can't find any writing.

More often, however, I just use the jump test. This is when I simply jump into the air and then try to delay my landing. If I can delay it for even a second I'm dreaming.

In my dreams I can walk through walls. This is something I had to develop. I started by passing through glass windows, then through closed doors, and now I'm at the point where no room can contain me, and no locks can prevent my access. The trick is to flash my hands at whatever barrier I'm about to collide with - I do that and I just pass right through.

I'm also working on my invisibility. This comes in quite handy when I'm skulking around looking for some cutie to molest. Some especially sensitive characters seem to sense my presence, but all they ever do is watch me pass with a quizzical look on their faces.

I can of course also fly, though that ability has the annoying habit of diminishing as I use it. It's like I have a certain amount of flight time allocated at the start of each dream, and once that quota has been used up I'm limited to just fast running, or maybe sliding around like I'm skating.

Height is also an issue. I seem to be limited to just a couple of dozen feet above the ground. Trying to go higher uses up my quota very quickly. I'd reasoned that If I could just get high enough I could then just drift back to to whatever destination I wanted. No such luck.

It's very annoying because my dreams typically start out at home - either my current one or the one from my childhood - and I can never get to where I want to go by flying. My flight time allocation just isn't long enough.

Driving isn't much of an option either. It seems that all of the cars in my dreams are limited to maybe 5 MPH at most.

Running can get me to where I want to go - and I'm a very fast and relaxed dream-runner, but then I run into the most annoying thing of all.

I wake up.

All of my dreams are too short. I'm such a light sleeper that nearly every time I get to my destination I wake up. Just for a second, but enough time to have to start all over again.

I've been trying to develop teleportation to cut down on my travel time but I haven't had much success with it yet. I'll keep trying though.

How's this for an awkward ending to this entry?

I thought I'd jot down some ideas for future 'blog entries so that the next time I find myself in a little creativity drought I'd have some ideas ready and waiting.

Despite my stated intention to make an entry at least every couple of days there have been way too way too many times where I fail to meet that goal. This entry may help ease that problem.

1. The Mystery Hottie. This is the person you see while driving to work, or the girl at the grocery store. You don't know their name or anything about them yet you still want to have sex with them.

2. Asshole of the Day. The people who take up three parking spots. The people who won't use their turn signal. The ultra-Liberals.

3. The Stupidest Thing I Heard Today. I could make an entire website devoted to this topic.

4. Stuff I Didn't Know. They say you learn something new every day. Maybe I should write about the things I learn each day. Like yesterday I learned that the first man to go over 100,000 feet in a balloon got back to Earth by jumping and parachuting. How cool is that?

There's a saying - at least I think there is, maybe I just made it up - that bad things come in threes.

As I type this I'm waiting for the trifecta to complete.

First, I'm relocated to the worst position possible at work. Then on Saturday my truck developed a radiator leak.

Now, as I type this, something in my computer is making an awful racket. I can hope that it's just one of the cooling fans, but I fear that it's one of my disk drives.

If it is a disk I hope it will hold out until I can buy a replacement and transfer all of my files.

Playing with the Terragen Strata plugin and made this one.

I like this image. I think it can be a lot better than it is. Maybe it should just apply itself instead of being so lazy all the time.

as-i-nine
adj.
1. Utterly stupid or silly; asinine behavior.
2. Of, relating to, or resembling as ass.

First off, Friday night.

I had a pint of the Arcadia Scotch Ale, which I like more and more each time I drink it. What happened next was NOT the beer's fault. About halfway through I started feeling a little queasy. By the time I finished my pint I wasn't feeling very good at all so I left. I have since figured out the reason for my little anxiety attack, and it's nobody's business but mine. So there.

Anyway, once home I felt a little better. I had a bottle of Stone Smoked Porter while I watched a movie. It was pretty good beer actually, not as strong of a smoke flavor as some of the other smoked porters I've had, but enough to be recognizable, and enough to be pretty good.

On Saturday, I resolved to be in a better mood.

The night started out pretty well. VigilanteGirl was very fired up about the adventure she'd just had. She'd chased down some gas thieves and got their license number for the cops. She was VERY fired up, and her enthusiasm was quite contagious. I arrived at Rich O's in a very good mood. Ahhh, youth.

My mood was quickly diminished by what has to have been to most fucked up conversation I've ever heard. Now I want to be clear that I consider these people to be my friends, and that hasn't changed, but when people start talking about how cool Nazi's are and how, even if they're not cool, America is no different than the Nazis, I have to either bite my tongue or go off on someone.

I chose to bite my tongue. People like that are, I've found, not very receptive to conflicting views, and like I said, these people were my friends.

After a while I moved over to the island area and spent a good couple of hours talking with CoffeeDude about a lot of things.

Oh yeah, beer. While all the stupidity was going on I had an Arcadia. Once I'd moved to the island I switched to NABC Beak's Best.

I was able, via my conversation with CoffeeDude, to turn my mood back to a positive one.

Thanks, CoffeeDude.

Just a little image I made while playing with Terragen's bliss effect.

As I mentioned a couple of days ago, I've been find it harder and harder to pick an image to eliminate, when posting a new image, to keep myself down to five galleries total.

To help ease that pain somewhat I've gone ahead and added a sixth gallery.

Actually what I did was add a fourth Terragen gallery and rename the old galleries four and five to five and six respectively.

Damn I'm feeling creative lately. My third image in as many days has some of the most complicated surfacing I've done yet:

Instead of doing things I should have been doing, like mowing my lawn, I worked with Terragen today and came up with this:

On a related note - I've got so many images now that I'm finding it harder and harder to find one to eliminate before I can put a new image in one of the three Terragen galleries. I really need to start thinking about adding a fourth - and maybe a fifth - gallery for Terragen images.

Today I saw an image that used Terragen's "glow" feature in a way I'd never even thought of before.

I copied the style and made this: