Tag: thinking in my head

Munda’s Wandering Thoughts

Some days, shit is happening, and all you can do is pretend to pursue the normal aspects of being. For one, war is hettin’ up in the Middle East or whatever you want to call it. It’s been a war zone for years. It’s usually a matter of who is going to strike back, how, and when. There will be violence, death, and destruction. The Middle East quagmire of religions, history, and tribes and factions are overstocked with tendencies to war.

Personally, dispiriting matters keep piling up in my world. I don’t write about all of them. Not going to start now. My basic bottom line which I return to again and again, is, this is life. Many of us — hell, I’ll go out on a limb and declare that most of us — go through this shit. I can only imagine how worse the shit is magnified if you’re suffering from serious diseases, homelessness, racism and other prejudice, discrimination, or hate. On paper, I have it pretty good but life is lived on a spectrum. We slide up and down it. I’m on the down side today.

We watched again a Neflix series on the gut and the biome’s influence on our brains and pains.* As part of this show, they talked about fecal transplants. Transplants were done by people who had problems and were seeking solutions. One woman used her boyfriend’s fecal material as her transplant source. She noted that he has ‘mental issues’ but didn’t specify more. Or maybe I spaced on it. I did catch her say that she began acting and feeling like him, emotionally unstable, anxious, and depressed. She quit using his shit and used her brother’s shit. After a week, she felt much better.

I imagine a future of routine fecal transplants. A partner on the computer says, “I’m ordering some groceries and things. Is there anything you need?”

“Yes, get me some new shit. I’m almost out of shit and I’m feeling it.”

“What shit do you want?”

“Same shit as last time. It should be in your order history.”

“Is it the Tom Cruise brand Improved Shit?”

“Yes, that’s the shit, but get a big jar. I’m really feeling it.”

“You got it.”

I think about whose shit I might order. Maybe Taylor Swift, Tom Brady, or Patrick Mahomes. I pity the fool who tries mine. But then again, I know people with some shit that’s a lot worse.

*The Neflix series is You Are What You Eat: A Twin Experiment

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The Car & Contest Dream

I dreamed I had a very fancy sportscar. I knew it was quite unique, exotic, and expensive. It seemed dark in color but I never saw its color or make, and know little about its shape other than some brief glimpses. It appeared low and svelte with organic curves, along the lines of sports racers in the mid-sixties.

My wife and I were traveling in it. Along our way, we paused to submit an entry in a contest. Everyone was participating in it. My wife took care of that entry, going in and providing them some sample of clever engineering that we’d either found or created. Coming back to the car, she told me there was another opportunity to come back to give them an entry at three that afternoon. We agreed we would return and drove on.

We drove to our destination without incident. Then, with sunset chasing us, we headed back the other way. First we stopped to submit another entry. Since my wife did the first one, I volunteered to go in and take care of this one.

Inside this well-lit, austere place, it was chaos. I found a counter where a rotund white man with a thin mustache was supposed to be handling the entries. He looked like he was in over his head. I brought our device to him for registering and entry. The thing, whatever it was, was round, small, and lightweight, easily residing on my open palm. I gave it to him with the paperwork and watched to see what happened, wanting reassurances we were properly vetted. He did some things but seemed to lose focus halfway through. I made it a point to pester him to ensure our entry had been processed. Reassuring me, he showed me a pullback lid from a small metal can, the sort you’d find on a pet food offering. I was horrified and protested, but then decided, the hell with it, I had to go.

I returned to my car but didn’t see my wife. Picking it up, I carried it out of a crowd of people and around a corner, and set it down with a thump. Still looking for my wife and not finding her, I reasoned that she must have gone off and would be back in a moment. But she rapped on the car window from inside the car; she’d been sitting there the entire time and was indignant about the way I’d just picked up the car and carried it because it’d been unsettling for her.

That out of the way, we and five other couples began driving down a curving multilane highway into the gathering dusk. I could hear the people talking in their cars. Many were discussing my car and me. I gently accelerated, easily outdistancing them, though I knew they remained behind me and could still hear them talking.

By now, it was a moonless and starless black night. I reached a point where the road went up a vertical grade. The car handled it with no problem, but at the top was a ceiling. Reaching it, I stopped the car and left it. I was at the juncture between a white ceiling and white wall with a blue and black pattern. There was a crawlspace access. I knew from my journey there that I had to pick up the car and carry it through this crawlspace to the other side. I knew I’d done it before but I was a little more tired this time.

Nevertheless, I scaled the wall and entered the crawlspace. The other cars had arrived and were queued to follow me. Reaching back, I picked up the car with my wife inside it. As I began wedging myself and my vehicle through the narrow space, I thought, this is stupid, and stopped.

There must be a better way, I thought.

Dream end.

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Monday’s Wandering Thoughts

Watching an NFL football game on television yesterday, I heard the analyst say about a running play where the team lost yardage, “He ended up with a negative loss.”

That spun my thinking. I’d never heard it before during a football game. Hearing it prompted me to wonder, can a football team have a positive loss? It seemed like a screwy way to express the results.

I can imagine some football fans trying to come up with a way to establish a negative loss. Like, not only did they lose yardage, but the clock kept running, meaning that they’re running out of time. That means, with the score as it is, they’ll probably lose because they’re behind and not much time to play remains.

That sounds like modern NFL football, convoluted and a little contorted, becoming more abstract by the week.

For instance, on a quarterback sneak, it looked like the player was stopped short of the goal line. It was fourth down, so that team turned it over on downs.

But wait, it looked like the quarterback fumbled the ball and another player on his team recovered it, so it’s a touchdown.

No, the referee explained: “Only the person fumbling the ball may advance it. Therefore, the ball will be placed at the point of the fumble, and possession has changed due to loss of downs.”

Got that?

That wasn’t the end. The team who didn’t score — the Eagles, BTW — threw a red flag to challenge the result. That ended with the Eagles having a touchdown awarded them. That’s because, before the QB fumbled, the ball crossed the plane of the goal line before his body was down. Officials in New York figured that out by using multiple sychronized television angles to determine exactly where the ball and the QB’s body parts were during which point of the play.

Yow. Watching resulted in a positive increase of confusion AND exasperation.

Imagine trying to use ‘negative loss’ in other ways. I know that in some emotional situations, people like to express positive loss and negative loss, trying to spin, for example, someone’s death in a positive way. I have done that: “At least they’re not feeling pain.” I think that’s positioning a negative event with a positive outcome.

Drinking my coffee. I suppose I could say, “I’m going to drink more coffee, which will result in a negative loss of coffee in my mug.”

I wouldn’t, though. That’s laborious. I’d just say the obvious, “I’m going to drink more coffee, so there will be less remaining in my mug.” I could even shorten that: “I’m going to drink more coffee, so I’ll have less remaining.”

Or, I could tell my wife that after shopping for groceries, we had a negative loss in our checking account.

I’m sure that would earn me a WTF look from her.

Why, though, would such a declaration be even needed? Isn’t it self-evident that there’s less coffee after I drink some? I think it is, unless it’s a magically self-refilling cup. As for whether it’s positive or negative, that depends on your outlook: is the mug half-empty or half-full? Are you a pessimistic or optimist?

I don’t usually think in terms of glasses and mugs being half-empty or half-full. I usually think, “I have some left,” or, “It’s gone.” Does that mean that I’m just a pragmatist? Or am I merely focused on the situation’s bottom line: I have some or I don’t.

I’m no doubt overthinking the turn of words, but I hope ‘negative loss’ doesn’t catch on. It probably will, the way that saying, “I literally died” is now acceptable to so many. Sure. Now that you ‘literally died’, you’ve returned to life. Are you undead or have you been resurrected?

I suspect some became zombies after they ‘literally died’. That might explain our state of politics. *rim shot* (Yes, that was snark.) The ‘literally died’ lost some brain cells during their experience, negatively decreasing their thinking skills. (See what I did there?)

It’s like hearing, as I so often do, “I was thinking in my head.” Well, where else would you be thinking? In your foot?

That’s like saying, “I was chewing in my mouth.” Okay. I’m glad you’ve mastered that. (Yes, that was more snark.)

Although, after drinking coffee just now, I had a positive gain in my energy and focus. BTW, I drink my coffee black, without cream. (Hello, it’s more snark.)

It’s kinda like saying that football team had a negative loss.

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Friday’s Wandering Thought

He read in a paper, “…they were laying down on their stomach.” He frequently reads sentences like that and wonders, is down necessary? Could they be laying up or in another way? It seems redundant.

Like that phrase so constantly heard, “I was thinking in my head.” Like, where else do you think? Explain.

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