i have a dream

Last night I had a dream involving hotboy. Fortunately I had booked a session with Doctor Robert this morning, so I was able to tell him about it.

The transcript below explains everything. It's probably only interesting if you're me, but it's all true.






Doctor Robert: Just relax, and tell me what you have to report today.

Patient: Well, I had a dream.

Doctor Robert: Okay, just tell me what you can remember.

Patient: Well, I remember I was living on one side of a forest, and I could see over on the other side ...

Doctor Robert: Symbolically, the other side of the world?

Patient: Yes. There was a large tree, and hotboy was scampering around in the upper branches of it, like a monkey, or judging from the bend of the branches, more like an orang-utan. He was being encouraged by a mate of his.

Doctor Robert: Who was his friend?

Patient: I don't know, maybe his sensei. Anyway, as hotters climbed higher into the tree, the branch was bending ever lower towards the ground, and nearer and nearer to the garden I was standing in.

Doctor Robert: Symbollically, you want hotboy to visit you.

Patient: Yes, it all makes sense! Yesterday I had bottled another bucket of home brew, so in my dream I created someone to drink it all!

Doctor Robert: Just leave the psychoanalysis to me. Tell me more about the dream.

Patient: I suppose so. And in the dream I was thinking - I would never perform gymnastics high in a tree that, it's too dangerous.

Doctor Robert: What do the aerial gymnastics represent? In real life, does this hotboy fellow ever do anything that's risky?

Patient: Apart from the drugs, the feats of drinking, the cigarettes, the boxing, and the running around outdoors in an Edinburgh winter? Nothing at all.

Doctor Robert: Do go on.

Patient: Well, as hotters continued to run and jump around on the branch, I was thinking - I hope it doesn't break or he'll injure himself falling into my garden.

Doctor Robert: In other words, you imagined a more down to earth hotboy.

Patient: Yes, I suppose if he ever applied his abilities to something practical or a career, he would be a great success and then I would be the only under-achiever I know.

Doctor Robert: So what happened next?

Patient: He sank so low he was able to step off into my garden, and I showed him around.

Doctor Robert: What happened next?

Patient: Next thing I knew, he was back on the other side of the forest, with one of his mates.

Doctor Robert: What was the friend doing?

Patient: He was obsessively tinkering with a car engine, a sports car, to make it go even faster.

Doctor Robert: Does hotboy know anyone who's obsessed with speed?

Patient: Yes! I see now, it must have been Poisonous!

Doctor Robert: Maybe, or does he know anyone else, someone with an obsessive hobby?

Patient: Well there's Menzies, he's an obsessive pitch inspector.

Doctor Robert: There you are then.

Patient: Yes. Inspecting the car engine represents inspecting a cricket pitch. Anyway, I saw hotboy leaving the forest and walking in the direction of Nicholson Street, so I ran to try and catch him before he went home. By the time I reached Nicholson Street, he was already on his bike and cycling away. I shouted, and he turned around. I suggested we go for a beer, and I offered that we could either go to a nearby pub full of deifheids and flatheids, or drink some of my home brew back at Buccleuch Towers. He chose the pub.

Doctor Robert: Why did he prefer the pub?

Patient: I haven't a clue.

Doctor Robert: Time's up. I hope this has helped.

Patient: Thanks. This virtual analysis really works. Every day I'm getting a little more normal.



If you think you too could benefit from spending some time with Doctor Robert, he's taking bookings now in the comments section.

pills and laughter

The first visit this year by the deifheids was a useful reminder of why the weekly walks with them had to stop. Enough said. In contrast, last weekend we went to visit Kerry and Ray (to hell with protecting people's anonymity, nobody reads this stuff anyway), and what a pleasure that was! Ray is taciturn but if you ask him about something, he knows a lot that's useful. Kerry talks a lot, but it's all good practical stuff, she doesn't whinge, and she knows how to listen too.

---

Recently, the bliss pills have lost their effectiveness, in fact they've been making me quite cranky. It's probably a fault at the factory - they're manufactured in Australia, where quality control is not quite up to the standard of the rest of the third world. Over there, the bliss pills are so unreliable, people are turning instead to low-tech solutions like laughter workshops. Spud's brother is building a career there, as a certified laughter facilitator. This is one of the videos filmed at his workshops, and you can see the results for yourself.

stalling

At the same time as the engine room of capitalism is blowing up, the engine room of my corner of the blogosphere is stalling, and there's nothing to read on my chums' blogs. Or mine. If this social drought continues I may have to go out in the real world and look for some friends.

Speaking of which, this morning I'll be seeing the deifheids for the first time this year. They're coming over here for breakfast. It might actually be bearable, since I've had a long break since my last exposure to deifheidism.

PS - I can recommend some scary photos amd a scary video.

rediscovering tai chi

I did the (Yang style short) form tonight. I first learned it from Larry about 20 years ago, and I used to know it off by heart. But it's been years since I did the full routine, and tonight I found a wee gap where I couldn't remember how to get from Single Whip to Fair Lady (aka Four Corners). It's an especial shame because Fair Lady is my favourite move.

So I decided to get the Tai Chi books out and try and relearn the missing bit. At first I didn't recognise what they were telling me to do. Interestingly, I realised that the reason I had forgotten this particular move was because I had never learnt it properly in the first place. I had always just fudged this part of the routine.

Well it took about half an hour of experimentation to be able to do something half-way between what I had mislearned, and what the book was showing. My knees had to work hard but without injury, which is itself progress. Probably all the dog walking has been silently fixing up the old recurring joggers' knee problem.

So I was able to do the whole form from start to finish. Now I'm feeling that particular post-Tai Chi knackered feeling that you don't really get any other way. Hot too. I'll sleep well tonight, even sounder than the bliss-pill sleep.

Apparently the financial world is falling apart, but if you can keep yourself happy for nothing, who cares?

in the paper this weekend

In the paper this weekend, there was an opinion piece on Palin, written by the brilliant Naomi Wolf, in which she points out:

The McCain campaign has surrounded Palin with veterans of the Bush-Cheney cabal.

The form of cancer for which McCain has been treated has an actuarial survival rate of two to four years for a person his age. [This leads to] the disturbing prospect of a long Palin presidency.

[Palin is] a scary stalking-horse for eight more years (or more) of rule by the thugs who looted America's treasury [and] wrecked its economy.

Have a nice weekend.

balanced walking

Just back from the morning dogwalk, trying out the pulse monitor that I've borrowed from the blister. She's lost the instructions, so I'm the only one who can figure out how to work it. But I'm not sure how to interpret the stats it's giving me. I suspect that, like everything, they're part good and part bad.

At one point, after only a minute of fast uphill tramping in the ankle sandbags, the reading reached 143 bpm (probably bad). Yet I wasn't even out of breath (good), and the pulse went down again to about 100 after about half a minute (probably good). Natural equilibrium!

I seem to remember that somebody, possibly me, had a post and comments some time ago about pulse rates, but finding it is too much like work, and I'm on holiday. I'd rather spend the time in the garden murdering weeds.