Rachel

Comment and:
1. I'll respond with something random about you.
2. I'll challenge you to try something.
3. I'll pick a color that I associate with you.
4. I'll tell you something I like about you.
5. I'll tell you my first/clearest memory of you.
6. I'll tell you what animal you remind me of.
7. I'll ask you something I've always wanted to ask you.
8. If I do this for you, you must post this in your journal.

Since I'm the sort of person that will carry three different notebooks a day through meatspace because they have each have a different purpose, I've made myself a new LJ just for recording my polyphasic experiences. This may be a sign of an underlying neurosis, but with me, what isn't?

http://polyphasicpooka.livejournal.com/

View it. Boggle at it.

Oh, by the way-- I'm home. ^^

(Click here to post your own answers for this meme.)

✓ I miss somebody right now.  (I haven't seen school friends in forever.)	✓ I don't watch much TV these days.  (I'm away most of the time. And most of it sucks anyway.)	✓ I own lots of books.  (I need more. Lots more.)
✓ I wear glasses or contact lenses.  (Glasses, hurrah! My face looks unfinished without them.)	× I love to play video games.	× I've tried marijuana.
× I've watched porn movies.	× I have been the psycho-ex in a past relationship.	× I believe honesty is usually the best policy.
✓ I curse sometimes.	✓ I have changed a lot mentally over the last year.  (I've become a lot more interested in personal development over the past few months, and I think I'm less of an emotional fishstick. Hurrah.)	✓ I carry my knife/razor everywhere with me.  (Swiss Army knife-- evidence of my Girl Scoutin' experience.)

( it goes on... )

I'll be off to my glorious summer job tomorrow to teach children how to make s'mores and ride horses and sing some very silly songs indeed. If you've anything vital to talk to me about or just wish to convey your overpowering sadness *cough*, leave me a comment here, one at the myspace, or e-mail me. I'll be back during some of the weekends, covered with bugbites, gleefulness, and DEET.

Au revoir, mes petites! I love you all.

Instructions:
List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they're not any good, but they must be songs you're really enjoying now. Post these instructions in your livejournal along with your 7 songs. Then tag 7 other people to see what they're listening to.

Songs:
[1] The Pixies-- Where is My Mind
[2] The Beatles-- I'm Happy Just to Dance With You 
[3] Rise Against-- Swing Life Away
[4] Sorry About Dresden-- What Gives You Butterflies
[5] The Format-- Dog Problems
[6] Some Bloke Who Made Songs for the V for Vendetta comic-- Vicious Cabaret
[7] The Weakerthans-- Our Retired Explorer

Tagging:
Aaanyone.

(Rachel'll be happy to send anyone any of these. They are obsession-making, even if they are not all entirely awesome.)

I've been idly looking around Steve Pavlina's website ever since I came across his bloggings of his Polyphasic Sleep experiment. At first I shied away from the more self-improvementy bits, as I've always associated the phrase with tedious lectures, with  becoming more organized, more productive, and ultimately more boring. Hot damn, but I'm glad I've dropped that mindset.

One part that enthralls me is the Million Dollar Experiment. I signed up tonight and have been staring at a little purple Post-It in front of me ever since. It reads:

In an easy and related manner, in a healthy and positive way, in its own perfect time, for the highest good of all, I intend $1 million to come into my life and the lives of everyone who holds this intention.

Yes, my Cynic, who wears a dark beret and snarks constantly, says that this is a stupid, soppy, and idealistic goal. I merely smile patronizingly. My Cynic has poor judgement, both in relation to hats and to my abilities-- and in the abilities of the universe.

Ever notice that if you complain long enough, the universe responds? Or if you learn a new word or phrase, it crops up everywhere? It's like that. The other week I was searching feverishly for one of my pens-- I only write in Bic Cristal Gel rollers if I can help it, but they often vanish. My searches turned up Post-Its, masking tape, and thread-- three items I'd been looking for earlier that week. I set the things down on my dresser-- and found a pen. 

Wow. Now, what if one can manipulate these-- or at least be more aware of these occurances?

I'm crazily pleased that there's a name for these weird quirks in our percieved universes, these synchronicities. I fully intend to exploit them. If I'm wrong, if they don't exist, so what? I'm out a few calories from brain power and a few seconds from believing worthless things. Still, it's more productive than counting ceiling tiles and more enjoyable than calculating the minutes left in the schoolweek.

So if I'm going to torture myself with two hours of sleep a day this August, I at least want to know what trouble I'm getting myself into. Scientifically. Accurately. Sadistically. Thus I bribed the sister into getting me Counting Sheep: The Science and Pleasure of Sleep and Dreams by Paul Martin from the library. (I got her The Magician's Nephew from the children's section as payment. I can't get things out on my own card since I have books that are about five months overdue and the librarians fully intend to break my kneecaps if I get close enough to the check-out desk. Fat Louie has nothin' on these ladies.)

So far, the book has nothing to say about polyphasic sleeping other than anything less than eight hours of sleep a night is dumb, but it's still an interesting, though occasionally tangentially written, read. Didja know that the surrealist writer Gerard de Nerval went mad in 1841 and adopted a pet lobster that he would walk on the end of a blue ribbon through the streets of Paris? Nerval's response to worried passerby: "Well, you see, he doesn't bark and he knows the secrets of the sea."

I may have to start introducing people like that, replacing my last favorite: "This is so-and-so. They fixed the World Series back in 1919." Alas, my dear F. Scott Fitzgerald. A juxtaposed crustacean has displaced your wisdom.

The SAT is tomorrow morning, and I have adopted a Zen attitude towards my results. This scares me. My Zen attitude, I fear, is mostly a sham put up to hide my complete lack of preparation. My gut clenches in anticipation, or possibly from the earlier sweet-and-sour chicken.

Anxiety or MSG? I fear I shall never know.

I've been accused of being tangential, easily distracted, and whimsical before, and it's all true. I'll seize onto something-- black and white photography, running, the Finnish language, Victorian etiquette-- learn as much as I can about it-- and often lose interest before managing to actually do anything with my new info-hoard. My Mintola camera is buried in my room under a pile of scarfs, Dame Curtsy's Etiquette Book lost to the downstairs.

This idea of polyphasic sleeping, though, specifically the Uberman sleep schedule, has held me in fascination for a record time of two weeks, and I know that for once, this is something I have to try. Twenty hours a day to do things, broken only by six every-four-hours twenty-minute-long naps! Time for homework and silly socializing! A way to justify my night-owl habits! The ability to be more productive than almost anyone else near me on two hours of sleep a DAY!

Unfortunately, my impending summer job at a resident camp rules out anything other than monophasic, or eight-hours-nightly-in-one-chunk, sleep. In a place where there's very little electricity at night and everyone's asleep by one A.M. at the very latest, it would be vastly unrealistic and unrewarding.

But August 13th-- August 13th I shall launch with joy into my experiment. I'll give myself four weeks, the last three or so of vacation and one of school, to get used to it and see if I can continue from there. The only trouble would be the nap I'll need during school, but I'm sure I'll be able to work something out with my study halls and lunch periods.

Four people I've explained this to are for it, about seven against it, and two are considering their own polyphasic experimentation. 

I, f'r one, like the odds.

Name ten of life's simple pleasures that you enjoy, then pick ten people to do the same. Try to be original and creative and not to use things that someone else has already used

01. Watching the rain from inside a platform tent when there's nowhere immediate to be.
02. Getting classmates to play camp games during school.
03. Learning pennywhistle tunes by ear.
04. Making homemade noodles.
05. One-match campfires.
06. Making strangers laugh.
07. Finding beachglass.
08. Losing a piece of story, finding it, and wondering who wrote that piece months later.
09. Those sweet peanuts that taste like snow.
10. Leaving snatches of Lewis Carroll's poetry on slips of paper inside schooldesks.

So NHS kids saved premature babies today. In boxes.

No, not really. S'just my response to the phrase, because I'm silly like that. Aaanyway. I was convinced (guilted until I agreed) to do the March of Dimes with April and Brittany and others, around technicolor-and-flowering-shrubs Fredonia, the pretty college town that has delusions of Europe. Ulk. Red Bull tastes like liquid Smarties. April swears it sharpened her vision. (They prolly drug the samples so we buy more. I bet. Maybe.)

Turns out I'm not the only loser skipping their junior prom. Hot damn, but I am excited to do non-promly things with others and pointedly have more fun than those at the dance. Eh-leez-ah-bet, my Temporary Southerner, is coming up that weekend to do stuff. I squee in joy!

But seriously. People who protest the March of Dimes piss me off. There were two people by the ice cream shop passing out leaflets on how March of Dimes-funded studies kill kittens. I, for one, would rather kill mice than release plagues and dangerous medicine on the masses. Still, I admire their nerve. Had the walkers not mostly been old folks and little kids, we so could have constituted a mob.

Rachl out!