» Pointless Experiments

2001 Sleep Deprivation Study
For the whole year of 2001, I conducted a study on sleep deprivation. Like I've said on many a QoTW, I've never had many friends. I wanted to see how lack of sleep effects the brain so I avoided it at all costs. I would stay up for days at a stretch and succumb to the eventual sleep, waking up and trying it again, this time for longer. My mind at that time swirled with enlightened thoughts and I was sure I was the Buddha incarnate. I had found the meaning of life. But when the sleep study ended and I went back to my normal and somewhat sane self, all I found as proof of my enlightnment was pages and pages of this (these are actual excerpts from my sleep deprivation journal):

Time moves slow and so do I -- everything seems to be happening behind a waterfall of maple syrup. The air seems palable.

If that which doesn't kill us makes us stronger, old people wouldn't be so frail.

The clock just struck 4:25, as it does everyday at about this time.

The world has closed its eyes to me and everything else, and your thoughts detatch and become real, somehow, moving breathing lifeforms that you no longer have to feed.
Day is breaking. Smash.


At the pizza place we went to, there was an entire, possibly epic game of chess going on on the ceiling, and everyone around me was too busy to notice.

The Spanish channel is yammering on and on inside my head. I wish I could understand it; maybe they are saying something important. Instead he just talks and talks, in a language that I don't understand, words seem to overlap as the tempo of the talking gets faster. Is this even Spanish, or something that just sounds like it?

Hammers and nails, hammers and nails, it's what we use to kill garden snails.

Pippo was a normal boy with extraordinary powers. He seemed to see things that the other people around him didn't even bother to take notice of. For instance, as long as Pippo could remember, there was always a giant comet hurtling towards Earth. One day he looked up and cried, "Holy fuck, a giant coment!" Since then he's always been praised for his above average perceptual skills.

If I were to pour a cup of coffee for the sole purpose of dumping it on someone, than I probably wouldn't put sugar in it first.

Right now I have the word "irrelevancy" stuck on repeat in my head. I don't know why. But it seems strangly...irrelevant.

Just now I was walking under some trees, and acorns kept falling on me. I think the squirrels are trying to kill me, but I can't prove it.

Today I figured out that if you take any monosyllabic word and double it, you'll have either the name of a monkey or a panda bear.

Today I was talking to Erika about having a purple toilet in your kitchen. I postulated that a good way to con someone would be to simply invite them into your house. They would see the toilet, and go, "My God! A purple toilet!" and then, "Hey! There's a toilet in the kitchen!". Finally, they would put it together and exclaim, "Holy fuck! There's a purple toilet in the kitchen!" While they are standing there all confused, you could take their wallet. I even wrote a song about it.


A guy with two glass eyes only looks like he can see.



As you can see, sleep deprivation gives you illusions of profound enlightenment while really only providing you with a vast and playful insanity. Sort of like college...
(Thu 24th Jul 2008, 23:54, More)

» Public Transport Trauma

Ear phones
The batteries ran out of my portable CD player. Ah, no. No. It's not the music that I'll miss, it's the sanity of complete isolation. With those huge headphones strapped on my head, no one talks to me. And now the batteries are dead. And I'm on the bus. With nothing to read. Oh, no. No.

Solution: I'm the only one that knows the batteries are dead. So I'll sit for a while, bobbing my head, pretending that everything is fine. Yeah.

I must have done too good of a job and now some teenage boy is tapping me on the shoulder. I turn around, remove one earphone from my head and resume the most annoyed expression I can.

"Yes?"
The boy says, "Oh, can you turn that music down? It's really loud!"
"Okay..." I reply, amused. I fumble with the dial on my dead CD player. "Better?"
"Ah, yes," he says, a look of blissful contentment creeping across his face. "Thank you."

True story.
(Sat 31st May 2008, 5:08, More)

» I'm going to Hell...

Halloween 2004
I dressed up as Jesus. I thought it was a very clever costume, as I'd heard of no one doing so before. I was bored of the usual sexy witches and fairy tale charecters and wanted to do something out of the ordinary. I spent months constructing a giant cardboard cross and a crown of thorns and applied some fake blood (subtly, not too liberally). I was in high school then, so I spent my day not learning but pulling this huge cross up and down the halls behind me, wearing a flowing white robe, with a pained yet stoic expression slapped across my face. I thought it was harmless and ingenious and didn't expect the storm of righteousness that would fall upon me from the school's Christian Club.

I found myself, before lunch even started, being chased by an alarming group of kids who days before had been spouting concepts of Christian Love, but were now carrying large rocks and a megaphone. The leader of the group bellowed into the megaphone shouting, "Help us catch this sinner!" I ran, but was soon cornered by the group in the school's courtyard. The teachers on duty turned a blind eye as the Christian Club surrounded me, pelting me with rocks. And what did I do? Did I cry? Did I apologize? Or did I pick up on the incredible Biblical irony and proclaim with raised arms, even as rocks hit me square in the face, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone”?

Dear reader, I don’t think I have to tell you the answer.
(Fri 12th Dec 2008, 22:23, More)

» Faking it

And this one...
It's a repost from a few weeks back, I hope that you do not mind:

The batteries ran out of my portable CD player. Ah, no. No. It's not the music that I'll miss, it's the sanity of complete isolation. With those huge headphones strapped on my head, no one talks to me. And now the batteries are dead. And I'm on the bus. With nothing to read. Oh, no. No.

Solution: I'm the only one that knows the batteries are dead. So I'll sit for a while, bobbing my head, pretending that everything is fine. Yeah.

I must have done too good of a job and now some teenage boy is tapping me on the shoulder. I turn around, remove one earphone from my head and resume the most annoyed expression I can.

"Yes?"
The boy says, "Oh, can you turn that music down? It's really loud!"
"Okay..." I reply, amused. I fumble with the dial on my dead CD player. "Better?"
"Ah, yes," he says, a look of blissful contentment creeping across his face. "Thank you."

True story.
(Fri 11th Jul 2008, 19:44, More)

» Childhood Ambitions

After school special
There used to be these commercials on, where a little girl would say something like, "I want to be a ballerina when I grow up!" Then it would show a hobo-type person, dressed up in poor clothes with messed up hair, and a voice-over would then remark, "No one ever says, 'I want to be a junkie when I grow up.'" Remember those commercials? Well I do. Anyway, I remember seeing one such commercial at the age of five, eating cheerios or some shit in my living room. It seemed to me that if no one wanted to be a junkie, well, there wouldn't be much competition in that particular job market. So I instantly exclaimed, "I do! I want to be a junkie when I grow up!" I'd never seen my mom panic like that before or since.
(Sat 31st Mar 2007, 22:34, More)