Hello ladies. I'm back from wandering the wasteland. Actually, the first few days of my trip were spent in the heart of civilisation, doing aunt duties—ie: babysitting my brothers' kids on pupil-free days. Last week—however—I was hard at work …
What's been going on while I've been away?
I wasn't keen on this album when I first got it—twelve months ago. It's grow on me considerably since then. Today, it dawned on me that Squib might appreciate the fact that there's an entire metal album out there dedicated to Charles Darwin.
I know the lyrics aren't exactly super-sophisticated—but hey—they're a metal band … from Finland … who speak English as a second language. … What more do you want?
The best song on the album doesn't have a video, so here's a Norwegian girl doing a very decent karaoke version.
Also, the last track on the album is a 30min instrumental piece with a song in the middle and a reading by Richard Dawkins at the end.
At the start of the year, I mentioned that I'm enjoying bed-time a lot more now than I used to. I guess it's about time I explained myself.
The power of suggestion on the human mind is a fascinating thing. Every time I read about stuff like the placebo effect, it blows me away. Hypnotism and subliminal suggestion are such bizarre concepts that it's hard for me to believe they're even real. Recently, I discovered there's an internet community based around a phenomenon known as Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR)—which is actually a made-up bullshit term for a sensation that a lot of people say they experience, but nobody's ever seriously researched. Long story short—I'm currently using it to help me get to sleep.
Since this post is long, I've organised it with the least critical (and more to the point—least interesting) content first. The idea being that you can use the table of contents below to easily skip past the parts you don't care about. For instance, the first section is just about my sleep issues. Let's face it, we all have sleep issues, and there's nothing special about mine. The second section describes what ASMR actually is. If you already know what it is, you don't need to read this bit either. Alright, you get the idea …
I've mentioned before that I hate going to sleep. That doesn't mean I hate sleeping—what I hate is the process of transitioning from being awake to being asleep. Why? Because sometimes it takes forever and is full of unpleasantness. For example, sometimes I get this thing which I call the wandering itch. This is where some part of my body will itch, and the second I start to scratch it, the itch will go away and reappear on another part of my body. For instance: I scratch my head and my elbow itches, I scratch my elbow and my foot itches, I scratch my foot and my nose itches … This goes on and on indefinitely.
The other thing I get is guilt-trips. Basically, my unoccupied mind will amuse itself by dragging up all the nasty and horrible things I've ever done in my life and making me relive them. Yes, thanks to my cunt of a brain, I get to have a full understanding of exactly what people mean when they say, How do you sleep at night?
So, to paint a picture; falling asleep often requires me to lay in bed—potentially for hours—feeling horrible (and sometimes borderline suicidal) while trying to ignore an itch that's driving me crazy. And as an extra special kick up the arse, sometimes when I'm very, very nearly asleep, I'll get a sensation like I'm falling and then jolt awake—meaning that I then have to start the process all over again.
So far, the best solution I've found is exercise. In general, the more physically exhausted I am when I go to bed, the quicker and easier it is to go to sleep. The down side is that it's also the only solution I've found; meaning, if—for any reason—I don't get in a sufficient workout, or it simply isn't doing the trick on a particular night, I'm up shit creek without a paddle. I suppose I could look into drugs—but I'd really rather not. For this reason, I'm always on the lookout for methods of getting to sleep—just so I can have an extra arrow in my quiver. So far, I haven't had much luck with emptying my mind, counting sheep, warm milk, boring literature, or white-noise—but this time, I think I might be onto a winner.
There's two parts to this. Firstly, a rough explanation of what ASMR actually is, and secondly, what the community is all about. The first part is relatively easy. ASMR is a sense of euphoria, accompanied by a pleasurable tingling sensation that starts in the head and sometimes travels down the whole body. If you've ever experienced it, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about—chances are, you just didn't have a word for it until now. If you haven't experienced it before, I'm guessing you also haven't got a fucking clue what I'm talking about. the important thing to understand is that it's not a state of mind or something you can do; it's an uncontrollable physical/chemical reaction that happens to you. A bit like a sneeze, or when the doctor hits your knee with that little hammer thingy and your foot kicks out. Some people describe it as a brain orgasm, but most people in the community avoid this term—mostly because they want to push the point that it's a completely non-sexual experience.
Because there's never been any serious medical research done into ASMR, nobody really knows where it comes from or what causes it. The only thing that is known is that different things trigger it in different people and some people don't get it at all. The most prevalent theory is that, when we are very young, our brains create deeply embedded connections between certain—very specific—sensory stimulus (taste, touch, sight, sound, smell) and a primal, pre-sexual sense of pleasure. The idea is that if you get exposed to that stimuli again—under the right circumstances—your brain turns on the happy juice. For those of you who have never experienced ASMR and are having trouble imagining what it feels like, it's not the type of happy feeling that makes you want to get up and dance; it's more the type that makes you want to curl up and go to sleep while sucking your thumb. Less ecstasy and more heroin.
Since it's hard to communicate taste, touch, and smell, over the internet, the ASMR community basically consists of a bunch of people trying to create audio and visual material which stimulates ASMR in other people. So, if you search for ASMR on Youtube, you'll find hundreds of videos of people whispering in reassuring tones, slowly and deliberately acting out mundane household tasks, and role-playing trips to the doctor or hairdresser; usually in a manner that makes the audience feel as if they are viewing the action from the perspective of a very small child.
To give you an idea of how weirdly specific this stuff is, for me to get a response, I need to be wearing headphones, and the audio should preferably be recorded with a binaural microphone setup which mimics the human ears. Videos should feature a woman in the age range of 30~50 who is slowly and methodically doing things with her hands—preferably things that cause her nails to scratch or tap against something—including skin. Hair brushing is also acceptable. She should only talk in a low, whispery voice. What she says is less important than the tone. Foreign languages are acceptable.
I think it's safe to assume that my ASMR trigger is somehow linked to subconscious imprinting from my mum.
Whether or not there's anything in this for you is going to depend on whether or not you're susceptible to ASMR, whether or not you can find anything that triggers your ASMR, and how intense the ASMR experience is for you. Of course, you might also happen to be one of those people who goes to sleep the moment your head hits the pillow at night—in which case, you needn't bother with any of this crap, you lucky, lucky bitch.
Also, despite what I said earlier about ASMR being non-sexual, there is at least one parallel you can draw. If you're distracted, or you're not in the right frame of mind, or the type of stimulation's not quite right—not only is it a lost cause, but the experience can actually be downright irritating.
Lastly, I have no idea how sustainable this is as a long term sleep-aid. I have read that some people do get desensitised over time. I suppose I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. In the meantime, anything that keeps me from crying and scratching myself raw is a big win in my book.
I haven't watched this stuff yet and I may not get around to it; but I'm perusing the ABC & SBS on-demand listings and two things have jumped out at me:
Speaking of exploitation cinema, is anyone planning on seeing the new Tarantino flick when it comes out? And has anyone gotten around to seeing the new Star Wars yet?
… I'm sprawled on top of my bed—fast asleep—as any decent person over the age of 25 should be. Suddenly, I'm jolted awake by the sound of somebody trying to turn my front door knob. I leap off the bed as a key enters the lock. It rattles, but doesn't turn. I'm just getting to the door when the knocking starts …
***BANG***BANG***BANG***
Silence
***BANG***BANG***BANG***
Suddenly I'm awake and conscious of the fact that all I've got on is a pair of shorts. I fumble around on the bench and find a screwdriver.
***BANG***
***BANG***
Mercifully, he didn't apologise and try to woo me back …
soooo, the end?
I've got a couple of rellies staying with me at the moment. I'm going to call them Muddy and Dusty; mostly because it's close enough to their "real" names to feel authentic but not close enough to come up in a Google search. I've spoken before about how—in my family—sometimes a parent will go off the rails, and then the oldies will have a yarn amongst themselves, and then the kids will go off to live with aunts and sisters and cousins and so forth (It's always been a worry of mine that—since i don't have kids—I might get nominated; but so far, so lucky). Anyway, Dusty & Muddy are a perfect example of this. They're not biologically father and son, but for all intents and purposes, that's what they are. In fact, Dusty is closer to Muddy than he is to any of his biological children. This is due to some shit he went through with his mad alcoholic missus many years ago. At any rate, none of this has anything to do with this post. The point is that since Dusty has been needing to come to the city for specialist treatment, I've been seeing quite a bit of them recently. In fact, they're part of my three month backlog; so expect to see more of them in coming posts.
During the periods they've been staying with me, it's been all sport all the time. So, last night, we're watching the T20 cricket match between the Melbourne Renegades and the Hobart Hurricanes. Dusty & Muddy are nattering away—filling me in on a century's worth of gossip and community history—ignoring the cricket commentators and pausing only when one of the players appears on screen to speak … and then this interview happens:
My two guests laugh their arses off.
Then they go back to their conversation—seemingly missing everything the commentators say about the exchange:
Eventually we get to the end of the game.
And I did. But we'll get back to that in a bit. Man of the match is announced and it's some other bloke.
I ended up giving the whole incident quite a bit of thought last night—trying to work out how I felt about it. But—truth be told—I didn't really feel anything. All I could think was, "The way he said that was so awkward and stilted—like he had specific lines worked out ahead of time. Did somebody put him up to doing it? His team mates? Her work colleagues?", and also, "I'll bet this is going to blow up on the interwebs".
Well, a day has passed, and I've had time to think about it some more. I haven't listened to any radio or telly, but I did take a quick look on the interwebs and sure enough—about a dozen headlines on ABC, about the same on The Guardian, Fox Sports News, Sky News, etc. Even tried swimming through the river of shit that is Twitter. Saw all the stuff I expected to see too. Gayle's been fined ten grand and issued one of those not-so-apologies, stating he's sorry if anyone got offended by his harmless little joke. There were outraged feminists; anti-feminists telling them to calm down; some misguided bloke suggesting she should have replied with "I don't go out with monkeys who've just come down from the trees", just to let him know what a "joke" feels like; female journalists talking about hostile work environments and male-dominated industries; female athletes declaring that they're going to try chatting up a male interviewer on air, just to show how much things are being blown out of proportion; and of course, the obligatorily nonsensical "The dumb slut looks like she could use a big black dong to loosen her up!" (… hang on, aren't sluts—by definition—already loose women who get more than enough … oh—fuck it—why bother?)
So anyway, I'm reading through all this outrage and abuse and bullshit, and I'm thinking again about how I should feel about the issue … and still there's nothing. The whole incident/reaction seems so predictable and by-the-numbers that it almost feels mechanical. I just can't bring myself to care—even though somewhere—at the back of my mind—there's a nagging little voice telling me I should. … Actually, I'm lying. There is one thing I care about—a little bit. I really hope none of the splatter lands on the women's league that's trying so hard to get off the ground this year. And maybe I also feel a tiny bit guilty that that's the only thing I care about. But that's it for me—truthfully, this time.
What about you lot? Did this come across your radar before you read about it here? What did you think? Do you care? Do you think it's an important issue that we should all be concerned with? Or not? Would it steer you away from exposing your young (possibly hypothetical) daughters to cricket?
**EDIT** This is the current header image for the BBL at cricket.com.au
Ya reckon this bloke had lost a bet, or what?
30 minutes. GIMP.
Something nice and simple to start with. I decided to work in GIMP for the first time in a while. It was okay. Kinda like hanging out in one of your old home towns. Everything seems just right to start with; and then you realise why it is you left. GIMP is not designed for freehand drawing and painting, and lacks a lot of the little freehand-centric luxuries that MyPaint and Krita have.
There's a lot about this effort I don't like. To start with, I probably went overboard experimenting with the different brushes. The tree branch started out as a little test area, but just sorta worked its way into the picture over time. The composition isn't great either. Reckon the bike turned out alright though.
