I had an odd recollection today from my childhood days.. I remember when I was in my freshman year in junior high (age 13), there was a basketball tournament held at school. I loved all kinds of sports events at school cause there were so few of them. I always wished there were school teams for different sports like one finds in other countries. The question would I have made any of those teams remains unanswered meanwhile. So that was an annual thing, we got a group together and signed up for the tournament. Each team required a name of some kind so we came up with "Dream Team" (reference to the US men's basketall team in the 92' Barcelona Olympics which wiped the floor with all the other teams).

So we went to register our team and as we were in line to do so, there was another team behind us. So finally we go up to the secretary and get registered as the "Dream Team". As it turned out, the group behind us ripped off the name and enrolled as "Dream Team 2". So seeing this, the brilliant secretary changed our name to "Dream Team 1". :wallbang:

Worse still, in the first round of the tournament, we came up against "Dream Team 2" and... they knocked us out. :wallbang:

Come to think of it, all the teams I was on in my time never cracked that first round. *sigh* The only good team I ever played on was my very first one, the soccer club I joined at age 8.

You've heard the term "everything in moderation". It's cracking good advice too. But it's not for everybody..

To start off in general terms, I have never been normal and I have never wanted to be normal. I'm only being me when I'm not normal. That doesn't mean I have to be different always, but certainly at times when I do feel that need, I won't let down and I don't feel good unless I get my way. This I've known for a long time but lately it's become apparent in more concrete means. I'm not a moderate. I need to exaggerate, to overdo it, to go "too far". And whenever I do, quite often there are people around to say "there's no need to exaggerate". Well not for *you* maybe, but I need to. Needless to say, they never get much headway. :D

Ok so I'm extreme, an extremist. When I played sports with friends, I was always the kid who wanted to play longer than anyone else. I'm still like that. I could have 1l+ of ice cream in one sitting, or 200g of chocolate. In a debate, I can go further than anyone else in applying logical rules to arguments and show that people's statements can be mercilessly twisted to mean completely different things than intended, just because I think there is a truth there worth exploring (people don't like this :D ). A few years ago, I heavily neglected school work to work hours a day on a website just because I wanted to. I've had some of the longest and most intense email exchanges, 2000 words per message everyday. I've done lots of instant messaging, I was in a chat that lasted 12 straight hours (I kid you not!), with just the one person. I've watched all of "Seinfeld" probably about 5 times (180 episodes), I can do lots of comedy from memory because I've heard it so many times.

Is that normal? Is that moderate? I can't do moderation, it's not for me..

I'm sure you've seen that commercial a bunch of times. It doesn't even matter what product it's for because you don't notice the product anyway. It's all about the atmosphere.

Let me describe it for you. A person wakes up one morning, in most cases it's an attractive woman, you see a shot of the bed, the clean and slightly curled up bed sheets, the bed has a head board, above it there's a small shelf or a picture or something like that. On both sides of the bed there are night stands with small lamps above them. The carpet is white or at least a very light color, that's what dominates the scene, plenty of white. The walls are white and quite plain but the room looks elegant, like you see in one of those home decorating magazines, the modern look. You can't see the window in the opening shot but there are scattered rays of sunlight protruding the bed and the room, not enough to blind the woman in bed and make the room too hot, just enough to create a nice effect of sunlight entering the room. The cherry on the cake is the soothing music being played over this sequence. The woman opens her eyes, stretches her arms and begins to exit the bed. She goes into the bathroom and takes a shower, the product is usually soap, shampoo, deodorant, perfume, something like that. But the whole point of the scene is to create a decidedly peaceful atmosphere in the room just as morning sets in, not a care in the world, perfect harmony. The woman wakes up perfectly rested, eager to start a new day. It's like a piece of paradise.

I would like to have *one* morning like that. I never get that, even if I buy the soap. ;) My morning looks like that Wella Shockwaves commercial, with the gorilla dragging the guy - who's asleep - through the room by his hair, doing everything to mess up his hair. I also never feel fully rested when I wake up, it happened to me once in years. It doesn't matter if I sleep early or late, if I go to bed early or late, what time of year it is, what the weather is, what the temperature in the room is, it just doesn't happen. Everyday I wake up I feel like I could use a couple more hours of sleep.

If you figure out a way to have that morning from those commercials, let me know.

I had just fired up gimp today, for those who don't know it, it's supposed to be an Adobe Photoshop clone, only free. Now I don't do a lot of work with graphics for a variety of reasons. It takes a lot of time, I don't know much about it but most importantly because I don't have talent for it. This time around I just needed a simple graphic for a school project when the New Image dialog caught my eye. The screenshot is from the gimp user manual and the interesting entry is highlighted in red. When you create a new image in gimp, you get a dialog asking to input the common properties any image must have (dimensions, resolution etc). There is also a list of predefined image types available to you, in order to make it quicker to create certain types of images. One of these is the "toilet paper" format, out of the US apparently, which happens to be completely new to me. So as the gimp is widely used, apparently enough people were doing toilet paper designs to lobby for a special entry into that menu, interesting.

Everyday you learn something new..

Why drink alcohol? Why take drugs? Why do people say they are "having a good time" when they're "partying", which implies some degree of intoxication? Is it not escape? Escape from the meaningless or depressing or downright sad existence which meets us every morning. Some drink to feel the alcohol, others just drink to gain the artificial phychological impression of being under the influence, that which they exert on themselves in the spirit of the moment. What is it all for? To not be where they are at this precise moment, to not be who they are right here right now. To be different, to be elsewhere. To escape to more fashionable thoughts, to feel "free". Emotional discharge takes on many forms. It can be sports, it can be chemicals as mentioned, it can be yoga or tai chi. Whatever the form, the goal is to restore a balance to the mind. The mind suffers with imbalance, we must rid ourselves of it. How often do you hear people say they "feel better" when they're doing something specific or they're in a certain place? What does it mean to "feel better", is it not an expression of relief? One way or another we all feel it, there's something not quite sitting right, only the subconscience really knows but we can feel it.

I don't drink, when I do it's not to intoxicate myself and in any case it's sporadic. I don't do yoga (maybe I should), I don't do drugs. But I've found my catalyst. The one thing that dislodges the obstacle at the choke point. That discharges the negative emotions and restores balance. It's writing. Right here. It's not always topical but the tone matches the mood. I don't know why writing makes a difference but it makes you see things from a different angle, helps to move on from a problem area. If you don't like getting drunk, try it.