I have this horrible feeling I'm losing my memory. This is not fucking funny. Why do I keep losing the names of things? Stupid stuff, usually names of places (like Indigo's cafe the other day - that scared me) or albums or whatever. Not facts or concepts so much (though my ability to remember verbatim quotes is apparently also going) or things like "where did I leave my keys?" but... names. And forgetting names is scary.

Though apparently if I take two tries at it I can still list all the Eighteen Legions and Primarchs thereof, which made me feel fractionally better when I tried it as a mental test earlier. I can still get all the Traitor Legions on a single pass, perhaps unsurprisingly - it was the Loyalists who took me two attempts, and the ones I couldn't think of were the White Scars (who fall slightly under "who?" anyway) and the Ultramarines (D'OH!!!!)

Speaking of the Traitor Legions and also of things I can't remember properly, I wish I could recall more details of the dream I had last night that had a couple of the Thousand Sons and the Emperor's Children wandering around it. I do recall being pinned in a vicious armlock by something with tentacles that was sneering mockingly in my ear, and looking up to see tarnished blue and bronze filling my vision as this huge figure turned to focus its attention on me... brr. I should probably have been a lot more frightened but I was too busy being blown away by finding myself in the presence of an honest-to-gods Chaos Marine to even think of being scared, because, well, dude.

There were also zombies (which started out as just heads - apparently they grew bodies when they were raised) and some very bizarre plot involving someone trying to conquer the world and Unicronians turned human and looking completely lame, but the stuff with the two Traitors is the bit that's mentally stuck. For which I'm quite grateful as it was clearly the best bit.

So, yeah. Anyone know of any good ways to improve your memory? (Apart, of course, from going back to playing Kim's Game.)

Laters,
The Navigator

I have a new bed - well, sort of a bed. It's actually a large bean bag that was given to me by deepbluesquee, and Koi took a photo of me curled up in it with my nose sticking out of the duvet, and... well, see above. ^_^

Interestingly, though, it seems to make me sleep a bit differently. More lightly, I think, to be precise. I seem to wake up in the middle of the night more often (which is cool, as the full moon has been shining straight through my window for the last couple of nights and it's absolutely magic getting to see that at five am when nobody else is awake). But the one difference I've really noticed is that I seem to be dreaming more than I was, and this is a good thing because when I don't dream, I feel wretched when I wake up and am well below optimal levels of functionality for the rest of the day.

Does anyone else notice what effect their dreams have on their wellbeing, out of curiosity? Or am I just weird? (If Freddy Krueger ever shows up, of course, I'm proper screwed...)

Meanwhile, in other news, I went in Body Shop yesterday and treated myself to some new bath things. Their Christmas range this year (amber/cranberry/vanilla) is fantastic. Especially the Vanilla Spice body lotion, as it's got gold shimmer in it and leaves you sparkling all over like some kind of demented Mary-Sue while also being incredibly good for your skin. I shall definitely be using this more.

Now, though, I'm stuck at work and miserably bored. Entertain me? Anyone? Please?

Laters,
Rath

PS And in the news today: Obama's new Secret Service codename is "Renegade". I like it. ^_^ Meanwhile, there's finally a proper sighting on a planet orbiting Fomalhaut... iä, Cthugha!

I had a dream last night that I was in the middle of nowhere with a few people I know, and we were looking up at the sky and I saw what must have been a million million shooting stars all at once. It was as though the whole sky had always been one great dome of clear glass, and someone had smashed it and all the pieces were falling at once. I don't know why I dreamed that, but I'm just posting it because it's the kind of image you want to remember.

Having mentioned that... the rest of this post will now consist of stuff I want to show to everyone. In no particular order:

I've just discovered Tiny Ghosts. This is a strange little photocomic that isn't really "comic", but a sequence of little thought-provoking two-sentence stories. Mental jumping points, if you will. Some of it is a little too sentimental for my taste (the anti-war ones and the more mawkish romantic ones in particular sometimes cross the line) but the more macabre, weird or just plain leftfield ones are great. This one in particular struck me with some nameless sense of realisation, and left me looking round like I'd just seen the world slip sideways an inch; this one feels awfully believable; this one is sheer poetry.

I think my absolute favourite has, though, to be this one.

Meanwhile, also in the department of visual arts, I was talking to Koi while it was sitting with its graphics tablet the other night, and asked "draw me something Black Metal?" The result? This, which is absolutely awesome though you may have to adjust your screen brightness a bit to actually see it, looking at how it's come out on the work monitor. ¬.¬ Thank you Koi!

Finally, I've been haunted of late by a piece of music. I was in the cinema and caught the trailer for Babylon AD, and my ears instantly pricked up and I went "I know that piece, where do I know it from?" My brain distantly pinged a flag that said Sunshine, and, yes, it's the same piece of music that was on the trailer for that! It turns out to be called Lux Aeterna, and has appeared in about a million different guises on various movie soundtracks/trailers including Requiem for a Dream and, apparently, a trailer for The Two Towers. It's also on Youtube, where it's been used as a songvid piece for every remotely heroic/depressing fandom you can think of. Seriously, have a listen to a few of the versions. It's a gorgeous, spectral piece with a refrain that makes me think for some reason of the mirror scene at the end of Prince of Darkness - it sounds to me like a key, like a song that if played in the right place at the right moment could unlock our reality and create a gateway to another one. One where there's something that really, really wants to be on our side of the gate... and that we really, really don't want here, even if we don't know about it yet. I have no idea why this song affects me like this, but...

Okay, post long enough for now...

Laters,
The Navigator

I just resisted buying a rare album I really, really want[1], even though it was the cheapest I'll probably ever see it. Because if I did, I wouldn't have enough money to get to the next paycheque and still be able to go to the Midsummer Fair. Which means that dammit, I AM going to the Fair now I've made such a horrible sacrifice to be able to do it. Who's going and which days?

And last night I dreamed I was wandering around Whitby with someone I actually fancy IRL (dear brain, that was the height of self-indulgence) and another person who I know I knew in the dream but can only remember now as a huge, hulking, sinister figure who I'd have been afraid of if they weren't an old friend. However, even my nice dreams manage to be disturbing, as witness the recurring motif of brown paper parcels with suspicious white powder in.

Oh, and then there was the bit where I and unknown-friend had to catch the demon cat-thing that was crawling into people's mouths and eating their insides. The part where I had to hold the ends of this furry aberration while my friend cut it in half was possibly the single most grotesque thing I've ever had to do even in my sleep. O_O

Meanwhile, the staircase outside my office smells as though someone has been raising undead cabbages from the grave. I don't think I'm eating at work today. *gag*

Laters,
The Navigator

[1] Five years ago, I could have picked it up for a tenner, and I didn't because (lj)oml404 had it. The moral of this is: no matter how much you love someone, always buy your own copy. *headdesk*

(Also, when an album you remember glancing over on the merchandise stall at the gig has become a hundred-pounds-a-copy collectable? You're old. :p )

I got booted awake by the alarm this morning in the middle of a dream that I really wish I could remember more of. All I can clearly remember is that the POV character (who I was variously being or watching, my dreams are a bit fluid on the whole first-person/third-person thing) was the custodian of a massive crypt complex or necropolis type place, deep underground; that he had apparently been put into suspended animation and woken up again, some time into the future; and that the people who woke him were working to overcome death and for some reason needed his help. Which he wasn't prepared to give, and I remember him running through the crypts, dashing from one weirdly-glowing spot to another, presumably working to activate some secret technology built into the place or something like that. I wish I could remember more of the whys and wherefores.

But the part that really sticks with me, is when my character (me, at the time, I think we were in first-person) was being interviewed/instructed by the mysterious Them who were running the show, and they took him into a room to show him how their project of conquering death was coming along. All very sincere, like they genuinely thought they'd achieved something great and just wanted him, for the good of humanity, to provide the last piece of the puzzle. And there were... people. Old, withered. Grannies and grandads, old men and crones. All of them alive, smiling, talking in that slightly dotty but lovable way that the really old have - but their bodies were literally falling off them. Teeth showing through shredded lips, empty oozing eyesockets, bare bone and wet, moving tendons glinting in the furrows in their arms and legs as they propped themselves on their canes and walkers. As though they'd started by anchoring the spirit to the body so that it couldn't get detached, but hadn't figured out how to stop the body from coming apart even so. Not like they were rotting, even, but like they were just... breaking up. *shudders* Beat most horror movies I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot of horror movies in my time.

So, yeah, I wake up with weird things in my head. Brr. For some reason my brain is also saying that there were other, different walking dead things in the crypt somewhere, but that may be an embellishment I added subconsciously rather than something that was explicit in the dream. I wish I could rescue more of this idea, it'd have made a great story.

Brr. Anyway. How are you guys?

Laters,
The Navigator