Fever Dreams part one

One thing that really amazes and amuses me is the fact that the human brain has a built in entertainment centre, and more often than not it is triggered when one is *in between states*, i.e. in the act of dozing, day dreaming or when one is having fever.

While I loathe getting ill, the eternal optimist in me sometimes go:


"Oh goody, I wonder what fever dreams my addled brain will give me when I nap this time?"


Last week after a high bout of 37.7 deg C (that's about 99.9 F for non metric friends) I had my first of many Sinusitis induced fever dream.

1) Gollum Dreams

Imagine Gollum/Smeagol, dressed in a Greecian Chiton, in the battlefield of Troy. You can hear the clashes and screams of the warriors in the background; horses pulling chariots, and just loud thunderous sounds of battle, of life and of death. Then it fades slowly as Gollum climbs an overturned chariot, the wheel still spinning brokenly in it's axle.

Everyone stops (including me). Turns to Gollum and listened, as the former hobbit started declaiming Homer's Illiad to the listening crowds.

Now, if you've read Tolkien's and Homer's works, imagine the opening verses being recited in that scratchy, almost maniacal, sneeeeeeky Gollum-like voice and cadence:

"Sing, goddess, the anger of Peleus’ son Achilleus
and its devastation, which put pains thousandfold upon the Achaians,
hurled in their multitudes to the house of Hades strong souls
of heroes, but gave their bodies to be the delicate feasting
of dogs, of all birds, and the will of Zeus was accomplished
since that time when first there stood in division of conflict
Atreus’ son the lord of men and brilliant Achilleus. . . ."

And don't forget to intersperse the stanzas with generous smatterings of "Gollum, Gollum" and the odd "My preciiiouuussses" so it sounded more like:

"Sing, goddess, the anger of Peleus’ son Achilleus *Gollum*Gollum*
and its devastation, *My PRECIIIOUSSSS* which put pains thousandfold upon the Achaians,

hurled in their multitudes to the house of Hades *sneeky* strong souls
of heroes, but gave their bodies to be the delicate feasting *yesssssss gollum*

of dogses, of all birdses, and the will of Zeus was accomplished
since that time when first there stood in division of conflict *my preciouss*

Atreus’ son the lord of men *The SNEEEK! YES, the SNEEEEEEK* and brilliant Achilleus. . . ."

and carry on applying the Gollumisation onto the rest of the Epic verses. It was very amusing. I bet psychoanalysts everywhere would have a field day trying to decode that LOL.


I will try to sketch what it looked like in my fever dream today. But I thought I'd share my LSD-like (I've never tried LSD, I'm just assuming it would be as weird as fever dreams) experience

T'is the season to be sneezy and feeling shitty, and have unusual fever dreams.

Normally I don't indulge in whingeing. To me it just makes me more depressed, so instead I very much rather make fun of my illnesses and pain, and (mentally) de-personalise the failings of my physical body and focus on surviving long enough to become a Cyborg!

And go to Mars! Or even to the nearest Exo-Solar planet in a itty bitty exploration probe. And mess with the Extra-terrestrials. I found this jpeg floating about in Facebook which summarises the Cosmic Joker in me:







I mean, why not? To me, a sense of ironical humour is a telling sign of intelligence.

Back to being a Cyborg, why do I want to be a Cyborg? Simply put, my physical body is failing much much faster than I'd like it to be. Too many soft tissue damages, fractures, aches, pains, infections. The only way I can ignore the Doom of Disability is to make sure I don't rely on the (failing) natural, biological, physical attributes that I have and Imagine a world where I can just upload my personality, memories and humour into a Machine. And leave this world and look for newer ones.

Escapism to the N-th degree. Do you blame me? Then you should blame Stephen Hawking as well. He started it.

The physicist in me is thrilled by his work. The Biologist in me is having paroxysms of philosophical pain, trying to ingest his words. The very ill Ehlers Danlos sufferer in me admires his tenacity. How not? What better way is there in the whole wide world, to ignore pain, disability and incoming death, than to formulate alternate realities? In that way Hawking is my J. M. Barrie; and Multiverse is my Neverland.

In an alternative universe, I am perfectly healthy. In an alternate universe, I do not suffer from infections after infections. In an alternate universe, I am perfectly happy zooming around the universe, making Crop Circles and confounding the other specie!

Yes, that is me. Thank you, Mr Hawking, for giving flesh to my alternate reality, and coming up with the mathematics to prove it!

Gotta Go. I need to make some Crop Circles somewhere....

Summer's coming to an end

Apologies for the very long silence. I've started a new job in June that takes up a lot of my time. Yes it's nice to be able to pay your bills and occasionally splurge on a nice meal, but one's main interests does have to take a back seat until such time when my work hours are less Demonic in nature.