No coffee for a week. That's right. Seven full days. Cold turkey, baby. Not even tea or a cola.
I detox periodically .. in an effort to keep the hounds of addiction at bay. Been a while tho, since I went without. So the bean-monster had ample opportunity to grow big-n-strong.
After the second day with no headache, I thought, This is cake.
Then it hit. With a vengeance. Ouch. Sweet Jesus. (Big ouch.) And Advil did nothing to loosen Fester's cranial vice.
Musta had enough caffeine in my system to keep me crankin' for a few days.
Few more days later and the headache started to subside. But by then .. well, do you recall that old song by Aerosmith? .. with lyrics that said » "My get up & go musta got up & went."
That's the hardest part. I can handle the headaches .. cuz I know they'll go away. (Eventually.) And because I've become quite chummy with mister pain-n-suffering, lately. But having no energy .. that really suks. Cuz it feels like the jam machine might not ever restart.
Lost 5 lbs, too. Without even trying. That was weird. Sorta lost my appetite. Drank lotsa water. Always thirsty. Never hungry.
So it's been a somewhat altered state this last week. Speaking of states of consciousness...
»»
SHUTTER ISLAND
Saw Shutter Island last night. It's currently the most rented movie. Wasn't nearly as scary tho as I thought it'd be. Actually, it wasn't really scary at all. More suspenseful than scary. The trailers made it look pretty scary.
[ Must say, I enjoy most everything Scorsese does. He's an East Coaster. ]
Speaking of the East Coast .. when I was a kid, my dad would take the neighborhood kids to see scary movies at the local theater on weekend nights during the summer. They'd stop by during the day, eagerly asking,
Is your dad going to the scary movie tonight?We'd all climb in the back of his pick-up. The whole neighborhood. And go watch scary movies on the big screen at the local theater. We loved it. Would hoot & holler all the way home. Sometimes we'd stop for pizza.
But getting back to Shutter Island .. I love when movies challenge your view of reality like that. You think you know what's real. But then .. maybe you don't. Doubts arrive. Make you think.
••• today's entry continues here below •••
Seems hard to make a movie like that. Cuz everything has to LOOK one way, but really be another. The details become crucial. Hard to talk about Shutter Island without spoiling it. So I won't say any more.
»» AN EDUCATION
Also enjoyed An Education (last week) .. by Sony Classics. Grabbed that one without knowing a thing about it (.. except for the picture on the cover).
Not what I expected. Darker, especially the second half. Cuz the picture on the cover looks so bright & airy. (That's the type of movie I felt like seeing.)
Sometimes I like to watch movies about which I know nothing. The lady at the library simply smiled and said, You'll like it.
Can't believe I didn't see it coming .. the surprise ending, I mean. So obvious (.. in retrospect).
I'll give you a hint » The word 'education' in the title refers to two different things .. only one of which applies to your standard university lore.
»» INCEPTION!
But the movie I really wanna see is » Inception .. released just this weekend (by Warner Bros).
I read some reviews, which got me stoked, cuz I like movies where technology & psychology combine in ways that make you think. That present new ideas (.. that might challenge old ideas).
One critic described it as » 'James-Bond-meets-the-Matrix.' Nearly wet my pants when I read that. Would like to see it on the monster screen at the Big Newport .. where they have the "biggest screen in the West". Best movie-viewing venue I've ever sat in (.. seats over 1,000).
The thing about movies, tho, is that (like people), when you have high expectations .. it's hard for them to live up. That's probably why An Education worked so well. I had no expectations. No idea what it was about.
»» DREAMS
Inception supposedly deals with DREAMS. Been having some bizarre ones myself, lately. Maybe due to the detox (.. caffeine being a psychoactive stimulant).
Had a dream a few nights ago where a certain person, who is normally very nasty, was NICE to me. I mean, REAL nice. (Use your imagination.)
Never had THAT dream before. Ever. Seemed so real, too. Talk about trippy. Cuz there's nothing in the 'real' world that might suggest such a thing. Quite the contrary.
»» ROAD DREAMS
In the novel 'The Road,' Cormac McCarthy writes the following passage .. regarding beautifully enchanting dreams while real-life = a desperate situation:
"He distrusted all of that. He said the right dreams for a man in peril were dreams of peril and all else was the call of languor and of death. He slept little and he slept poorly. He dreamt of walking in a flowering wood where birds flew before them and the sky was aching blue but he was learning to wake himself from just such siren worlds." [ ** ]
What a fascinating concept! .. that enchanting dreams are death's way of seducing and drawing you in. I remember the first time that notion passed thru my consciousness. It spun my head around with enough cranial torque to make me set down the text and ponder the idea. (Been faced with a few desperate predicaments myself, lately.)
I've heard similar notions about mountain climbers who succumb to the cold at high altitude. That freezing to death is actually a much more pleasant experience than you might otherwise imagine.
[ ** In the book, the dad actually *is* dying. It's the boy who's keeping him alive. He's coughing up blood every morning. ]
»» SOCAL WEATHER » Enough of this talk of cold and freezing to death. Summer has finally arrived here in SoCal. Been downright nippy until this week. Whatever happened to global warming? We could use a little GW here.
»» RAD_WEBSITE
I modified the style of the ROLL-OVERS for the black buttons found at the top of the blue sidebars on the homepage. I changed them to a white background. What do you think?
I think it 'works' (representatively speaking) .. cuz most of those links take you to pages with a white background. The effect is not as subtle or understated as I normally like, but I like it better than what we had before.
Also began taking advantage of » parallel downloads .. for the gfx on the site's homepage (.. by creating 10 gfx-only subdomains). Maybe the page loads a little zippier for you? (depending on your connection)
I try to keep total page-size below 200-KB .. including gfx, which comprise the vast majority of your download. (Preferrably < 150.) But it gets hard, cuz I like to use better-quality images (.. which increase size.), and cuz I try to post at least one representative image for each entry (.. for those graphically inclinded).
Also introduced the »» NEW TOPIC » flags in today's post .. at the beginning of new topics .. prolly cuz I changed the topic so many times. Didn't want to be confusing. Thoughts? Org aid or distraction?
If I do decide to keep the practice, I should probably mark-them-up as low-level headings (.. to be semantically accurate), and style them as in-line elements (via span). Pictures also accompany some new topics.
Also dropped in some named anchors (links within the page) for these NEW TOPICS, which I usually never do.
[ UPDATE: I decided to convert the more important NEW TOPIC tags into full-blown headings (leaving their page-specific anchor links in place), and leave the less important TOPICS as mere in-line CAPITALS that begin a new topic. ]
»» MODERATION IN ALL THINGS
The coffee tomorrow is gonna taste sooo good. Can almost hear the barrista say .. "Gentlemen, start! your! engines!" A good espresso can make me feel downright religious.
Thought of quitting outright, but I like the buzz. And growing up Catholic taught me that repression has consequences. Usually bad ones. Tho I probably shouldn't wait so long to detox next time.
» BUG » Haven't seen the Bug for weeks. He's back East, visiting relatives. Miss him. Should see him later this week. Friend offered to take us to the Bug's first major league baseball game. San Diego. Train down. He loves the train. (He has a train.)
